One Sunday some time ago, I was browsing through Spotify playlists — gospel and blues from the mid-20th century, mostly. At times I find myself wishing for a little more variety in the religious musical tradition I’ve grown up in. Perhaps it is simply the familiarity of the hymns that have made me take them for granted.
During my exploration of gospel music, I discovered Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel singer whose flourishing career spanned the 1930s through the 1960s. I fell in love with Tharpe’s witty way with words, her spunky but not sacrilegious treatment of religious topics, her enthusiasm for Jesus, and her vibrant stage presence. In one television performance, Tharpe shreds on the electric guitar while rows of robed choir members behind her clap to the beat, but (to my eyes) are unable to match the sharp whimsy and flair with which Rosetta performs.
On several occasions, my dad and I have played classical music in Latter-day Saint chapels. At Easter firesides, funerals, and sacrament meetings, hymns were accompanied with piano solos from Manuel Ponce and Claude Debussy, a waltz by Chopin, a bluesy rendition of Amazing Grace, a duet from Astor Piazzolla. After I played La Fille aux Cheville de Lin in sacrament meeting one Sunday, my bishop had the following to say about it: “I haven’t felt so peaceful in a very long time.” The 341 hymns found behind the green cover that we are all so familiar with aren’t the only pieces of music that can act as conduits to the Spirit.
Before playing Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1 at an Easter fireside, my dad asked a member of our ward (a wordsmith if there ever was one) for an introduction to the piece, and received the following: “To all the testaments of our Lord’s resurrection found within the corpus of our scriptural canon, we must add, with reverence and appreciation, the wordless witness of God’s created world as found in Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1.”
At the homecoming sacrament meeting of a Portuguese speaking sister in our ward, my dad and I played a duet by Piazzolla called “Soledad.” The closest Portuguese word to “soledad” is “saudade,” a central part of the sister missionary’s message that day. It doesn’t have a perfect English translation, but refers to a particular kind of melancholy, yearning, and nostalgic longing for something (or someone) absent or lost. There was one piano in the chapel already, but the duet required two, and so on Saturday, my dad uninstalled one of the pews on the stand and recruited a few young men from the ward to help him move a second piano next to the pulpit.
On my mission in Mexico, I remember a woman who had gotten baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a couple of years prior and had no regrets about doing so. She loved the Church, the doctrine, the spirit, and the community she had found there. But I’ll never forget her explaining the one thing she did struggle with while attending church — “The music just doesn’t move me,” she told us one day over lunch. This faithful, believing, spiritually self-aware woman had spent many years attending another Christian congregation. Upon joining the Church of Jesus Christ, she found that musically it was a stark departure from what she was familiar with. I remember struggling to know how to respond to her, because as an appreciator of many different kinds of music (including hymns) I understood in part where she was coming from. There are certainly some hymns that move me more than others. Don’t we all have our favorites?
But how much does that have to do with the musical style of the songs themselves versus the attitude of the singer? In sacrament meetings I’ve heard rousing renditions of “Now Let Us Rejoice” and others that for the dragging tempo of the chorister, lack of enthusiasm from the congregants, or both, have more closely resembled a funeral march than a hymn. Spiritual fulfillment from our hymns requires work on our part. When I took the time to learn about the story of John Newton, who penned the lyrics to “Amazing Grace,” the hymn and its message about the Savior became even more special to me.
In 2018, the Church announced that it would be preparing and releasing a new set of hymns. I looked forward to the musical pew moving — an opportunity to revisit old favorites and discover new ones.
A New Collection
Cherilyn Worthen has been part of the hymnbook committee since its formation back in 2017. What began as an effort to make a simple update eventually grew into a larger project to expand upon the previously existing collection of hymns, make it digitally available, and accessible to a worldwide audience.
After the Church’s call for new hymns in 2018, members had the opportunity to submit their own suggestions as to what should be included in the new collection, whether they be already existing hymns not found in previous versions of the hymnbook (such as “Come, Thou Fount”, “Amazing Grace,” or the Tongan hymn “Folofola mai a Sisu”), or new compositions.
Communications professor Scott Church submitted three hymns in 2019 as part of a collaboration with music professor Brent Yorgason. Church wrote the words, and Yorgason the music. “Hymns are just such an important part of not just our church and our hymn book but of all religion,” says Church. “It’s a form of devotion, a form of praise.”
Much of the committee’s work involves working together to review large batches of submitted hymns — well over a thousand submissions, according to BYU music professor Stephen Jones, who chairs the music editing committee.
“We’re taught in church that the council system, like a ward council or a family council, is a great place to iron out and work through differences,” Jones says. “There has been great safety in having multiple opinions, sometimes quite different opinions, about what was best for the music. It was always gratifying — challenging but gratifying — to see us zero in on [what] seems to be the best approach.”
