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“Rejoice at the Sound of the Organ”

The Future of Music in the Church: A Conversation with Reid Nibley and Norberto Guinaldo

First Place: The Ward Organist

Listen to the Out Loud audio version of this fiction piece here. Listen to the interview about this piece here. Never learn to play the organ, the old woman told me. I should call her…

Review: A Book of Verbs is Something to Hear Michael Hicks, Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection: Essays on Mormon Music

A book of essays has an upward inflection; it sounds like a question. To essai, in French, is to attempt. To try. But this is not the essay’s reputation. Ideals of ironclad arguments, footnoted discoveries,…

The Quest for Universal Music in the LDS Children’s Songbook

Over the years, the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has expressed a set of theories about the nature and purpose of music. Elder Bruce R. McConkie asserted a divine origin of music: “Music is given of God to further his purposes.” Former Church President Heber J. Grant proclaimed the evangelical power of music when he said, “The singing of our sacred hymns, written by the servants of God, has a powerful effect in converting people to the principles of the Gospel, and in promoting peace and spiritual growth.”

Hymn #49

This morning I helped a friend bury her dog 
A dog that she once didn’t want 
Taken in under duress 
But in time grew affection for. 

Singing in Harmony, Stitching in Time

Spring 1911. Seated in her parlor on the farm they lease, Bertha Hansen shivers as she slips her needle through beige linen. Heinrich has booked a trip to Germany, a visit home, but as departure draws near, uneasiness envelops her like the white mist of their native marsh. Does danger await them, a great storm perhaps, and is the chill she feels a premonition? Or is it simple bad humor, a wife’s irritation with a husband who squanders money on steamship tickets when they’re saving to buy a farm?

The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

One of my favorite types of sacred music is the music of the Russian Orthodox church. It has its origins in Byzantine chant, but developed its own distinct style called Znamenny Chant. It is sung in Old Slavonic, so I cannot understand it with the exception of a word here or there that is similar in modern Russian, but I find it incredibly beautiful. Sung in resonant sacred spaces as part of worship services, you hear the devotion in the music. Not only are the sounds and attitudes of the singers imbued with beauty, the music is part of a rich symbolism, together with candles and incense, that help the worshipper to look upward to the divine. Other religious traditions have similarly beautiful elements involving music. For example, a muezzin calls out the adhan, or call to prayer, from the mosque five times during the day; a hazzan, or cantor, is a trained musician who sings prayers in the synagogue. 

Saints of Song and Speech | Alice Parker, choral arrangements, The Mormon Pioneers

Columbia Records, that national giant of a record company, has beat someone to the punch. To prove that not all good things about Mormons must originate in the West, Goddard Lieberson has produced another of…

Hymns to the Gods | Clinton F. Larson, The Mantle of the Prophet and Other Plays

The publication by Deseret Book Company of the work of a serious Mor man poet or playwright is not an event to be dismissed lightly, if only because it happens so seldom. Clinton Larson is…

All Content

“Rejoice at the Sound of the Organ”

The Future of Music in the Church: A Conversation with Reid Nibley and Norberto Guinaldo

First Place: The Ward Organist

Listen to the Out Loud audio version of this fiction piece here. Listen to the interview about this piece here. Never learn to play the organ, the old woman told me. I should call her…

Review: A Book of Verbs is Something to Hear Michael Hicks, Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection: Essays on Mormon Music

A book of essays has an upward inflection; it sounds like a question. To essai, in French, is to attempt. To try. But this is not the essay’s reputation. Ideals of ironclad arguments, footnoted discoveries,…

The Quest for Universal Music in the LDS Children’s Songbook

Over the years, the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has expressed a set of theories about the nature and purpose of music. Elder Bruce R. McConkie asserted a divine origin of music: “Music is given of God to further his purposes.” Former Church President Heber J. Grant proclaimed the evangelical power of music when he said, “The singing of our sacred hymns, written by the servants of God, has a powerful effect in converting people to the principles of the Gospel, and in promoting peace and spiritual growth.”

