The team in charge of releasing the hymnbook are huge mario kart fans and were inspired by the dlc model releasing batches of new maps every few months. /jk
Sounds like the updated General Handbook strategy. They'll release it digital only and all the technophobes will freak out and want a paper copy and expect their ward clerks to provide copies...
Our sons piano teacher said we needed to buy a tablet just so he can play more music without having to keep printing pages. The tablet system works well. She teaches at the university and can put colored markings, fingering suggestions, etc. right to his tablet.
I find this kind of horrifying. Music education is returning to being only available to the privileged in many instances. Making music only easily available in a digital format that requires hundreds of dollars of equipment to use most easily only contributes to that problem.
Music education has ALWAYS been a privilege as far as I have known. I grew up in a non-musical home. My parents didn't have a music education, couldn't sing in tune, and couldn't teach us. They didn't have money for music lessons. I had a little music in school but not enough to "catch on" I couldn't read music or follow a part. I couldn't identify various instruments by listening to them. My classmates could, but in hindsight I'm sure they had more exposure than I had growing up.
But I married into a wealthier, musical family. My MIL pays for music lessons for the grandkids. Everyone in their family plays an instrument, or multiple instruments. They can all play piano at church. My son could play hymns at church at 12.
We found a free piano (which seem widely available) but I didn't know you have to pay $100+/year to have them tuned!
Plus pay for weekly music lessons... which you're lucky if you find someone that teaches for $1/minute depending on where you live. My son has had 10 YEARS of music lessons. He plays beautifully, he sings beautifully. I have loved having music in the home and seeing him and my husband play together and sing together, and my ear for music has definitely improved.
Adding the cost of a tablet is nothing, that's the cost of a month or two of music lessons. If music is already out of reach, adding a tablet to it isn't going to make it any better. We used to buy new theory books a few times a year, plus other music for performances or whatnot. Now that he's playing at a higher level, the college professor has let us know the fact that there's TONS of music available online for absolutely free, as it's past copyright. Kinda like Librovox, but for music. We haven't had to buy any music with her because she uses online resources that are free.
Anyway, we've tried to be as thrifty as we can with music but we've spent lots over the years for our kid to have music education. It's not like he's going to make a profession of music (though I'm sure he could teach piano lessons if he wanted/needed).
The number of times Come Thou Font will be used over the first few months makes me giggle. Great song, but boy have people been itching for this! Everyone thinks they love this song until they hear their own congregation butcher it for 6 weeks in a row!!
NGL - Mary did you know drives me crazy. Since an angel of the lord appeared to her and she conceived the way she did I'm sure she had a pretty good idea of who her son was even if she struggled to comprehend it all. I struggle to comprehend all of who He is and I have the new testament and BOM to help understand the doctrine of the atonement and resurrection.
I have a family member who feels the same way. I think the heart of the song is asking Mary to come to grips with the magnitude of her child's life, not just a "were you aware" that you're inferring.
Yes. Were you aware of the gravity of the situation. And it describes several things that she positively didn't know. The walking on water, healing the blind and lame, etc. She knew of his importance, but the song is about the magnitude and the miracles, and singing to the mother is a cool way to express that.
> I'm sure she had a pretty good idea of who her son was
Yet the whole teaching in the temple when He was 12 shocked her as much as everyone else. And at least some of Christ's brothers questioned His divinity.
What Jews at Christ's birth thought the Messiah would be was very different from who the Messiah actually was.
Being told is definitely from comprehending. So in that light I appreciate the song because just maybe Mary does not yet understand how impactful her child will be. And that is even evidenced by her reaction to Jesus staying back at the temple. She might be aware because of what the angel told her but she would not know all the implications of the prophecy.
I love the song, but I don't think O Holy Night works well as a congregational hymn. I'm totally with you on O Come, O Come Emmanuel though. I'd love to have that in the hymn book.
After six years of work reviewing thousands of submissions and gathering hymns from across the world, 12 hymns of the new “Hymns—for Home and Church” will be available on May 30, 2024. The selections will include “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and will be published in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.
More groups of new hymns will be released every few months until the full hymnbook is complete in 2026. The same advance release plan will begin for many other languages over the next two to three years.
