Remember the familiar doxology that was the last verse of 557 and 565? You can also sing it to Old Hundredth. Well, you can also sing it to lots of things, a lot of the "long meter" (8888) are interchangeable. But this one is especially common with Old Hundredth, so it's listed here as well. This version is worse for singing as a canon (for labor choir!), though.

This and 864 are like 858 and 859; one member of each pair is just a slightly modified set of lyrics of the other, to be less sexist in referring to God. There's no need to reprint the music because it follows immediately from the other version. Again, I choose to believe the committee sat around and argued about this for way too long. "Well which one gets to go with the music? If we give the sexist one priority, you owe me a veto over some weird old-timey verse in another section." And so on.

Some of the changes are quite minor: "Praise him for his..."/"God be praised for..." And if you're going to rhyme "bring" and "sing" as in verse one, you might as well throw in "King," although "ring" in the alternate text flows fine as well.

I mentioned last time that the revised text has "adoration"/'creation." This version has "adore him" and "before him" in the corresponding spots. I like the change because if you're going to talk about the sun and moon, you might as well include "all creation!"

Also, this version's verse three is completely different from 864's, which was about flowers that "flourish" and "perish." This one is about how Jesus "spares us"/"bears us" in his arms. I guess the use of "he"/"his" was repetitive enough that the editor of 864 got sick of it, but I feel like this could have been tweaked slightly along the lines of the other verses.

This is the combination of an awesome text with an awesome tune. "When in our music God is glorif-woawoahWAHAHwoah!" Double awesomeness. So it's a little weird that the less impressive 850 tune comes first and that one gets the "awesome texts" tag, but oh well, it's a good problem to have.

This is a different text for #386--the first verse (and the leading/trailing alleluias, of course) is the same, but then it expands on Mary Magdalene's encounter with the risen Jesus. Which makes sense--for a song about "sons and daughters," it's nice to go into details about the women's story! (Mary gets lumped in with some others as "the faithful women" in the other version.)

This version is also originally in English rather than a translation, so we get some cool rhymes with "anguish-bent"/"sent" (as an apostle--that a woman or group of women are always the first to see the tomb/Jesus is pretty significant in the Gospels that normally restrict "apostle" to the group of twelve men), and "gloom"/"tomb"/"whom." That's one way to keep "whom" alive...(or resurrect it, I guess, in this case).

Okay, I thought the phenomenon of "these texts have nothing in common but they have the same tune so we'll just put them together and only write the music once" was not really a thing, but here it is again. This is the same music as 380. It's sort of Easter-y in that it's about how "Jesus bought our peace with God," but then, I would expect to find that in the Holy Week section (there's no mention of Jesus' resurrection here). I would expect this title in the "peace" (and justice) section, but you could say it's not really about "peace" in the "social justice" sense, more "calm, tranquility, unity of the church." So...they just didn't want to write the music again. Except they've done that for plenty of other hymns. I don't know.

So, it makes sense that this would be in the "Holy Week" section, because it refers to Christ washing the disciples' feet on Maundy Thursday. And it happens to be to the same tune as 359. But other than that, their text really isn't the same. Just because two hymns are in the same section and have the same tune, doesn't mean we necessarily write one down without the music and say "see above melody"...do we? I nerd-sniped myself with this so here's a counterexample, there will be another communion song with the same tune as 462.

Except here, apparently we just write the lyrics and don't repeat the music (or citation for it) because it's directly above. I guess. Weird.

Done with this section, we're moving along nicely. I mean it's still very slow, but the sections are of different enough lengths that we get to space out the ends and feel like we're accelerating. I'm pleased with myself for having come up with this system.

This is the same text as #611 (Healing), but with a melody by Thomas Tallis, of canon fame. This one also lists "Alternate Tune: Kingsfold," which is the melody for 611. So I'm not sure why we really needed that entry.

Our choir sang a different (well done, modern Lent-themed) text to this melody, which is known as the "Third Mode Melody" because it ends on the "mi" (third note) of the scale.

This is the same text as the familiar 277, to a tune that was somewhat more prevalent in my parents' generation. Sometimes churches will, like, do 277 on Christmas Eve when the young kids are around and then 278 the week after Christmas when it's more old-timers.

This is the same melody and text as 351, but it's the "rhythmic" version (no harmony, notes are the "dance-like" version with different lengths). Actually, the previous version had several notes that were "slurred," not as in it's an insult, but you start on (for instance) a B and then move to an A on the same syllable, so it's pronounced more like sha-ame instead of shame. This doesn't have any of those so technically the melody is slightly simpler, pitch-wise.

Have we already done this?

Yes, it's the back half of #420, with individual verses for the saints (mostly apostles) in the second half of the year.

Who are some of the standouts?

John the Baptist is commemorated on June 24, or exactly half a year before Christmas Eve, because he was the last of the prophets and contrasts with the birth of Jesus.

Mary Magdalene and Mary (Mother of Jesus) get their own verses, women power! Magdalene's day is July 22, which in European countries is 22/7 (Pi Approximation Day!) Good combo.

St. Bartholomew's Day is August 24, this was actually the subject of a funny sermon one year because at that point in the summer you're really stretching for things to write about.