This is the home stretch! We've finished all the other sections, so we'll be going straight through with Praise/Thanksgiving to the end. (Except I will probably do a proofread or two to see if I've missed anything that I need to loop back to.)

Very big tenor/bass gaps; the entire "left hand" range is an octave plus a sixth, and there are a couple places where they're almost that entire distance (an octave plus a fifth) apart.

Lots of Jesus=Proper Nouns, with an extended metaphor of God the Creator as Singer and Jesus as incarnate Song. And a literal translation of "Emmanuel" as "God-is-with-us" (one word, hyphens theirs). The music motif is a cool concept, but it doesn't quite stick the landing for me, in part because of rhymes like "Song"/"began."

In a reprise of the queen of chorales, we get a lot of Jesus=Proper Nouns. (Well in this case, I guess the Holy Spirit=Proper Nouns.) Sun, Light, Rock, Source of life.

The second verse starts out by praying for guidance "on the narrow way," but then hoping "that we may follow you forever free." Free from what? Other people "derid[ing]" us? Sin? In some sense it's like, we don't necessarily want the freedom to make bad choices, we want to have the knowledge and strength to make the right choices. But I'm not sure I would try to spin that as "true freedom."

We get some proper noun fun with "Ancient of Days" and "Almighty," and some tortured word order with "The earth..., Almighty, your power has founded...and round it has cast, like a mantle, the sea." Some nice internal rhymes with "defender"/"splendor" and "hills"/"distills"--the latter, I think, trying to say something about how even the dew and rain are signs of God's care. If you look at them in the right perspective. Plus "hymn" as a verb. This is one of those old-timey 1800s texts that you can't blame on a translation, they were just really going over-the-top.

More Jesus=Proper Names (which is surprisingly frequent now that I look for it, I haven't mentioned it every time but try to tag here and there) with "God the First and Last is with us." Mostly amusing because it's a literal translation of "Alpha and Omega." We also get lines like "Tell [the world's] grim, demonic chorus: 'Christ is risen! Get you gone!'" which I think is relatively neat rather than cheesy but my former director may disagree. We sang this to "Ode to Joy" which isn't suggested as an option here, but fits both accent-wise and thematically.

This is a Spanish translation that's relatively easy to follow along with--it has all kinds of words you might actually learn in class, like "has venido" (have come), "sonriendo" (smiling), "Pescador" (Fisher). They even have "redes" (nets), which I learned to reference the internet! And working backwards is an interesting way to learn more words--"orilla" is the titular "lakeshore," "barca" is "boat" or "small boat." The issue where Spanish sometimes needs more syllables than English shows up again; to make the translation scan, they sometimes have to "pad" extra syllables--"sonriendo" becomes "kindly smiling," "Señor" is "sweet Lord."

And sometimes the repetition can be more striking in the original. "mi cansancio que a otros descanse" becomes "working love for the rest of the weary" [what Jesus needs from us]. But the root word in "cansancio" (tiredness) matches "descanse" ("you need me to tire so that others can rest," loosely?). The image of needing "tiredness" rather than money or weapons from important people is neat.

Apparently I missed this before, better double-check the numbering for the various sections at some point.

This is the same melody as "Earth and All Stars," and the same guy did the verses too; while it doesn't quite measure up to that one in coolness, it's still good at sounding new and jubilant without being too hippie or over-the-top. We get an interesting twist on the "Jesus=Proper Nouns" motif with the use of small caps "I Am."

Well, in the title, both Light and Radiance are capitalized, but in the text, Radiance is but light isn't. I guess it still counts as proper nouns. :p

Lots of large tenor/bass gaps.

Translation by committee gives us "grace/maze" (and also "praise/grace" in a different verse!) Most of the emphasis is on, and I'm paraphrasing, asking God's light to be revealed to people who are sinful and/or doubting. But there's an interesting pivot in verse three to "take away the needless fears of those who tremble to express the faith their inmost hearts confess." I'm wondering whether in Heermann's day that was more a threat of religious warfare (you don't want to be too obviously Protestant in a Catholic principality, or vice-versa?) Versus today when it can, somewhat anachronistically, be read as "help people to express their faith who are just ashamed of it."

So last time around we covered the Argentine "Holy, Holy, Holy." That melody (although with a slightly different harmonization!) becomes the refrain to this one, but now the text is in English and referencing Jesus as the bread of life.

And then there are several verses to a different melody. The name for that tune is "Break Now The Bread," which is also the beginning of the first verse, but not to be confused with this "Break Now The Bread."  Which means that the overall combination is one of the rare double hymn tunes!

We also get "Holy One" for the Jesus=Proper Nouns category.

Pentatonic melody, Chinese text. I don't know any Chinese, but I can guess which words (in their transliteration) correspond to "Bethlehem," "Christ," and "God"; it's "Boliheng," "Shengzi," and "Shangzhu" respectively, because those are the only proper nouns! So rather than a case of Jesus being personified as the Word or the Life or the Way for proper noun times, this is a multilingual bonus.

This is another arrangement of the song of Zechariah; in fact, both of these have the exact same first line, which obviously means same title too. We also get duplicate rhymes with "way" (John the Baptist prepares the way) and "peace" (God's love leads us into peace). This one, unlike the previous version, has a harmonization with large bass/tenor gaps. We also get some Jesus=Proper Nouns as the "Branch" of King David's tree/family.