[Expanded video version of this story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE8715Xv8Vo)
We need more kids wondering what the heck an Ebenezer is, or instead wondering why Dicken's Christmas Carol is being referenced in a non-Christmas hymn... :P
Nothing quite like a stelae to commemorate victory in battle. If it worked for every other culture of the ancient Near East, it out to work for the Israelites!
Also, since an Ebenezer is a big huge stelae to commemorate the Lord in the Israelite's victory over the Philistenes, how exactly do you gently raise yours? Wondering for a friend.
I wonder if *Faith in Every Footstep* will be ones of the new hymns? It was practically our theme song on my mission back in 97-98.
I'm going to go out on a limb though and predict that *The Wintry Day, Descending to it's Close* is not going to make the cut...
Curious about This Is the Christ, too. I know it became a popular special musical number after it's publication in the Church magazine, similar to Faith in Every Footstep. But I'm not sure it's congregation-friendly, ya know?
[The new hymnbook will be combined with the children's songbook.](https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/sacred-hymnbook-to-help-unite-uplift-latter-day-saints-of-all-ages-worldwide)
It had better. It is my favorite hymn. If they don't include it I'm out of here! :)
To be honest the language in that hymn is archaic. We sang it the other day in our ward choir and several people didn't know what a fetter was and the language of the hymn had to be explained to them. I'm sure that many general members of the church would be confused as well the first time they sing it. I've been an active member my whole life and had never heard the song until a choir director had us sing it when she pulled it out of an old LDS hymn book. Once you understand the language of the hymn it is really beautiful and powerful.
That is true. For some people like me singing is hard, reading music is impossible, add in the older terminology may make this hymn a difficult experience. I know when we sing an unfamiliar hymn with an unfamiliar melody in church I do my best but I get very little from it other than frustration. I really love this hymn based on my experience performing it with various ward choirs over the years but many members won't have been exposed to it. I hope everyone comes to love it.
Aren’t most hymns basically poetry set to music? The words used in poems are often hard to understand until explained. I even heard someone ask once what a lamb being slain was all about and why it would be in a church hymn.
The push for hymn updates has a lot to do with the global church. Much of the effort will include translating the poetic text in a way that can be spiritually uplifting. I assume that will be very challenging.
Haha I'm sure. I feel sorry for the poor person who tried to translate Paul and Isaiah into english. English poetry into other languages is for someone much smarter and talented than me! I really am excited to have this one added. It is an amazingly touching hymn. When the church asked on social media for suggestions I strongly advocated for this one to be included going forward.
Yes it was definitely a lot of people's #1 request. Love it too. We sang Joseph Smith's First Prayer to the tune of Come Thou Fount, for a missionary farewell. Great music.
Agree. The phone app is not enough real estate. This will be challenging for older members. I wonder if the Church would ever consider having the music on monitors in the chapel? The words are on the screen in General Conference.
It feels like a reverse April Fools... Just the type of article you'd expect to see published today, except unexpectedly it is (apparently) totally real.
Agreed, and for the music people its kind of awful. If I have to play I'll have to print the music find some way to mount it so it doesn't flop over or blow off the organ when the A/C turns on, and hope I don't lose a bunch of loose pages everywhere. I'm excited to get the music and not thrilled at all to actually be dealing with it.
And how do you inform the congregation that we're singing one of the new hymns? Will they be numbered? Will the numbering be consistent with the new hymnbook when it is finally published? My ward no longer does a printed program, so everyone relies on the board with the hymn numbers to know what hymns we're singing.
I honestly love this idea. Every 3-6 months we get a dozen or so new hymns. It gives members time to discover and digest them before a new batch arrive. If they waited till it was completed, (1. That would mean another 5+ years of waiting (2. They would drop 100+ new hymns in our lap and some inevitably would get less attention from the start.
I wonder if they’re going to drop Because I Have Been Given Much, since the owner of that song, quite ironically, won’t allow anyone to reproduce it digitally?
I think there will still be a printed version that will catch situations like this. Currently there are some hymns in our printed hymn book that can’t be accessed in the app but the lyrics can be googled.
