New hymnal is in the works! Some major, wonderful changes.

[Anonymous]

😆

Oh my.

[Anonymous]

Pure, spit-take gold.

😆

[Anonymous]

There are so many hymns we don’t sing. We never sing Adam ondi Ahman, which is quite an interesting tune.

I love The Morning Breaks in the MoTab version – again we never sing it.

Put your Shoulder to the Wheel features quite frequently in our local services. And I’m not a fan. It sounds to me like the kind of song that Chairman Mao’s cadres would sing while beating up some passing old man.

Just to be contrary I actually like Praise to the Man and Joseph Smith’s First Prayer.

And I notice they have God Save the King down there… it’s been God save the Queen for quite a while. Elizabeth has been queen since the 50s… longer than I’ve been alive or most of the other board members. But you know the LDS likes patriarchy. And they’ve left it so long that it probably will be back to the King soon. She’s pretty old now.

I know our current president can probably remember Elizabeth’s coronation, but I can’t.

[Anonymous]

I am excited about the changes, mostly for the reasons Curt gave. But also because I think for the last few years we’ve been hearing “No, we’re not redoing the hymn book so quit asking.” I also like that the “canon” will open a bit with online options. I think most regulars here know how much I dislike a certain hymn about Joseph Smith, and I am going to have it on my list to drop without much hope of that actually happening. Imma do some research and I’ll be back with my lists.

[Anonymous]

On Own Now wrote:

The church is seeking input, including original songs. I have submitted the following, though it is to a common tune (as they used to do).

(sung to “If You Could Hie to Kolob”):

If you could high five Dieter, with a twinkling in his eye,

He’d then continue talking ’bout when he used to fly,

Do you think that you could ever, through all eternity

Find out the reason he is not in the First Presidency?

Did you really? :clap:

I didn’t even bother suggesting deleting Paise to the Man, but I found about 35-40 others that I hope are OBVIOUS candidates. “Lean on My Ample Arm” and other wastes of space.

I really hope they get good submissions. I hope they pile all other churches’ hymnals on the table and look for SATB gems.

Any chance “I Believe in Christ” will get shortened? I just groan when its turn comes around.

I also hope that they don’t try to do too much coordinating with that big General Conference index in the sky. We need more general hymns of praise and gratitude. That’s what opening hymns are supposed to be. They’re not necessarily matchy-matchy with the theme for the talks.

I put in a strong pitch for more Easter hymns. I’ll probably go back for round two as all my peeves and long-suppressed hopes bubble to the surface. I honestly thought we’d never get a new hymnal. I was bracing myself for self-playing pianos programmed with 50 acceptable hymns.

I haven’t read his biography, but I get the impression that President Nelson is very musical. Maybe he’s been on the same wave-length with many of us.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I didn’t even bother suggesting deleting Paise to the Man, but I found about 35-40 others that I hope are OBVIOUS candidates. “Lean on My Ample Arm” and other wastes of space.

That’s the first time I’ve heard that hymn (on Youtube). There are so many in there I don’t know, and so I don’t feel I can judge them. Our bishopric’s musical tastes are a bit different from mine… but in our meetings we sing a very limited range of hymns – under fifty I would guess excluding carols.

Here is an LDS candidate to go in. You’ll know the tune…

https://youtu.be/7CcvtoZ6Ra0

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

– – – – –

I could be completely wrong but I think one of the goals is to standardize the hymnals in all languages. I’ve belonged to multi-language wards in the past and it was always a struggle. Group A, turn to page 36; group B, turn to page 116; group C turn to page 46 – all to sing the same hymn. There were also several hymns that were unique to the various languages so we had to cross reference and cross reference every time we picked out hymns. It’s a niche problem to be sure, but I think they may be aiming for hymn 36 to be the same hymn in all languages.

I really hope not. This kind of correlation is what I find annoying about the church… do they not realize that poetry often does not translate well and that this applies to hymn lyrics? What works in one language will not always work well in another… Shakespeare does not translate well into French I’m told…

I prefer the idea of localizing the hymns a bit. The Polynesians have their own musical traditions for example, and I think their hymnbooks should reflect that, rather than just ape American ones.

A language like Finnish or Japanese is very different from English. I’m told the Finnish hymnal contains a lot of traditional Finnish hymns not found elsewhere in the LDS and I’m all for that.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

I prefer the idea of localizing the hymns a bit. The Polynesians have their own musical traditions for example, and I think their hymnbooks should reflect that, rather than just ape American ones.

I’m not sure what their master plan is. I got the impression that the official hymnal would be correlated but there would be additional hymns available online or through the gospel library app to extend the standardized hymnal.

And I think that’s a part of the exercise, to get off aping American hymns. The English hymnals include many America specific and even some Utah specific hymns. That same hymnal was used in other English speaking countries. Maybe the correlated hymnal will include Polynesian hymns, Finnish hymns, etc. to help make the church less American and introduce the saints to a little culture.

