Our Latter-Day Hymns

by Karen Lynn Davidson

If you enjoy the hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then you will enjoy Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and the Messages. In this volume you will find the stories of all the hymns in the 1985 LDS hymnbook, so far as those stories are known. Some of the hymns came about in ways that are quite dramatic and personal; others came into being under ordinary circumstances. And each of the more than three hundred hymns has a message all its own.

Prepared with the cooperation and assistance of the General Music Committee of the Church, this companion to the hymnbook gives brief biographies of the authors and composers of the hymns, the stories of the hymns themselves, and an account of changes that may have ocurred in the words or in the music.

Our Latter-day Hymns gives insight into the beliefs and history, hopes and fears of the people who sing these hymns. Church members who have music callings as well as those who simply enjoy singing will find this volume fascinating and informative.

Genres: Lds, Religion, Nonfiction, Church, Music, History, Inspirational

400 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 1988

Reviews

[Danny]

The author has reviewed the history of the LDS hymns, their authors and composers with lots of miscellaneous information that brings the circumstances of their creation to light. A good resource.

[Brent Huntley]

I don’t know why I thought it would be interesting to know the stories behind the hymns. Turns out most of the stories are that someone sat down and wrote a poem and it got turned into a hymn.

[Julianna]

I enjoyed this book, but it's a bit dry and esoteric if you're not a history and/or music nerd. Perfect as a reference resource.
Definitely written for Mormons by Mormons. I wish there had been more context regarding other Christian standards not included in the LDS hymnal and why. I'd like to see what objectionable about the doctrine or licensing issues ect. But I understand that is not quite the purpose of this book.

[Brian]

This book was a text for a hymn class that I took back in college. I remembered liking the class, but at book buy-back time, this thing fetched a decent $30 or so that I couldn't turn down. Part of me has regretted selling it back ever since. With the recent release of newer hymns and some accompanying background information for each, my interest in revisiting this text has been rekindled.

Unfortunately, I found this book a bit of a chore to get through. The tone came across as a bit stuffy throughout, and all the references to the previous version of this book and the quotations from J Spencer Cornwall got pretty tiresome, too. It makes sense that they would use that material, but I think that's where a good amount of the tone came from. In addition, there wasn't quite as much background and history of the hymns themselves as I went in hoping for, and a bit more exposition on the hymn meanings than I felt was necessary. So, all those things together made it a bit of a tough read-through.

Difficulties aside, I am still glad to have read it through, and glad to have it as a reference book. Taking it a few hymns at a time would alleviate many of the things that I found irritating on trying to read straight through.

[Adam]

Psstt... (I didn't actually read all of this book . . .)

The last 120 pages are paragraph biographies of all the composers of the hymns. Biographies are already one of the most boring of literary genres. To then make them composer biographies of music and only a paragraph long makes it not worth my time. I actually tried to skim read them, but by the third one I was done.

What I love about this book is that it is a reservoir of personal experiences on how ARTISTS receive and act on revelation. This really should be used as a reference book more than anything, but it did have inspiring stories every twenty hymns or so that made the reading worthwhile. It was really cool to see how these saints had normal, trying experiences that they turned into beautiful music and lyrics. And how these composers and poets did much of the work, but every once and a while had a moment of pure revelation. Or how they would get the main melody and then figure out the rest for themselves, etc. etc. Pretty cool to read and see how the hand of God works on all of His children who diligently, faithfully seek out His glory.

[Karin]

This is an excellent reference book to have if you are at all interested in the hymns and their history. When teaching them to choirs, when trying to match certain hymns or just trying to avoid all of Manookin's hymns until the new hymnbook comes out, this book is invaluable. There is a small snippet on author, composer and history on each hymn along with some musical info.

[Angie]

An interesting resource for those in a music calling, but not a great read, otherwise. Truly interesting tidbits seemed too few and far between, so it felt like I was slogging through the rest of the book to get to them.

[Angie]

Great book on hymns.

[Yolanda]

Good reference material. Got bored with the book, shelved it, read some, shelved it, read some, etc. Nearly two years later, done.

[Bruce E.]

Sister Davidson gives some great back stories of the hymns I grew up with. I have given two copies of this as gifts.

[Deborah]

Great resource. My music ministry has covered practically all the territory in ward & stake callings in the Church of Jesus Christ, and i w returned to this gem of information over and over.

[Aaron Hart]

Turns out most hymns do not have interesting stories, which I guess the book says in the preface so I can’t really get mad at it for that it still wasn’t that fun to read through

[Brittany]

For the past year or so I came up with this idea to study the hymns. So here is what I did (this is going to sound really nerdy):

I started with the beginning of the hymnbook by reading the introduction. Then from there I sang all verses of the first hymn, looked up the correlating scriptures and then read about that hymn in this “Our Latter-Day Hymns” book. Finally I read the information about the people who wrote the text and the music from the back of the "Our Latter-Day Hymns” book. I continued these steps with all the hymns in the English hymnbook.