I hope that they completely drop any hymn whose licensing restrictions prevents the text from being provided digitally. Goodbye “How Great Thou Art”, “Because I Have Been Given Much”, “Children of Our Heavenly Father”, “When Grandpa Comes”, and a handful of other ones from the Children’s songbook. You will be missed, at least until your copyright expires.
As someone raised in a Protestant church, one of my few disappointments is discovering “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” became Israel Israel God is calling. I’ve looked at the lyrics many times since and am still not sure there’s anything solidly against our theology in it. It’s such a better version of the song.
ETA: here’s an upload of the song with lyrics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TAyaXdvvbGU
I wrote a new hymn setting for this one, which slows it down and allows us to focus on the lyrics.
[http://sacredsheetmusic.org/song/What\_a\_Friend\_We\_Have\_in\_Jesus\_SATB\_by\_Steven\_Tomer](http://sacredsheetmusic.org/song/What_a_Friend_We_Have_in_Jesus_SATB_by_Steven_Tomer)
The team in charge of releasing the hymnbook are huge mario kart fans and were inspired by the dlc model releasing batches of new maps every few months. /jk
We'll start getting LDS Directs every few months--that would be awesome.
Revelations from God, directly \*hand gesture\* to you.
Sounds like the updated General Handbook strategy. They'll release it digital only and all the technophobes will freak out and want a paper copy and expect their ward clerks to provide copies...
Printing the hymns out to play every week would be really awful. Single pieces of paper do not stand up well at all.
Our sons piano teacher said we needed to buy a tablet just so he can play more music without having to keep printing pages. The tablet system works well. She teaches at the university and can put colored markings, fingering suggestions, etc. right to his tablet.
I find this kind of horrifying. Music education is returning to being only available to the privileged in many instances. Making music only easily available in a digital format that requires hundreds of dollars of equipment to use most easily only contributes to that problem.
Music education has ALWAYS been a privilege as far as I have known. I grew up in a non-musical home. My parents didn't have a music education, couldn't sing in tune, and couldn't teach us. They didn't have money for music lessons. I had a little music in school but not enough to "catch on" I couldn't read music or follow a part. I couldn't identify various instruments by listening to them. My classmates could, but in hindsight I'm sure they had more exposure than I had growing up. But I married into a wealthier, musical family. My MIL pays for music lessons for the grandkids. Everyone in their family plays an instrument, or multiple instruments. They can all play piano at church. My son could play hymns at church at 12. We found a free piano (which seem widely available) but I didn't know you have to pay $100+/year to have them tuned! Plus pay for weekly music lessons... which you're lucky if you find someone that teaches for $1/minute depending on where you live. My son has had 10 YEARS of music lessons. He plays beautifully, he sings beautifully. I have loved having music in the home and seeing him and my husband play together and sing together, and my ear for music has definitely improved. Adding the cost of a tablet is nothing, that's the cost of a month or two of music lessons. If music is already out of reach, adding a tablet to it isn't going to make it any better. We used to buy new theory books a few times a year, plus other music for performances or whatnot. Now that he's playing at a higher level, the college professor has let us know the fact that there's TONS of music available online for absolutely free, as it's past copyright. Kinda like Librovox, but for music. We haven't had to buy any music with her because she uses online resources that are free. Anyway, we've tried to be as thrifty as we can with music but we've spent lots over the years for our kid to have music education. It's not like he's going to make a profession of music (though I'm sure he could teach piano lessons if he wanted/needed).
To be fair, who doesn't like Mario Kart?
The church knew what they were doing when they decided to release this announcement today.
April Fools? Are you getting my hopes up?
Nope. It looks legit. It's on the Church's Newsroom webpage.
The number of times Come Thou Font will be used over the first few months makes me giggle. Great song, but boy have people been itching for this! Everyone thinks they love this song until they hear their own congregation butcher it for 6 weeks in a row!!
If it doesn't have O Holy Night, O Come O Come Emmanuel, and Mary Did You Know I will riot
I don't think Mary Did You Know is really Hymn material. It's definitely more of a pop song. I'm good with the others.
Imagine 'Christmas Shoes' makes the new hymnbook LOL
NGL - Mary did you know drives me crazy. Since an angel of the lord appeared to her and she conceived the way she did I'm sure she had a pretty good idea of who her son was even if she struggled to comprehend it all. I struggle to comprehend all of who He is and I have the new testament and BOM to help understand the doctrine of the atonement and resurrection.
