"The God of Abraham Praise"

Back in March, I watched the One LSB Hymn a Week video for "The God of Abraham Praise."

I noticed only a single thing then, but in looking at the hymn again in order to write this post, I found a handful of others.

The tune is "Yigdal."  Here's the first phrase:

In the eighth verse, the text here is "The God who reigns on high."  "High" is sung to the highest pitch in the phrase (C), musically giving an impression of this.

The third phrase:

In the second verse, the text here is "From earth I rise and seek the joys."  "From earth I rise" is sung to an ascending group of notes (G Ab Bb C), giving a sense of this "ris[ing]."

The sixth phrase:

In the sixth verse, the text here is about the Promised Land: "And oil and wine abound."  Both "oil" and "abound" are sung with melismas (F G and F F E, respectively), both of which give a musical impression of the ample supply.

In the eighth verse, the text here is "And evermore shall be," describing God with a phrase adapted from Revelation 4:8 ("Who was and is the same / And evermore shall be").  Here, "evermore" is sung with a melisma (F G Ab Bb C).  Because the word is stretched out, there's something of a sense of that long period of time.

The seventh phrase:

In the sixth verse, describing the Promised Land, the text here is "And trees of life forever grow."  Similar to "evermore" mentioned above, "forever" is sung with a melisma (Bb C Bb C), giving a sense of that long period of time.

The eighth (and final) phrase:

Verses one, four, and seven end with "Forever..." or "Forevermore" sung with a melisma (C Bb Ab G [plus F for "Forevermore"]), which - as described above - musically gives a sense of the word's meaning.

"Yigdal" (TLH #40)

I recorded this yester-day, and when I saw that this was in Ab major, I considered just skipping it because I try to avoid anything with more than even two flats (and it would have taken too long to transpose it).  But I like this tune, so I decided to soldier through it (although my resolve failed after recording the mandolin parts, which is why this one doesn't have bass).  Ab major isn't the best key for mandolin, so there are some passages (particularly near the beginning of the verse) where you can hear my left hand moving around on the strings to get to a better position.

When I started recording the harmony part, I discovered that I'd played the melody more from memory than what was actually written (so I had to do it again).  There are three spots in the TLH version that are different from the LSB version: two instances of a quarter note (in TLH) becoming a pair of eighth notes (in LSB) and one instance of a dotted half note becoming a quarter note and a half note.