Finishing this section with another Christ the King song, contrasting Christ's humiliation before his execution with his heavenly reign. It features a run-on sentence between verses three and four: roughly, "everyone in heaven and on earth: [verse break] the cross is a gift for them." There isn't really an active verb in either part.

The altos get a lot of D.

The alto (and tenor) parts are fairly repetitive, but the bass part in the refrain jumps around a lot. At some points it's very far below the tenor (hard to play on the piano) and at other points they overlap. I was going to see if the bass ever rises above the tenor but a. I don't think it does and b. I got sidetracked onto some nerdy music theory sites, because of course the AP music theory practice tests would touch on this, why wouldn't they, totally normal thing to be researching at 11 pm.

Anyway. "purged our stains" meaning, roughly, "removed our sins" sounds weird to the modern ear, I feel like "purge" has negative connotations even if it shows up in the Psalms. Maybe it's because of that movie.

This is the same melody as mentioned here, but with a slightly higher Shannon density since the fifth and sixth lines are not repeats. I say "slightly" because the beginning of the first few lines is the same: "Give thanks for those whose" and then the different verses break off into faith, hope, and love. Which means that the title doesn't actually appear until the last verse, which is fairly unusual for hymns.

It's not listed as an alternate tune here, but some versions list "Ode to Joy" as another potential melody for this text.

One of the former pastors at the church where I grew up really liked this text and in fact had it taped on his office door, so part of my "awesome text" tag is probably his opinion wearing off on me. The last verse is especially great--"Shout with joy, O deathless voices! Child of God, lift up your head!" Upon poking around, verse 3 as it stands is actually an abridged version of the original verses 3 and 4, the editors smushed them together to get rid of some of the more archaic language. I think it works this way, though.

This is the same hymn tune, "Lasst Uns Erfreuen," as #367 (and two more). So when you sort by hymn tune name, they are all together.

The weird thing comes when you sort by meter. In 367, there were six unique-ish lines besides the trailing alleluias, so it was "888 888 and alleluias." This, however, has even more trailing alleluias, so it's "888 88." Which means it gets a second entry in the "sort by meter" index. There will be another text to this melody with even more alleluias in the middle, which would be "8888," except "8888" is abbreviated to "LM" for "Long Meter," obviously. So three entries for one song!

The lyrics are about various types of angels and saints. Catholicism in particular extrapolates loosely from some Biblical phrases about "dominions" and "thrones" and makes a whole hierarchy of angels and their special abilities based on that. Protestants are more likely to go "that's...probably a metaphor???" Mary also gets a verse to herself, which is also a Catholic thing.

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Meanwhile, I've attempted to put my money where my mouth is and write my own hymn for an ongoing contest. I can use a public-domain melody (and harmony), so I've been asking myself, "why yes indeed, the alto part is very boring, it's simple quarter notes even when the sopranos are doing something else...how do I get that to look nice in the software." Sounds like I'm not the only one who's frustrated at the difference between hymnal style and software for recording the "stems" of notes.

This is probably the most popular hymn for All Saints' Day (November 1 or thereabouts). The music is by Ralph Vaughan Williams which is part of the fame. As we'll see, there's a lot going on here.

Are there trailing alleluias?

Oh yes!

Is this why you liked it as a little kid?

I...don't know, but maybe? It was probably that or I enjoyed the hymn number in the old hymnal for some reason, but I don't think it was particularly special. But yeah, as a little kid I liked to flip through and find this one.

Is the melody the same for all the verses?

Yes.

Why are some of them listed with a different musical part then?

That's the harmony for if you want to sing in harmony.

Couldn't you put all the verses in harmony and just leave it up to the individual churches to decide which to sing the parts for? Or just put the extra text at the bottom if it didn't fit?

Yes.

Why did they do it this way then?

I'm...not sure.

Is it a culture wars thing?

I don't think so? I mean, the original text is kind of old-fashioned (thee and thine and militaristic imagery), and some of that got edited in previous hymnals, and now appears to have been rolled back to a more archaic version, which was probably a compromise about something, but...I still don't understand what that would have to do with the harmony?

Anything else of note?

In a sermon on All Saints' Day some years ago, one of my college pastors pointed out that the hymn tune name means "without a name," so it's a good way to indicate all of the saints who don't have their own feast days but who are important even if we don't know them. Also, even though it's regarded as a very impressive text and tune, the lines don't always scan in perfect iambic pentameter--there are parts where some notes are rushed together or held long to make the stress fit the music. Which means...nothing's perfect so we shouldn't be overwhelmed by its majesty? I don't know, it was interesting at the time.

"General stanza 2?" "Last?"

This is the extremely long song mentioned last time, which is actually only the first half of it--there's a bunch more verses included with the other tune. Basically you just pick and choose which saints you want to commemorate.

Do Lutherans even want to commemorate specific apostles on their saints' days?

In my experience not really, but some days you're really pushing for someone to include.

Who are some of the standouts?

Andrew: in some of the Gospels the first disciple to follow Jesus, so he gets celebrated at the beginning of the church year (at least sometimes, depending when Advent begins). He is also known as the brother of Peter, which makes Andrew "Ender" Wiggin's name in Ender's Game (he's the brother of Peter Wiggin) another triple-entedre.

Stephen: the "feast of Stephen" (from Good King Wenceslas etc.) is December 26, so that's why it's a kind of Christmastime song.

Matthias: the disciple chosen to replace Judas via dice roll. I assume he is the patron saint of random number generators.

Is this in "final verse same as the first" territory?

No, though it's close. Don't think that's worth a variant tag yet, but maybe we'll get there.

What festival is this for?

All Saints' Day, November 1. When we honor...all the saints, basically everyone who's served God.

That's kinda different from the Catholic thing where they have litmus tests for who can be a saint and assign a bunch of different days to them, right?

That's probably an oversimplification of Catholic teaching, but yeah. (We do have a more restricted calendar of saints, which is a lot of fairly arbitrary dates for Biblical personages with no specific dates associated to them, and we sometimes mention that in worship if there's nothing better to talk about.)

Was this a major sticking point during the Reformation?

Yeah. All Saints' Day was big in the pre-Reformation church, especially in the area where Martin Luther lived, because it was a great excuse to be like "come see my cathedral and check out all my cool relics!" So, the story goes, he nailed his 95 Theses to the door on October 31 (1517) so everyone would see them the next day. We still observe Reformation Day on October 31.

Doesn't that overlap with Halloween?

Yes. Though since All Saints' Day stems from/overlaps with northern hemisphere autumn commemorations of the dead, it's all kind of the same thing ultimately.

When do we commemorate the Name of Jesus?

Occasionally, January 1 (eight days after Christmas, when he was brought to the temple to receive his name).

Don't most people have lots of better things to do on January 1?

Yes, which is perhaps one reason this observance hasn't really caught on.

What are the "thrones and dominations"/"heavenly orders" from verse 2?

Predominantly in Catholicism, there is a belief in different hierarchies of angels, extrapolated from a few weird word choices in the Bible. (Lutherans tend not to put too much stock in this and just go "okay, there are a few angels like Gabriel, they deliver messages from God and tell people to not be afraid, so they must look really weird.")

Is the composer someone I've heard of?

Maybe so! It's Ralph (pronounced "Rafe" Vaughan Williams), who is filed under V in the alphabet, and is a famous-ish British composer/arranger of folk tunes. We'll run into him again later.