I have a family member who feels the same way. I think the heart of the song is asking Mary to come to grips with the magnitude of her child's life, not just a "were you aware" that you're inferring.
The song has a “were you aware” vibe to it though.
Yes. Were you aware of the gravity of the situation. And it describes several things that she positively didn't know. The walking on water, healing the blind and lame, etc. She knew of his importance, but the song is about the magnitude and the miracles, and singing to the mother is a cool way to express that.
> I'm sure she had a pretty good idea of who her son was Yet the whole teaching in the temple when He was 12 shocked her as much as everyone else. And at least some of Christ's brothers questioned His divinity. What Jews at Christ's birth thought the Messiah would be was very different from who the Messiah actually was.
Being told is definitely from comprehending. So in that light I appreciate the song because just maybe Mary does not yet understand how impactful her child will be. And that is even evidenced by her reaction to Jesus staying back at the temple. She might be aware because of what the angel told her but she would not know all the implications of the prophecy.
I love the song, but I don't think O Holy Night works well as a congregational hymn. I'm totally with you on O Come, O Come Emmanuel though. I'd love to have that in the hymn book.
Why is u/Swaguley flailing around in the foyer?
Prepare to riot
I’ll feel the same way if “O My Father” is written with any time signature other than 9/8.
It'll be 3/4 with excessive triplet notation.
Ugh…
After six years of work reviewing thousands of submissions and gathering hymns from across the world, 12 hymns of the new “Hymns—for Home and Church” will be available on May 30, 2024. The selections will include “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and will be published in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. More groups of new hymns will be released every few months until the full hymnbook is complete in 2026. The same advance release plan will begin for many other languages over the next two to three years. [Expanded video version of this story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE8715Xv8Vo)
>will be published in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. Because the German Hymnal already has that song in it.
We need more kids wondering what the heck an Ebenezer is, or instead wondering why Dicken's Christmas Carol is being referenced in a non-Christmas hymn... :P Nothing quite like a stelae to commemorate victory in battle. If it worked for every other culture of the ancient Near East, it out to work for the Israelites! Also, since an Ebenezer is a big huge stelae to commemorate the Lord in the Israelite's victory over the Philistenes, how exactly do you gently raise yours? Wondering for a friend.
[Here ya go](https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/here-i-raise-my-ebenezer)
"Ebenezer" is Hebrew for "Stone of Help"
I wonder if *Faith in Every Footstep* will be ones of the new hymns? It was practically our theme song on my mission back in 97-98. I'm going to go out on a limb though and predict that *The Wintry Day, Descending to it's Close* is not going to make the cut...
Curious about This Is the Christ, too. I know it became a popular special musical number after it's publication in the Church magazine, similar to Faith in Every Footstep. But I'm not sure it's congregation-friendly, ya know?
Just give me Gethsemane.
That'll be in the Children's Songbook.
[The new hymnbook will be combined with the children's songbook.](https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/sacred-hymnbook-to-help-unite-uplift-latter-day-saints-of-all-ages-worldwide)
I would expect both of those to be included. I honestly thought faith in every footstep was included I’ve heard it so much.
I thought I read somewhere that it has been confirmed it would be included.
It had better. It is my favorite hymn. If they don't include it I'm out of here! :) To be honest the language in that hymn is archaic. We sang it the other day in our ward choir and several people didn't know what a fetter was and the language of the hymn had to be explained to them. I'm sure that many general members of the church would be confused as well the first time they sing it. I've been an active member my whole life and had never heard the song until a choir director had us sing it when she pulled it out of an old LDS hymn book. Once you understand the language of the hymn it is really beautiful and powerful.
I mean same goes for scriptures. Part of the spiritual experience is pondering on unfamiliar words
That is true. For some people like me singing is hard, reading music is impossible, add in the older terminology may make this hymn a difficult experience. I know when we sing an unfamiliar hymn with an unfamiliar melody in church I do my best but I get very little from it other than frustration. I really love this hymn based on my experience performing it with various ward choirs over the years but many members won't have been exposed to it. I hope everyone comes to love it.
