Classic Hymns and Their Stories
Puzzle 78 · A Living Musical Inheritance · Page 108 in print
Common Meter
Raymond Alden’s 1903 handbook describes common meter as “four-stress and three-stress lines,” a pattern behind the familiar rise and fall of many hymns.
Jump to a word
The words
Aberdeen
A tune listed in the Common Metre group.
Abridge
A tune listed in that group.
Accent
The spoken emphasis discussed in metrical analysis.
Albano
A tune listed in that group.
Bangor
A tune listed in that group.
Belgrave
A tune listed in that group.
Binchester
A tune listed in that group.
Bishopthorpe
A tune listed in that group.
Caithness
A tune listed in that group.
Common Meter
The alternating four-stress and three-stress pattern.
Iamb
A light syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
Rhyme
The matching line-end sounds discussed with the stanza.
Stanza
The group of lines organized by that pattern.
Stress
The emphasis counted in the pattern.
Syllable
A unit of speech whose accent is counted in meter.
Sources
- The English Hymnal, music edition (Henry Milford impression), full text of a scanned copyInternet Archive
- Alden, English VerseProject Gutenberg