Hymn #49

This morning I helped a friend bury her dog 
A dog that she once didn’t want 
Taken in under duress 
But in time grew affection for. 

Singing in Harmony, Stitching in Time

Spring 1911. Seated in her parlor on the farm they lease, Bertha Hansen shivers as she slips her needle through beige linen. Heinrich has booked a trip to Germany, a visit home, but as departure draws near, uneasiness envelops her like the white mist of their native marsh. Does danger await them, a great storm perhaps, and is the chill she feels a premonition? Or is it simple bad humor, a wife’s irritation with a husband who squanders money on steamship tickets when they’re saving to buy a farm?

The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

One of my favorite types of sacred music is the music of the Russian Orthodox church. It has its origins in Byzantine chant, but developed its own distinct style called Znamenny Chant. It is sung in Old Slavonic, so I cannot understand it with the exception of a word here or there that is similar in modern Russian, but I find it incredibly beautiful. Sung in resonant sacred spaces as part of worship services, you hear the devotion in the music. Not only are the sounds and attitudes of the singers imbued with beauty, the music is part of a rich symbolism, together with candles and incense, that help the worshipper to look upward to the divine. Other religious traditions have similarly beautiful elements involving music. For example, a muezzin calls out the adhan, or call to prayer, from the mosque five times during the day; a hazzan, or cantor, is a trained musician who sings prayers in the synagogue. 

Saints of Song and Speech | Alice Parker, choral arrangements, The Mormon Pioneers

Columbia Records, that national giant of a record company, has beat someone to the punch. To prove that not all good things about Mormons must originate in the West, Goddard Lieberson has produced another of…

Hymns to the Gods | Clinton F. Larson, The Mantle of the Prophet and Other Plays

The publication by Deseret Book Company of the work of a serious Mor man poet or playwright is not an event to be dismissed lightly, if only because it happens so seldom. Clinton Larson is…

On Mormon Music and Musicians

In the interest of broadening (and corroborating) my thinking about Mormon music, I recently contacted fifty Mormon musicians in an admittedly non-scientific survey. The survey sampled the obvious Church music hierarchy: the General Music Committee,…

Three Recent Tabernacle Choir Recordings | The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Greatest Hits, Anvil Chorus, and Symphony No. 9 (Chorale) in D Minor, Op. 125

While the Tabernacle Choir’s total output of albums annually may be less than that of some orchestras, no classical recording organization approaches the Choir’s sales per album. This may be attributed to three factors: the…

Worship and Music | Verena Ursenbach Hatch, Worship and Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Worship and Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be had as a single volume or in two separate bindings. One volume (separately reviewed) includes the first seven chapters of the…

Lyrics and Love in Orderville | Carol Lynn Pearson and Lex de Azevedo, The Orders is Love

To write a musical play based on any church theme or motivate will inevitably invite comparison with the “Father of Us All,” Promised Valley, written by Arnold Sundgard (lyrics) and Crawford Gates (music).  Promised Valley…

Three Christmas Hymns: A Christmas Hymn; The Babe of Bethlehem; Away in a Manger

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The German Hymnal

For well over a century the German-speaking Latter-day Saints have had their own hymnal. They are currently singing out of the ninth edition (excluding reprints), and many congregations make occasional use of the out-of-print Choirbook…

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The Japanese Hymnal

Of the hymnals discussed in this issue, the Japanese is unique in that it is used by a people with no tradition of hymn singing. The current hymnal is the third used by the Saints…

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The French Hymnal

Early in the history of the French missions, Church leaders encouraged the publication of hymnals. In 1899, the Swiss Mission published a collection of Mormon hymns which became the basis of the French hymnody. When…

