Contents

Articles

A Voice Crying from the Dust: The Book of Mormon as Sound



The Book of Mormon opens with a provocative conundrum: how can the sensory world of revelation most effectively be rendered in language? After introducing himself and his process of making scripture, the prophet-narrator Nephi recounts his father Lehi’s throne theophany and calling to be a prophet.This calling entailed two dramatic audio-visual encounters with the divine. In the first, Lehi prayed, and in response a pillar of fire appeared on a rock in front of him. By means of the pillar, somehow, “he saw and heard much” with such intensity he quaked, trembled, and was ultimately incapacitated by the experience (1 Nephi 1:6–7).



Read more

Why Mormons Sing in Parts (Or Don’t)



Most mainstream American Christian congregations sing hymns in unison. But The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long favored congregational part-singing. Nevertheless, a small but vigorous LDS constituency in the past thirty years has advocated a shift to unison-singing.



Read more

The Lindsey Stirling Effect



We will get to the violin playing. First, let’s talk about the dress. On May 17, 2015, the Mormon blogosphere erupted into controversy over the designer gown worn by dancing violinist and YouTube star Lindsey Stirling to the Billboard Music Awards show, where she was to receive the Top Dance/Electronic Album honor. Much of her fan base was torn. Her charm, her quirky fiddle-prancing shtick, and her unapologetic LDS religiosity had made her one of the most eminently Facebookable Mormons in an era in which LDS members have been encouraged quite specifically over the pulpit to share their faith online.



Read more

Mormons, Musical Theater, and the Public Arena of Doubt



“Hi, I’m Brother Jake.” An image of a smiling white man in white shirt and tie flashes across the screen as I watch yet another edition of the “Brother Jake” YouTube video channel. Brother Jake, described by one YouTube commenter as “the Stephen Colbert of Mormon satire,” carries a growing audience through fallacious explanations of controversial or historically problematic aspects of Mormonism.



Read more

The Brick Church Hymnal: Extracts from an Autobiography



In 1988 I completed my bachelor’s degree in music composition at BYU and moved to New York where I began a graduate program in ethnomusicology. I became disillusioned with the state of classical composition as I knew it at the time and felt that, although I wanted to continue to pursue my lifelong dream of being a composer, I would realize that dream more fully by enriching my musical study with music I had not yet encountered from other cultures. New York had the advantage of an underground jazz scene about which I knew as much as one could learn in those days from hanging out in the imports sections of record stores and reading esoteric music ’zines.



Read more

Editor's Note

Guest Editor’s Introduction



Kristine Haglund gave me a gift. This issue is the long thank you note.

She had asked me from time to time to write something on music for Dialogue. Or take part in a panel discussion on music for the journal. Or do anything on music, since she loves the art and its place in our faith and I have been a kind of go-to guy on that for years.



Read more

Personal Voices

Poetry

Oye Como Va



I had no rhythm that day on the bench
sitting in shade, under the oaks and palms.
My thighs stuck to the green bars, 
legs going numb. 
I wanted to stop thirsting. 



Read more

Drum Major



The church’s framework swayed in the air. 
Inside, big women with big grief 
swayed with all their weight inside, and sang 
big songs to bloom big flowers  



Read more

Resolve



“The music keeps going and never stops,” 
I tell my son—“Until the bar line?” 
Of course, until the bar line. 
He moves his fingers into place with effort, 
As if moving in the third person; 
As if they are thin sausages on sticks.



Read more

Roundtable