lutheranhymns

How are the feminine rhymes?

They start out pretty good (tender/defender, unshaken/forsaken), and then just...trail off.

The syllable count breakdown might play into that a little. Nominally it's 11-11-11-5, with the first and third lines rhyming, and the second and (short) fourth lines, at least for the first couple verses. But really, those 11s are each more like 5+6, so the last 5 is rhyming with the 6 part of the 5-6. Because of this, it might be "easier" to get rhymes for the first and third lines, because they match each other in length, and we sort of see that in the last verse (glory/adore thee). The effect is weird, though, because it's much more common to have a rhyme scheme of XAYA (the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other, the first and third don't rhyme with anything) than AXAY (the other way around)--since mostly we're listening for a rhyme in the last line. But here we have the latter case.

This is the end of this section, but don't worry, there are lots and lots of hymns all over the place where the last verse is "praise to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." "Trinitarian doxology"=big words in kids' choir hymn tangents.

What's the hymn tune name?

"Grosser Gott," which appears to be German for "Holy God."

Cool stuff.

Well, it's adapted from a Latin text called "Te Deum" ("You, God" [we praise...]) which gave its name to a Catholic prayer of thanksgiving on special occasions. I learned this in, of all things, a history of astronomy book, where an astronomer and Jesuit priest named Father Hell said the prayer after getting perfect conditions to observe and measure the transit of Venus. So that's cool if you're my kind of nerd.

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.

How's the rhyme scheme?

Decent. I like "Bethlehem" and "Jerusalem," it's natural enough to put the stresses there, and it's amusing but kind of like...duh, they're placenames from the same language, they probably will have some of the same sounds in them.

Is the imagery of God dancing pretty old?

Yes! There's a great 1500s-ish carol called "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day" which has a couple modern arrangements (one, by John Gardner, has a bunch of amazing time signature changes). These kind of metaphors provided the setup for "Lord of the Dance" (British hymn, to the tune of "Simple Gifts.")

Is it overly creationist?

No. I think mainline theology is compatible with, like, the Big Bang and stuff, and this has the pretty grand-scale imagery "The universe of space and time did not arise by chance/But as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance." Which is nice. It's only a problem if you're like "and also all these various adaptations like wings and eyes and photosynthesis did not arise by chance, God pushed some buttons and called them into existence one day." But that's unsingable anyway, so we don't have to worry about it.

Is this a Martin Luther original?

Yes. Only three verses, but they're long.

How else can you tell?

Some awkward rhymes translated from German. (feeds us/provides us.)

Is the original German that awkward?

The rhymes are probably better, but the actual text flow is probably worse.

How do you know? Can you read German?

No. Well, kind of, but only German I stuff from high school level and not even most of that.

So how do you know?

One of the things we did at my student church group in undergrad was look at a new set of translations of Luther's stuff that was supposed to better approximate the German originals and it was just...really awkward flow. It was more trying to get the message across, not really poetry stuff.

Was the student church group always that interesting?

No, it was mostly pretentious nerds being too cool for everything.

Sad.

Yeah. Anyway, the point of this song is Luther trying to be like "hey, we're not so different, I'm just trying to reform this church where we all basically agree on the important stuff, I don't want to start my own denomination and everything."

How'd that work out for him?

Not so great.

What do the two vertical lines mean before the last measure?

In general musical notation: "This is the end of this section, but not of the whole piece." In hymn context: "only sing the part after this after the last verse; otherwise, go right onto the next verse."

How do you tell the difference?

If the thing after the double bar is just "A-a-a-a-a-men," that's a pretty good sign.

Any questionable rhymes?

Honor/forever is out there, but then we get the brazen author/pleasure!

Are you at all familiar with this arrangement?

Nah.

What's Kyrie?

A famous basketball player for the Celtics.

It's also the Greek word for "Lord"; a lot of old liturgical texts (usually sung early in the service) have "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison," where "Eleison" means "have mercy," and "Christe," unsurprisingly, means "Christ."

Weren't Catholics super into doing everything in Latin for a huge length of time?

Yes.

Why did they stick with Greek for this?

Not sure.

Why is this one also referring to God as the creator, and the Holy Spirit, not just asking for Christ/Lord to have mercy?

Don't know either.

Look, the melody's from like 800, that's pretty neat, right?

Who wrote this?

The text is "source unknown, but around 1757," which seems oddly precise.

What is the tune name? Backing up, what is a tune name?

All of the melodies are given labels--sometimes the original version of the text title in another language, sometimes named after the composer, sometimes mysterious. Sometimes the same melody will be used more than once for different songs, so you can look up "which hymns go to the same melody as this one." This one is "Italian Hymn," which makes sense since the composer's name seems Italian-ish.

So is the text a translation then?

I don't think so.

Then is the rhyme scheme solid English?

Maybe in 1757, but I don't know. The third verse has the rough "Come, holy Comforter/thy sacred witness bear." Not only are "-er" and "bear" not particularly close, putting the accent stress on "ter" there is a stretch.

...If you don't like me whining about weak rhyme schemes this is not the blog for you.

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Entries tagged with holy trinity

Expand Cut Tags

#415: Father Most Holy

#414: Holy God, We Praise Your Name

#413: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty

#412: Come, Join the Dance of Trinity

#411: We All Believe in One True God

#410: All Glory Be to God on High

#409: Kyrie! God, Father

#408: Come, Thou Almighty King

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