I get that translations won’t always work. I’ve seen it with several Spanish hymns. In those cases it’s probably best to move away from attempting to translate lyrics and keep the tune but with entirely new lyrics (with a similar theme) that will fit.

[Anonymous]

I vote for the removal of:

-Hymns focused on or praising Joseph Smith

-War Hymns

-Hymns with deep, unsubstantiated doctrine

And replacing them with hymns focused on:

-God/Heavenly Father/Christ and our relationship with Them.

-Virtues such as humility or gratitude

“In Our Lovely Deseret” is a joke hymn. It’s like the “Star Wars Holiday Special”. It’s so bad it’s no longer “so bad it’s good”. A hymn you can torture people with, yet so torturous you can never make it past the second verse. I vote we keep it. Such a glaring stain helps keep the Church humble.

[Anonymous]

The hard thing about hymns is that – like most art – what is good or bad is subjective. As a trained organist I like to mix up the hymns a little and some hymns are fun to play and some are terribly boring. However the interesting hymns to me are often difficult to sing and are disliked by most congregations.

O Savior Thou Who Wearest a Crown is a beautiful piece, both the lyrics and the music. However whenever I play it virtually nobody sings it and I get comments like “who chose that lame hymn??” JS Bach wrote the music for heavens sake. I love to play Praise the Man although I don’t like the lyrics. When I play it on the organ I play the bass part with the simulated sound of bagpipes on the organ. The music itself is the Scottish national anthem that somebody hijacked and wrote about Joseph Smith. I simply cannot stand the “happy hymn” like “there is sunshine in my soul.” I find them trite and simplistic but the older folks in my walk just love those ones.

Updating the hymnal will be a challenge and there will be hymns that people will both love and hate. I just hope for Amazing Grace and Come Thou Fount. As stated earlier in this thread Grace as a concept seems to be acceptable LDS Doctrine again.

[Anonymous]

Why do we sing hymns at all at church?

I sometimes hear people try to glorify them as a form of worship…but…these are all 1800s tunes. We sound so Pioneerish in church.

Makes me wonder why we do this 2-3 times a meeting. I suck at singing…I enjoy listening to other good singers. I don’t enjoy our hymns much or our ward choirs. That’s just me. Take some hymns out or put new ones in…it just is part of the buffet I skip in my experience, I think. Meh.

[Anonymous]

As a musician, I welcome this. I was going to hold a teachers council where I model an entire lesson done in song and instrumental music with me on my upright bass and a piano player. But I figured I’d get kicked out if I did that.

I would like to suggest that they get contemporary and past LDS artists like Bryce Neubert, Janice Kapp Perry, Lex De Azevido, Michael McLean, Kenneth Cope and others to write hymns that have a more modern feel.

And lighten up with the 4 notes per hands chords and give us some thing with a hook in the introduction, and opportunities for church appropriate solos in the middle.

They keep this up and I might have to get orthodox again.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

Why do we sing hymns at all at church?

I sometimes hear people try to glorify them as a form of worship…but…these are all 1800s tunes. We sound so Pioneerish in church.

Makes me wonder why we do this 2-3 times a meeting. I suck at singing…I enjoy listening to other good singers. I don’t enjoy our hymns much or our ward choirs. That’s just me. Take some hymns out or put new ones in…it just is part of the buffet I skip in my experience, I think. Meh.

I used to go to a happy clappy church. To be honest, a lot of the new tunes were tacky/cornball, and I never cared much for their music. On the plus side, they were friendly and let me wear whatever I wanted.

I prefer a lot of the old hymns. Why? I think time has been a judge – it’s weeded out a lot of hymns, and preserved some others. Not always fairly granted, some good ones went and some bad ones remained, but some of them have staying power.

I don’t think Mormons have had the finest hymn writers – I’d put some of the Methodist and Lutheran hymns up there – but we have had some pretty good ones too.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

They keep this up and I might have to get orthodox again.

I won’t tell anyone

[Anonymous]

Roadrunner wrote:

I love to play Praise the Man although I don’t like the lyrics. When I play it on the organ I play the bass part with the simulated sound of bagpipes on the organ. The music itself is the Scottish national anthem that somebody hijacked and wrote about Joseph Smith.

Meh… Scotland doesn’t have an official anthem as such, but if there is one then “Flower of Scotland” is the actual anthem used at sports events etc which has a different tune, and seems to be preferred by them themselves. “Scotland the Brave” isn’t used much anymore and is seen as a bit corny by Scots. But it doesn’t mention fighting the English which probably makes it acceptable to the British government which rules Scotland. 😆

We could consider having Waltzing Matilda in the hymnal. Most Aussies seem to prefer that to the official Advance Australia Fair:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

Under the shade of a coolibah tree,

And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled:

“You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda, with me.”

(The gist of this is that a drifter boiled up a kettle by a creek.)

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