lutheranhymns | Entries tagged with prayer

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This is one of those that's pretty short and the melody doesn't move around much, which means the alto part really doesn't move around much. Oh well.

We have a little bit of Jesus=Proper Nouns; he is the "Hope" of repentant souls and the "Joy" of the meek. In some of the Advent traditions, hope and joy are two of the attributes associated with the four weeks of the season, but they're generic enough good things that it's probably a coincidence.

Done with this section too, we're zooming by! (Not really.)

You might expect this to be the kind of song I roll my eyes at like I do with the Taizé stuff--it's the same thing over and over again, in this case as a round, and the source for the text and music is just "Traditional." The text is very old, it means "Grant us peace" and comes from the Latin "Lamb of God" song/prayer in the communion liturgy. Is the music from North America? Europe? The 20th century? The 19th century? We have no idea.

It's good, though--the type of folk-y chant my extended family would sing as a meal prayer.

This is another "short enough to be repeated over and over" chant-type song. However, at least rhythmically, it's a little more interesting than the rest of the genre, with quick sixteenth notes and sixteenth/dotted-eighth syncopation.

This is another Taizé "short but repeat ad infinitum" hymn. The text is cited as coming from the opening verses of Psalm 102. What's interesting is that there's another verse--not "verse 2" but an alternate text, so it has the "alternate title" of "The Lord Is My Song" even though it seems to be just a glorified second verse. (That text does not appear to be from Psalm 102.)

Another long 1500s-German song that might have once been a dance tune but has an attributed composer.

"Abraham's bosom" is a kind of archaic phrase that survives in spirituals (the word "bosom" for breast/lap survives slightly more often among old-timey baseball announcers!)

The thought experiment of whether heaven itself would be void and bare if Jesus weren't near us is an interesting one, I guess it depends on what you mean by heaven.

In Shannon Density terms, this song makes it clear that all the verses have the same ending line: "Give peace, O God, give peace again." So they only print it once. That's the good news. The bad news is that all the rhymes work well with each other (restrain, stain, vain, chain), but less so with "again." I guess once you commit to an eye rhyme, you really have to double down on it.

The melody shows up for a couple different hymns, but with some different harmonizations--the alto part doesn't get as low as it did in this one (same melody).

This music is from the Philippines, and I'm not familiar with it at all. I get the sense that it could be kind of catchy if it was fast, or solemn and draggy if it was slow. The harmonization looks fairly complex as well, this is not a boring one for the altos (or the tenors or basses, they have some more complicated rhythms than the melody at times).

A lot of feminine rhymes that are either masculine in disguise and/or just stretches, but I do like "scornful/mournful" in the last verse.

This is the same as 746 except...this is the original 9-verse version. That one was abridged down to 4. Luther can be really wordy, let's put it that way.

There are a couple of lines that look as if they could have been cut for being too militaristic ("Satan's reign of hate and rage," "be the armor strong that steels us") but honestly I don't think the issue is that so much as it's very wordy.

I'm not sure when "let us pray as Jesus taught us" became a semi-standard intro into the Lord's Prayer, but there's a version of it here "help us...as our Savior taught, to pray."

He also takes an entire verse to say "Amen." (It's pretty impressive that that one also made it into the abridged version without truncation.)

What key is it in?

Unclear. Maybe G minor, but it ends on a C-minor chord, so...mode ii? Not a very common type anyway.

Is it basically just a paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer?

Yes, padded out by Luther to make it sort-of scan. With one caveat, which is for a different post.

Any fun rhymes?

"rescue us"/"success to us" is weird but amusing enough to stand out. On the other hand, they were kind of phoning it in with "Forgive our sins, as we forgive/when others hurt us as we live." As opposed to all those jerks who hurt us when we're not living, we don't have to forgive them.

How's the rhyme scheme?

It's actually pretty dense, but sometimes this can be hidden by the flow of the text. Verse 3:

"Give deep humility; the sense of godly sorrow give; a strong desire, with confidence, to hear your voice and live."

"sense" gets the musical stress, and rhymes with "confidence" in line 3. But based on how we punctuate it and would actually speak it as text, that gets hidden.

"Dust and ashes"?

There are songs that put that phrase together in reference to, say, Ash Wednesday, when people sometimes wear ashes to signify repentance. But this is kind of dark in that it's saying we are mere dust and ashes from God's point of view!

Is the title just the first few words?

Actually no, the first words are "In my life," followed by "Lord, be glorified..."

What is the Shannon density?

Extremely low. The only two words that change after the first verse are the "my life."

Is there a harmonization?

Yes, which is kind of surprising given the above--I was expecting it to be a praise type song that was just melody, maybe chords in some other edition.

Are most of the feminine rhymes actually masculine ones in disguise?

Yes. But bonus points for use of the word "assail" (us), which doesn't show up in hymns all that often.

What's the context?

Given that that was a Martin Luther verse, probably something extremely not politically correct. Luther had some pretty harsh things to say about Catholics. And Jewish and Muslim people. And just life in general. I mean maybe it's like a metaphorical poop joke or something, you never know with Luther.

Anything else noteworthy?

Not super noteworthy, but apparently verses 2 and 3 have an older copyright (used in a previous translation/hymnal) than 1 and 4? And #1 isn't actually Luther, he just tacked on a bunch more verses to a preexisting hymn, which...is the kind of thing he would do.

Do your friends despise, forsake you?

Well, I hope not!

This is maybe an allusion to Jesus asking why God has forsaken him on the cross?

What nationality was the lyricist?

This one surprised me. I would have pegged it as a classic example of the "southern US, white Christian tradition [Gospel]" but nope, this was an Irish guy who moved to Canada.

What about the hymn tune?

It's named "Converse," presumably after the musical composer, but I like the double-meaning of it being advice to Converse with Jesus.

Does the composer have a cool name?

Not necessarily the composer but one of the indirect sources of a traditional South African melody: Gobinca George Mxadana!

What's the Shannon density?

Text-wise, very repetitive; music-wise less so.

Do you only sing it once or over and over again?

I'm not sure because I don't know it, but this arrangement is attributed to the Iona community, who I think are on the "repeat" side of things.