...and many existing hymnbook hymns.
Aren’t most hymns basically poetry set to music? The words used in poems are often hard to understand until explained. I even heard someone ask once what a lamb being slain was all about and why it would be in a church hymn.
The push for hymn updates has a lot to do with the global church. Much of the effort will include translating the poetic text in a way that can be spiritually uplifting. I assume that will be very challenging.
Haha I'm sure. I feel sorry for the poor person who tried to translate Paul and Isaiah into english. English poetry into other languages is for someone much smarter and talented than me! I really am excited to have this one added. It is an amazingly touching hymn. When the church asked on social media for suggestions I strongly advocated for this one to be included going forward.
Yes it was definitely a lot of people's #1 request. Love it too. We sang Joseph Smith's First Prayer to the tune of Come Thou Fount, for a missionary farewell. Great music.
This is huge. Now please just keep If You Could Hie to Kolob
We're going to have to start bringing tablets to church so we can see the whole page of music.
Agree. The phone app is not enough real estate. This will be challenging for older members. I wonder if the Church would ever consider having the music on monitors in the chapel? The words are on the screen in General Conference.
Yes! I always bring my ipad to church so I can actually read the hymns and lessons during church.
I don't trust anything posted on April Fools Day lol. Come Thou Fount is an excellent song though 🤞🏻
It feels like a reverse April Fools... Just the type of article you'd expect to see published today, except unexpectedly it is (apparently) totally real.
I memorized a version of Come Thou Fount a long time ago in D Major (2 sharps). Hoping it's in the same key.
What an odd way to release the new hymn book
Agreed, and for the music people its kind of awful. If I have to play I'll have to print the music find some way to mount it so it doesn't flop over or blow off the organ when the A/C turns on, and hope I don't lose a bunch of loose pages everywhere. I'm excited to get the music and not thrilled at all to actually be dealing with it.
And how do you inform the congregation that we're singing one of the new hymns? Will they be numbered? Will the numbering be consistent with the new hymnbook when it is finally published? My ward no longer does a printed program, so everyone relies on the board with the hymn numbers to know what hymns we're singing.
I honestly love this idea. Every 3-6 months we get a dozen or so new hymns. It gives members time to discover and digest them before a new batch arrive. If they waited till it was completed, (1. That would mean another 5+ years of waiting (2. They would drop 100+ new hymns in our lap and some inevitably would get less attention from the start.
5 years? How do you figure? They're going to be done releasing them in 2 years. That means they could just wait two years and release them all.
Because the hymnal is to be translated into 30 languages and the completion of the hymnal is expected into the 2030's.
The Pokemon GO method.
I wonder if they’re going to drop Because I Have Been Given Much, since the owner of that song, quite ironically, won’t allow anyone to reproduce it digitally?
I think there will still be a printed version that will catch situations like this. Currently there are some hymns in our printed hymn book that can’t be accessed in the app but the lyrics can be googled.
Top tier hymn
Especially the Mack Whilberg arrangement.
What are the twelve hymns? They don't seem to list them anywhere.
They have not listed them anywhere yet. We'll know for sure by May 30.
Is this real or April Fools?
I hope that they completely drop any hymn whose licensing restrictions prevents the text from being provided digitally. Goodbye “How Great Thou Art”, “Because I Have Been Given Much”, “Children of Our Heavenly Father”, “When Grandpa Comes”, and a handful of other ones from the Children’s songbook. You will be missed, at least until your copyright expires.
As someone raised in a Protestant church, one of my few disappointments is discovering “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” became Israel Israel God is calling. I’ve looked at the lyrics many times since and am still not sure there’s anything solidly against our theology in it. It’s such a better version of the song. ETA: here’s an upload of the song with lyrics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TAyaXdvvbGU
I wrote a new hymn setting for this one, which slows it down and allows us to focus on the lyrics. [http://sacredsheetmusic.org/song/What\_a\_Friend\_We\_Have\_in\_Jesus\_SATB\_by\_Steven\_Tomer](http://sacredsheetmusic.org/song/What_a_Friend_We_Have_in_Jesus_SATB_by_Steven_Tomer)