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The Spanish Hymnal

The Church in the Latin-American countries faces acute problems in relation to music and worship. While this is not readily apparent to the general Church membership and leadership, it is of great concern to aesthetically-minded…

Our LDS Hymn Texts: A Look at the Past, Some Thoughts for the Future

Our LDS hymn texts are a fascinating key to the history of the Church and the changing attitudes and concerns of the saints. Since the publication of the vest pocket hymnal of 1835, each new…

The Birth of Mormon Hymnody

“And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church.” Thus was recorded the…

The Role of Music in the Reorganized Church

Sharing the love of music as the common heritage of Mormonism throughout the world, the Reorganization has experienced a steady growth in the use and development of music by its membership. Congregational singing has always…

Choral Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Church music is that music which serves a worshipful purpose in a religious meeting. The Random House Dictionary defines worship as “reverent honor or regard paid to God or a sacred personage. . . .…

Come Into His Presence with Singing

Brothers and Sisters, I have been asked to talk on music as a form of worship, or on the significance of music in worship.* I found in reading some scriptures trying to prepare for this talk that I needed to narrow things down, so my real topic would be something like the religious or spiritual significance of song, and if I were to give a title for it, I would paraphrase Psalm 100, verse 2: “Serve the Lord with gladness: come into his presence with singing.” 

Thoughts on Music and Worship

In considering the future of music in the Church worship service, a brief inquiry into the scriptures is necessary if musical objectives are to be rooted firmly in the rich soil of doctrinal truth. Too…

The Possibilities of Worship

One of the central principles of the Restored Gospel is that God created people to be free to diminish or expand their relationship to Him. He invites us all to find joy in our creation…

A Rummage Sale with Music | Donald R. Marshall, The Rummage Sale: A Musical in Two Acts

It is an unusual talent that can write a collection of short stories, transform them into the script of a musical, compose and direct the music (songs and lyrics), and play the accordion, organ, and…

The Millennial Hymns of Parley P. Pratt

Born in 1807 in Burlington, New York, Parley P. Pratt was baptized by Oliver Cowdery in Seneca Lake on 1 September 1830, less than five months after the Church’s founding. Among the first to be…

The 1981 RLDS Hymnal: Songs More Brightly Sung

Dialogue 16.4 (Winter 1983): 33–42
About ten years ago the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints decided that its 1956 hymnal was already becoming out of date. An RLDS Hymnal Committee was commissioned to begin work on a new volume, and the result, Hymns of the Saints, was published in 1981. Hymns of the Saints is more than just a revision or reediting of the 1956 hymnal; out of 501 hymns and responses, more than a third are new to this collection.

“Great Spirit Listen”: The American Indian in Mormon Music

Misconceptions of native Americans began with the misnomer “Indian” based on a navigational error. Mainstream Mormon art, literature, and music, which grants the American Indians a Book of Mormon history and destiny as Lamanites, embraces…

“A Song for One Still Voice”: Hymn of Affirmation

Christian doctrine, from Paul’s injunction, “Mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13), to King Benjamin’s declarative, “The natural man is an enemy to God” (Mosiah 3:19), teaches the death of the natural man, the…

A Song Worth Singing | Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History

Anyone who has worked with Mormon music has likely experienced the frustration of being unable to learn much about its past —such things as composers, per formers, and institutional policy and practice. Collections of folk…

Coney Island Hymn: Shore

They clap their hands together 
            and shout out 
            and sing the same song 

Changes in LDS Hymns: Implications and Opportunities

Hymn

Lately I can’t get over the feeling that there is a man in my bed: a big man with thick, wavy hair and a broad, barrel chest that goes up-and down, up-and-down all night long…

Fiddler with a Cause | Marian Robertson Wilson, Leroy Robertson: Music Giant from the Rockies

Leroy Robertson was one of my mentors. I played in the Brigham Young University orchestra under him in 1945-46, studied music theory from him as a graduate student at the University of Utah in 1955,…

