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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

Hymn #49

Singing in Harmony, Stitching in Time

From the Pulpit: The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

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

Hymn #49

Singing in Harmony, Stitching in Time

From the Pulpit: The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

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

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

Tao Song

Lyric of the Larks

Hymns: The Brick Church Hymnal: Extracts from an Autobiography

Personal Voices: Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection

Round Table: Now Let Us Revise

How to Be Alone with a Flute

Resolve

Legacy

Drum Major

Oye Como Va

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

easter sunday : : : thinking of you all the way

o hear

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

Mormons, Musical Theater, and the Public Arena of Doubt

The Lindsey Stirling Effect

Why Mormons Sing in Parts (Or Don’t)

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

Guest Editor’s Introduction

“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

Hymn #49

Singing in Harmony, Stitching in Time

From the Pulpit: The Song of the Righteous is a Prayer unto Me

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

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

Tao Song

Lyric of the Larks

Hymns: The Brick Church Hymnal: Extracts from an Autobiography

Personal Voices: Spencer Kimball’s Record Collection

Round Table: Now Let Us Revise

How to Be Alone with a Flute

Resolve

Legacy

Drum Major

Oye Como Va

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

easter sunday : : : thinking of you all the way

o hear

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

Mormons, Musical Theater, and the Public Arena of Doubt

The Lindsey Stirling Effect

Why Mormons Sing in Parts (Or Don’t)

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

Guest Editor’s Introduction