#327: Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow

I was surprised to learn (just now) that this is actually the older of two texts that go with this melody--the other one, which we'll get to relatively soon, sounds a lot more old-timey in its language (and that one isn't a translation, either). Anyway, this music stands out for its 8/2 triplets. That means, the main "beat" we feel is a half-note (twice as long as the "traditional" beat), and there are four of those to every measure (so the first beat of four gets the stress). But, a lot of those notes, rather than get subdivided into two equal units like usual, get subdivided into three equal units. To make matters worse, there are lots of other cases where they get broken into two unequal units, and those are written as 1.5+.5 = 2 rather than 2(2/3)+2/3  = 2 (the latter being what you would expect seeing so many triplets). I wonder if it's actually performed that way or if organists just know to break it all into equal thirds or two-thirds.

The main theme of the text seems to be how we are all one in our struggle to follow Jesus, looking to one God, lots of unity.