Committee members use several guiding principles in the selection process. According to the Church’s website, the hymns included in the new collection should:
- “Increase faith in and worship of Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ.”
- “Teach the core doctrine of the gospel with power and clarity.”
- “Invite joyful singing at home and at church.”
- “Comfort the weary and inspire members to endure in faith.”
- “Unify members throughout the Church.”
The committee that was initially made up of only eight people has now grown into various subcommittees, including a text editing committee and music editing committee, who work together to make adjustments to the melodies, harmonies, accompaniment, and text once a hymn is selected.
BYU music professor Brent Yorgason is a part of the attributions committee, whose job it is to conduct the musicological research about the origins of each hymn — who wrote them and why, how the hymn has changed throughout history, etc. Some have particularly interesting histories — a couple originated in response to the plague, or began as anti-slavery anthems. All this research is compiled into a lengthy document (some as long as 20 pages), which is then distilled into a two-paragraph summary that accompanies each new hymn as it is released.
“I’ve worked on hundreds of these, and each one has a unique challenge,” Yorgason says. “Sometimes just finding where a hymn came from is really hard, especially if it’s a folk hymn, because you can never really identify who created it.” Yorgason hopes that in the future, even more of the committee’s research can be available to the public.
Accessible to All
One matter that Yorgason brought up with the committee in the early stages of the project had to do with the intended audience — a global church. “How will [the hymnbook] connect with people around the world more than we’ve had before?” he asked.
To address this question, the committee has included hymns that were found in the language collections such as French and Portuguese and borrowed Christian hymns from other faith traditions. African American spirituals such as “This Little Light of Mine” and “Were You There?” have also been included.
Stephen Jones asked a similar question: “How do you create a hymnbook for an audience of more than 17 million people in 90 languages, and whose musical tastes are not the same?” For Jones, the answer is two-fold. First, simplify. Jones and the rest of the committee members try to keep both accompanists and vocalists in mind as they arrange the music, ensuring that finger position, pedaling, and melody lines are as singable and playable as possible.
The second key, according to Jones, is to remember that “we’re not monolithic.” Variety is needed in the music, the register of the text, the modernity or antiquity of the text, and more. “We need variety in all these areas to make the book reflect the richness of Christianity itself and our church culture and history,” Jones says. This balance of simplicity and variety ensures that there is something for everyone, from the music enthusiasts to those unfamiliar with the Latter-day Saint tradition.
Worthen says that, ultimately, the collection will be varied, and that while there are many music professionals on the hymnbook committee, they have also been mindful of including others who wouldn’t fit into that category.
“We also have a couple of people with very limited musical experience because they needed to represent … the average user of the hymnbook,” she says. “If we make a product that only works for the musicians of the church and it doesn't work for the others, then it's not really going to fulfill its mission.”
The new hymnbook is not meant to be a collection of personal favorites, Worthen explains, but rather a varied, expanded collection in which everyone can find something that resonates with them.
Language of Music and Familiarity
The gospel messages found in the texts of the hymns are at the heart of the project. “The texts of every one of these, if you read them on their own, they’re really important expressions of … the gospel,” says Yorgason. “Every text has been pored over, word by word, and careful selections have been made, saying, ‘we need this text.’ Sometimes the tunes can change, the melodies … but the texts are why I think they ended up being chosen.”
The texts combined with the music make up the hymns that shape our worship both in the chapel and outside of it. “Music can circumvent the limits of our language and present a distilled sense of truth and beauty,” says Church. “I think that the Spirit works in conjunction with music and because of the power of music to articulate feeling. It also has the power to articulate truth, the beauty of truth, and in ways that language cannot.”
In an age of many changes within the Church, it’s important that members approach this new collection of hymns with the same enthusiasm and reverence that we already have for the ones we already know and love. “They have been very much like the scriptures to us in our lives — they speak to us at certain times in very deep and powerful ways, and they either chart a course for us or give us guidance in our minds and our hearts in some way that leads us to the Savior,” says Jones. “I would hope that people would embrace the opportunity to look at the new hymns and feel a sense of excitement about trying to discover something about the text and the music that might bless their lives.”
“I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me”
The lyrics of one African American spiritual I became familiar with through Sister Rosetta Tharpe say “I’m gonna live so God can use me anytime, anywhere,” and it seems to me that those who have donated their time and talents to this project have done just that.
In the midst of my Rosetta Tharpe deep dive some time ago, I remember wistfully hoping that some of the songs she performed would make their way into the Latter-day Saint hymnbook someday. At the time, that seemed a far way off, but only a few weeks later, the Church released a set of 11 new hymns, and among them, “I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me.”
In “Hymns—for Home and Church,” we’ll find longstanding musical anchors of our testimonies as well as new hymns that we ought to get to know, per Jones' invitation: “Open your heart, see if you can find room for something that’s not familiar, but could become beloved if you’ll give it a chance.”