Sacrament Hymn

Jesus Deathkiller, 
God’s Lifer, Earth Rover, Gift: 

Be sure, 
in your name and our hope,

Day Music

The mountain is a redhead 
lying on his back 
nose and knees pointed 
to the sun. His hair 

Measures of Music

It came then that Sara dreamed of the flood. It had been the news for weeks, cities all along the Front sandbagging streets, sidewalks, driveways, window wells, a mudslide that made a lake over a…

Correlated Praise: The Development of the Spanish Hymnal

Statisticians predict that by 2012 native Spanish speakers will surpass native English speakers as the LDS church’s largest language group.[1] Clearly, the church is about to reach a dramatic turning point in its international growth.…

Music of a “More Exalted Sphere”: The Sonic Cosmology of La Monte Young

Seven and a half blocks east and five blocks south of the Salt Lake Temple, the 0,0 of the city’s cardinally aligned grid, an inconspicuous gate on the north side of the street opens onto a long path that leads to what was once the backyard of Thomas B. Child. A stonemason by trade and Mormon bishop by calling, Child spent many of his spare moments between 1945 and 1963 designing surreal and sacred sculptures and engraving poignant aphorisms into stone tablets, gradually creating one of the most unique (and, even to most Mormons, unknown) collections of folk art in the United States.

A Shaker Sister’s Hymnal

The frost grows fierce upon the pane,
crystals cluster in tight geometry. Inside my
glove my fingers freeze. I gasp the cold until I
am dumb: until my eyes are arctic marbles
rolling blue and plumb in their sockets: until
my leaden tongue sinks in my mouth. 

Requiem in L Minor

Today the L’s. In the old address book, the L pages are impossible—phone numbers lined out, zip codes scratched in, whole entries x’d or margined with a question mark. Even the H’s are more decipherable.…

My Mother Tongues

You can’t forget your first time. Mine was in the back of a beige ’68 VW bus, which I’d just bought from my mom’s boyfriend. I was taking Annie home from an Assemblies of God…

Tao Song

We create ourselves as we go: 
            memories folding inward 
                        like bread dough kneaded, 
                                    brain convolutions, or 
                                                tangible patterns on the shore. 

Lyric of the Larks

            Sobbing boughs above me bend,  
            Throbbing red in August wind. 

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.

Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection

I should keep a journal. If I did I could look up what year this happened. Or exactly why I drove to Ed’s house and knocked on his door. Or what time it was when…

Now Let Us Revise

I asked five diverse scholars to answer the question: What would you change in Mormon musical practice? Here are their replies. —Editor 

How to Be Alone with a Flute

Do not think of your suffering. 

Release it 
through your breath 
into the flute.

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.

Legacy

A horse-drawn carriage
passes by in another

age—leaves of ash

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  

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. 

& the day that i believe is known as pentecost to some

(((some 50 days later)))  
nostalgia tempts us—to long for early spring and the newly risen—
the surprise at the open tomb 
the gingersnaps & the whoopie pies & today 

easter sunday : : : thinking of you all the way

(in which mormons worldwide, on easter 2015,  
            do NOT have church service or partake of god’s flesh & blood)

Hsie T’iao** writes a complaint near the Jade Stairs:

o hear

o here 
lord—here 
is a platter of treats & refreshment 
in that high priest’s hands— 

the vulture-ism of the world (((since god isn’t here)))

muted to inspiration 
since god isn’t here 

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

“Rejoice at the Sound of the Organ”

The Future of Music in the Church: A Conversation with Reid Nibley and Norberto Guinaldo

First Place: The Ward Organist

Listen to the Out Loud audio version of this fiction piece here. Listen to the interview about this piece here. Never learn to play the organ, the old woman told me. I should call her…

Review: A Book of Verbs is Something to Hear Michael Hicks, Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection: Essays on Mormon Music

A book of essays has an upward inflection; it sounds like a question. To essai, in French, is to attempt. To try. But this is not the essay’s reputation. Ideals of ironclad arguments, footnoted discoveries,…

The Quest for Universal Music in the LDS Children’s Songbook

Over the years, the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has expressed a set of theories about the nature and purpose of music. Elder Bruce R. McConkie asserted a divine origin of music: “Music is given of God to further his purposes.” Former Church President Heber J. Grant proclaimed the evangelical power of music when he said, “The singing of our sacred hymns, written by the servants of God, has a powerful effect in converting people to the principles of the Gospel, and in promoting peace and spiritual growth.”

