Definition of "hymn-tune" [hymn-tune]

• A musical setting of a hymn, usually adapted for repetition with the successive verses or stanzas. Certain kinds of hymn-tunes are called chorals. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Our choir's pre-Epiphany anthem last Sunday was, appropriately, "Epiphany," an 1864 hymn-tune by the great Victorian composer/organist Samuel Sebastian Wesley, setting a venerable old Reginald Heber text."
• "I knew they had reached that hill-side where the dead of Ridgefield lie calmer than its living; and presently the long-drawn notes of that hymn-tune consecrated to such occasions -- old China -- rose and fell in despairing cadences on my ear."
• "A hymn-tune stirred under the tumult -- rose above it."