Overall I feel disappointed that I paid $29.95 for this book.

The author does warn the reader in her introduction of “Our Latter-Day Hymns” that some of the background stories to the hymns are undramatic.

Since quite a few hymns have an undramatic story or really no background story at all, it seems like the author felt like she had to write something about the hymn to fill up some pages and make this book into a big, thick book for $29.95.

The author basically repeats the message of the hymn’s text in her own words. She would write things like, “In verse one we read that…” The other thing that the author would sometimes do is write the scriptures that go with the hymn. But you can read these scripture passage on your own. The correlating scriptures are found at the bottom of each hymn in the hymnbook.

This book would have been better if it was reduced to a smaller, more affordable book with just the interesting facts (i.e. It would be nice if she cut out all the “messages” we can get that from reading or singing the hymn's text. If there is no background story about a certain hymn, she should have just wrote that there is no background story and not write all this fluff about a particular hymn.)

For the most part, the book was pretty boring to me and it took me a very long time to get through it. Only on occasion did I read something that was interesting about a hymn and highlighted it in my copy of the book. Yet looking back at my copy, I don’t have a whole lot of highlighted passages.

I have a love for Germany, the language, people and culture. So that being said, I thought it was interesting to see the influence German-speaking people had on the hymns.

Lastly, I loved reading the short little texts about the people who wrote the music or the text.

[Cathi]

I read this book back in the late-1980s, when it first came out, and loved every page! I read it cover-to-cover, enjoying the story of each hymn, as well as the brief biographies of the composers and authors of the texts. Since that time, I've referred to this book again and again, because it's such a wonderful reference for people with music callings or even just for preparing for a talk. To me, this is one of those treasures that would be a welcome addition for every LDS home library.

By the way, I took an English class from Sister Davidson long ago (the semester she got married and prepared to leave BYU), and she is a jewel. Intelligence, humor, and kindness--she was a great teacher!

[Robyn]

This book is wonderful for anyone who loves the hymns from the Latter Day Saint hymnal. It gives background information on every song and is also a great book for chorister's to refer to when searching for a song on a certain topic. It's also a great reference when teaching a new song. In one ward I attended, the chorister in Relief Society would read the story behind the song we would "practice" that week. It was so interesting to learn about our hymn's origins before we sang them. It helps you appreciate the hymn's even more.

[Virginia]

I read most of it during September of 2010. I loved hearing about the history of the hymns we love so much and have sung all of our lives in church. It is interesting to know about those that were blind and had other adversities in their lives and still found a way to add music to other peoples lives. The song we sing were written from the 1400's up to the almost present day.

[Suzanne Lorraine Kunz Williams]

The more I know about things the more I appreciate and enjoy them. I am thankful for the information in this book for teaching me more about the authors and the tune writers of the various hymns. It inspired me to greater study of the authors and tune writers on my own (on the internet). When I know the backstory on the hymns they mean so much more to me. This book is a good starting point.

[Georgia]

This is a GREAT historical book. I love reading about history of each hymn. I recommend this book to any Latter-Day Saint, however it is especially good if you are in Relief Society and are the music appreciation leader.

[Karen]

Sadly very boring for the most part so I didn't finish it. However, we did have a wonderful FHE thanks to the IDEA of this book. We each chose our favorite song, told why we liked it and looked up the scripture then sang the song (from either the LDS Hymnbook or Children's Songbook)

[Betsy]

I take issue with the fact that goodreads.com thinks I want to read this because I rated the Holy Bible. The Holy Bible stands alone in it's own category away from scriptures of other religions. Yes I am interested in perusing through this book but it belongs on a lower shelf than my Bible!

[Jen]

This is a very interesting book. It's fascinating to hear all the details about the hymns. I just love it.

[Heidi-Marie]

10/4/16 Been reading sporadically over the years. Decided to go from the beginning and read cover to cover as part of my hymn blogging project. So excited, because this book is amazing!

[Becky]

I love singing and playing the hymns. Learning about how they came to be written was very inspirational.

[Rebecca]

Bleh. This is not a book to read cover to cover! This is a book to use as a reference when you want to know (or have to tell - in a church talk) whence a hymn originates.

[Scarehaircare]

Read about the history of the hymns in the LDS hymnbook

[Emily]

Sometimes a little boring, but overall there's something interesting behind our hymns and this book lets you know.

[Marilyn Howard]

I have read about some of the songs so I can't say I read the whole thing. This is a great book with lots of fun, interesting, and sometimes sad information.

[Kathrynlouis]

So interesting...

[Channa]

I use this book for our Relief Society's 5 minute music time each week. It has been great resource to learn and share information about the history of the hymns.

[Nanette]

I decided to study the hymns again this year for my personal study and this book is an immense help!