Hymn #49

This morning I helped a friend bury her dog 
A dog that she once didn’t want 
Taken in under duress 
But in time grew affection for. 

Singing in Harmony, Stitching in Time

Spring 1911. Seated in her parlor on the farm they lease, Bertha Hansen shivers as she slips her needle through beige linen. Heinrich has booked a trip to Germany, a visit home, but as departure draws near, uneasiness envelops her like the white mist of their native marsh. Does danger await them, a great storm perhaps, and is the chill she feels a premonition? Or is it simple bad humor, a wife’s irritation with a husband who squanders money on steamship tickets when they’re saving to buy a farm?

The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

One of my favorite types of sacred music is the music of the Russian Orthodox church. It has its origins in Byzantine chant, but developed its own distinct style called Znamenny Chant. It is sung in Old Slavonic, so I cannot understand it with the exception of a word here or there that is similar in modern Russian, but I find it incredibly beautiful. Sung in resonant sacred spaces as part of worship services, you hear the devotion in the music. Not only are the sounds and attitudes of the singers imbued with beauty, the music is part of a rich symbolism, together with candles and incense, that help the worshipper to look upward to the divine. Other religious traditions have similarly beautiful elements involving music. For example, a muezzin calls out the adhan, or call to prayer, from the mosque five times during the day; a hazzan, or cantor, is a trained musician who sings prayers in the synagogue. 

Saints of Song and Speech | Alice Parker, choral arrangements, The Mormon Pioneers

Columbia Records, that national giant of a record company, has beat someone to the punch. To prove that not all good things about Mormons must originate in the West, Goddard Lieberson has produced another of…

Hymns to the Gods | Clinton F. Larson, The Mantle of the Prophet and Other Plays

The publication by Deseret Book Company of the work of a serious Mor man poet or playwright is not an event to be dismissed lightly, if only because it happens so seldom. Clinton Larson is…

On Mormon Music and Musicians

In the interest of broadening (and corroborating) my thinking about Mormon music, I recently contacted fifty Mormon musicians in an admittedly non-scientific survey. The survey sampled the obvious Church music hierarchy: the General Music Committee,…

Three Recent Tabernacle Choir Recordings | The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Greatest Hits, Anvil Chorus, and Symphony No. 9 (Chorale) in D Minor, Op. 125

While the Tabernacle Choir’s total output of albums annually may be less than that of some orchestras, no classical recording organization approaches the Choir’s sales per album. This may be attributed to three factors: the…

Worship and Music | Verena Ursenbach Hatch, Worship and Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Worship and Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be had as a single volume or in two separate bindings. One volume (separately reviewed) includes the first seven chapters of the…

Lyrics and Love in Orderville | Carol Lynn Pearson and Lex de Azevedo, The Orders is Love

To write a musical play based on any church theme or motivate will inevitably invite comparison with the “Father of Us All,” Promised Valley, written by Arnold Sundgard (lyrics) and Crawford Gates (music).  Promised Valley…

Three Christmas Hymns: A Christmas Hymn; The Babe of Bethlehem; Away in a Manger

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The German Hymnal

For well over a century the German-speaking Latter-day Saints have had their own hymnal. They are currently singing out of the ninth edition (excluding reprints), and many congregations make occasional use of the out-of-print Choirbook…

