We have a little Ascension mini-section to close out "Easter," commemorating Jesus' departure into heaven prior to Pentecost. This is a full-blown case of "final verse same as the first."

I like the image of "earth your footstool, heaven your throne," as if Jesus' body could literally stretch from heaven to earth, connecting the mundane with the divine. Verse 4 also contains some repetition with rhyming "great high priest" and "...priest and victim in the eucharistic feast." (Usually the Gospel imagery of the curtain of the temple being torn in two signifies "we no longer need a special leader to go inside the holy place and speak to God for us, Christ has already brought God close.")

This is a case of final verse halfway the same as the first, but close enough, I'm counting it.

Verse two also features kind of tortured "rearrange the line any way you want to get the rhyme in" syntax. "yours [is] the wealth of land and sea; we but stewards of your bounty held in solemn trust will be." Where "we" is the subject and "will be" is the verb, all the way at the other end. I guess I could see it for a good rhyme, but this is just "sea/be"!

The composer's surname is Duck, and she has another hymn in the baptism section as well as one about being called to baptize, I sense a theme.

The jump from "traced by water sign" in verse 2 to "flee the lures of hell" the next verse is jarring, but often during baptism ceremonies the sponsors/candidates for baptism do a ritual "do you renounce the forces of evil and the devil" "yes, I renounce them!" So this rephrasing makes the somewhat-familiar litany more effective as a tonal shift. Baptism is a big deal!

I don't recognize this, so I looked it up in that Susan Palo Cherwien anthology. Sure enough, the tune meter is recorded as "6 6 11 D[ouble]" there, whereas here it's "12 11 12 11." Not sure why that is.

The name of the tune is "Andrew's Song," not clear who Andrew is. But apparently the composer also has a "Lydia's Song" and "Hannah's Song" (neither of which made it into this volume) named after his daughters, aww. So I did some more digging, and apparently Andrew is a tribute to this guy, who I've never heard of but apparently they've sung his compositions at the Cambridge Lessons and Carols service. Big time by somebody's metric!

Out of order because shortly after my previous post I realized that this section was missing, and then I didn't have time/energy to post for several days, oops.

Is the left-hand part too hard to play?

Mostly no, but there's an interesting chord near the end where the tenors are up on a middle C (natural, which is unusual for this key), and the basses are down on a low F. That's a jump of an octave plus a fifth, which I think you'd need very big hands for.

What is the significance of the tune name?

It's called "Nicaea," which is a reference to the place where the Nicene Creed was hammered out. I'm not sure exactly how that's relevant--like, the Creed affirms that God is a Trinity, but like...there are lots of other songs about the trinity.

Is this still popular in the modern day?

Apparently so! The story goes that one Thanksgiving or Christmas or something my extended family was having a hymn sing, as they do, and my baby cousins got very eager to sing this song and asked a friend of my mom's (who had just walked in) if she knew how to find it. She was like, "I can use an index," and also, "what even is this family." But yeah, at least in some churches the kids are down with it.

Where's the justice relevance?

We don't really get there until the third verse, which summarizes the story of Jesus saying "whenever you show mercy to sick/hungry/imprisoned/naked people, you do so to me." That's social progress.

What's the rest of it, then?

We get the weirdly-Calvinistic "never grudging for the lost ones that tremendous sacrifice" (of Jesus). And then verse 2 is kind of cliche-y, I think "sunshine of your goodness" would be considered a little too cutesy in some corners. (I try to keep an open mind but it's not all that moving even for me.)

Is the melody catchy at least?

Yeah, especially the last couple lines. It seems to flow well in and out of other songs with similar meters so sometimes I'll be earwormed by something else and go "oh, that's Hyfrydol."

So your choir sang this recently, right?

Yes.

What did that teach you?

Quite a lot!

First of all, the original title was "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning," addressing the Star of Bethlehem. This was fairly sexist (and also a weird anthropomorphism, to be fair), so it got changed to "Stars" in both versions. That does make a not-so-creative duplication with "Star of the east," but...the morning doesn't reproduce, you know?

Secondly, there's apparently more than one melody that it's sung to; I'm only familiar with this slow, major arrangement, but the choir anthem was a fast minor piece.

Thirdly, there's another verse that comes before the titular "brightest and best" line...at least in some editions, others don't have it. Noteworthy for the bold rhyme of "Mediator" (in reference to Jesus) and "manger."

Is there a direct answer to the "what shall we give him" question in verse 3?

Yep, verse four says that it's a hopeless idea to bring the suggested gifts, but "the heart's adoration" is most appreciated.

And with that, I think we really are done with the Epiphany section. Like I said, no "We Three Kings," and I think some of the other stuff previously here got moved/dropped.