Sechs Variationen über W. H. Monks "Abide with me"

The sacred melody Abide with me, called Hymn, and its setting by W. H. Monk is one of the secret national anthems in Great Britain, but has also achieved some fame in Germany and can be found under number 488 in the "Evangelisches Kirchengesangbuch". The melody is treated in the Six Variations in various ways, both in terms of setting and character. The first Variation is a band of sound punctuated by delicate oboe solos with small nervous movements on the surface, the melody is led in the alto. The second Variation circumscribes the melody emerging in all voices with almost romantic parallelled harmonies. The third Variation is a polytonal movement imitating the Renaissancestyle melodic sections through all the voices, with cantus firmus in the tenor and doubled by oboe da caccia. In the fourth Variation, a kind of Gregorian melody is intimately performed in the lower voices, to which the main melody produces unusual harmonies in parallel thirds. the fifth Variation turns the whole movement into a darkened minor, whereupon the sixth Variation shines all the brighter as the finale: the music makes audible the certainty of victory in the sign of the cross mentioned in the text, confidence and the supernatural light breaking through the clouds. What might it mean that in this variation, of all things, the melody is conducted in octaves in the bass?