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The Japanese Hymnal

Of the hymnals discussed in this issue, the Japanese is unique in that it is used by a people with no tradition of hymn singing. The current hymnal is the third used by the Saints…

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The French Hymnal

Early in the history of the French missions, Church leaders encouraged the publication of hymnals. In 1899, the Swiss Mission published a collection of Mormon hymns which became the basis of the French hymnody. When…

The LDS Hymnal: Views on Foreign Editions: The Spanish Hymnal

The Church in the Latin-American countries faces acute problems in relation to music and worship. While this is not readily apparent to the general Church membership and leadership, it is of great concern to aesthetically-minded…

Our LDS Hymn Texts: A Look at the Past, Some Thoughts for the Future

Our LDS hymn texts are a fascinating key to the history of the Church and the changing attitudes and concerns of the saints. Since the publication of the vest pocket hymnal of 1835, each new…

The Birth of Mormon Hymnody

“And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church.” Thus was recorded the…

The Role of Music in the Reorganized Church

Sharing the love of music as the common heritage of Mormonism throughout the world, the Reorganization has experienced a steady growth in the use and development of music by its membership. Congregational singing has always…

Choral Music in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Church music is that music which serves a worshipful purpose in a religious meeting. The Random House Dictionary defines worship as “reverent honor or regard paid to God or a sacred personage. . . .…

Come Into His Presence with Singing

Brothers and Sisters, I have been asked to talk on music as a form of worship, or on the significance of music in worship.* I found in reading some scriptures trying to prepare for this talk that I needed to narrow things down, so my real topic would be something like the religious or spiritual significance of song, and if I were to give a title for it, I would paraphrase Psalm 100, verse 2: “Serve the Lord with gladness: come into his presence with singing.” 

Thoughts on Music and Worship

In considering the future of music in the Church worship service, a brief inquiry into the scriptures is necessary if musical objectives are to be rooted firmly in the rich soil of doctrinal truth. Too…

The Possibilities of Worship

One of the central principles of the Restored Gospel is that God created people to be free to diminish or expand their relationship to Him. He invites us all to find joy in our creation…

A Rummage Sale with Music | Donald R. Marshall, The Rummage Sale: A Musical in Two Acts

It is an unusual talent that can write a collection of short stories, transform them into the script of a musical, compose and direct the music (songs and lyrics), and play the accordion, organ, and…

The Millennial Hymns of Parley P. Pratt

Born in 1807 in Burlington, New York, Parley P. Pratt was baptized by Oliver Cowdery in Seneca Lake on 1 September 1830, less than five months after the Church’s founding. Among the first to be…

The 1981 RLDS Hymnal: Songs More Brightly Sung

Dialogue 16.4 (Winter 1983): 33–42
About ten years ago the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints decided that its 1956 hymnal was already becoming out of date. An RLDS Hymnal Committee was commissioned to begin work on a new volume, and the result, Hymns of the Saints, was published in 1981. Hymns of the Saints is more than just a revision or reediting of the 1956 hymnal; out of 501 hymns and responses, more than a third are new to this collection.

“Great Spirit Listen”: The American Indian in Mormon Music

Misconceptions of native Americans began with the misnomer “Indian” based on a navigational error. Mainstream Mormon art, literature, and music, which grants the American Indians a Book of Mormon history and destiny as Lamanites, embraces…

“A Song for One Still Voice”: Hymn of Affirmation

Christian doctrine, from Paul’s injunction, “Mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13), to King Benjamin’s declarative, “The natural man is an enemy to God” (Mosiah 3:19), teaches the death of the natural man, the…

A Song Worth Singing | Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History

Anyone who has worked with Mormon music has likely experienced the frustration of being unable to learn much about its past —such things as composers, per formers, and institutional policy and practice. Collections of folk…

Coney Island Hymn: Shore

They clap their hands together 
            and shout out 
            and sing the same song 

