After six years and thousands of submissions, the team tasked with the much-anticipated overhaul of the Latter-day Saint hymnbook announced Monday plans to release 12 songs that will appear in the final version of “Hymns—for Home and Church.”
That initial batch, due out May 30, will include the in-demand “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”
“We’re now, more than ever, a worldwide church,” Mack Wilberg, music director for The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, said in a news release. “To be able to share hymns together from the worldwide church, I think, is a really significant and an exciting thing.”
According to the release, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will see additional bite-size rollouts of hymns every “few months” over the course of the next two years until the complete hymnbook — expected to contain 450 to 500 songs — is available in its entirety in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) The church announced it is rolling out 12 songs at the end of May that will be included in the new official hymnbook.
At that point, the “same advance release plan will begin for many other languages,” a process those involved say will likely take two to three years.
The hymns will be available in the church’s Sacred Music and Gospel Library apps, along with the online Music Library.
“There will be one hymnbook for the entire world,” Anfissa Smith, a member of the hymnbook committee, said in a video accompanying the news release. “There will be hymn music from Germany, from Spain, from Brazil, from Africa, and it will be translated into all the languages.”
Ryan Murphy, associate music director for The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and hymnbook committee member, likewise emphasized the project’s international nature.
“As we continue to have more members of the church from different cultures and backgrounds and diverse life experiences,” he said, “we’re increasing the reach of our offerings through the hymns that allow people to feel that they are included in this hymnbook and that their voice can be expressed in worship through the hymns.”
Monday’s announcement did not name the additional hymns that would come out at the end of May, but one project adviser recently noted in a podcast that “Amazing Grace” was another that, like “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” topped those melodies requested most by the rank and file.
Originally written in 1758, the latter hymn has enjoyed a resurgence, thanks largely to Wilberg’s arrangement for The Tabernacle Choir.
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