Changes in LDS Hymns: Implications and Opportunities

Hymn

Lately I can’t get over the feeling that there is a man in my bed: a big man with thick, wavy hair and a broad, barrel chest that goes up-and down, up-and-down all night long…

Fiddler with a Cause | Marian Robertson Wilson, Leroy Robertson: Music Giant from the Rockies

Leroy Robertson was one of my mentors. I played in the Brigham Young University orchestra under him in 1945-46, studied music theory from him as a graduate student at the University of Utah in 1955,…

Sacrament Hymn

Jesus Deathkiller, 
God’s Lifer, Earth Rover, Gift: 

Be sure, 
in your name and our hope,

Day Music

The mountain is a redhead 
lying on his back 
nose and knees pointed 
to the sun. His hair 

Measures of Music

It came then that Sara dreamed of the flood. It had been the news for weeks, cities all along the Front sandbagging streets, sidewalks, driveways, window wells, a mudslide that made a lake over a…

Correlated Praise: The Development of the Spanish Hymnal

Statisticians predict that by 2012 native Spanish speakers will surpass native English speakers as the LDS church’s largest language group.[1] Clearly, the church is about to reach a dramatic turning point in its international growth.…

Music of a “More Exalted Sphere”: The Sonic Cosmology of La Monte Young

Seven and a half blocks east and five blocks south of the Salt Lake Temple, the 0,0 of the city’s cardinally aligned grid, an inconspicuous gate on the north side of the street opens onto a long path that leads to what was once the backyard of Thomas B. Child. A stonemason by trade and Mormon bishop by calling, Child spent many of his spare moments between 1945 and 1963 designing surreal and sacred sculptures and engraving poignant aphorisms into stone tablets, gradually creating one of the most unique (and, even to most Mormons, unknown) collections of folk art in the United States.

A Shaker Sister’s Hymnal

The frost grows fierce upon the pane,
crystals cluster in tight geometry. Inside my
glove my fingers freeze. I gasp the cold until I
am dumb: until my eyes are arctic marbles
rolling blue and plumb in their sockets: until
my leaden tongue sinks in my mouth. 

Requiem in L Minor

Today the L’s. In the old address book, the L pages are impossible—phone numbers lined out, zip codes scratched in, whole entries x’d or margined with a question mark. Even the H’s are more decipherable.…

My Mother Tongues

You can’t forget your first time. Mine was in the back of a beige ’68 VW bus, which I’d just bought from my mom’s boyfriend. I was taking Annie home from an Assemblies of God…

Tao Song

We create ourselves as we go: 
            memories folding inward 
                        like bread dough kneaded, 
                                    brain convolutions, or 
                                                tangible patterns on the shore. 

Lyric of the Larks

            Sobbing boughs above me bend,  
            Throbbing red in August wind. 

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.

Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection

I should keep a journal. If I did I could look up what year this happened. Or exactly why I drove to Ed’s house and knocked on his door. Or what time it was when…

Now Let Us Revise

I asked five diverse scholars to answer the question: What would you change in Mormon musical practice? Here are their replies. —Editor 

How to Be Alone with a Flute

Do not think of your suffering. 

Release it 
through your breath 
into the flute.

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.

Legacy

A horse-drawn carriage
passes by in another

age—leaves of ash

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  

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. 

& the day that i believe is known as pentecost to some

(((some 50 days later)))  
nostalgia tempts us—to long for early spring and the newly risen—
the surprise at the open tomb 
the gingersnaps & the whoopie pies & today 

easter sunday : : : thinking of you all the way

(in which mormons worldwide, on easter 2015,  
            do NOT have church service or partake of god’s flesh & blood)

Hsie T’iao** writes a complaint near the Jade Stairs:

o hear

o here 
lord—here 
is a platter of treats & refreshment 
in that high priest’s hands— 

the vulture-ism of the world (((since god isn’t here)))

muted to inspiration 
since god isn’t here 

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.