Hymn Sing 2019

I started doing a Hymn Sing program in the library a long time ago--I think I must have started it in the fall of 2012, or maybe even 2011. I am not sure. You can find a video that was made about it in 2013 here (scroll down for it)--one of Janet's students made that video for a class assignment. And that was at least a year into it.

It has been fun and/or discouraging. Both. When I first started, my students were my students (that sounds weird; but they were like my extra children back then!) and were very loyal about coming. Then they all graduated, and I changed positions so was no longer in charge of students, and it has been hard to build a following. Sometimes I have been discouraged and have thought--why keep trying? But I like to sing in a group just for fun! There is something soul-building about it. So I have kept going.

This semester, two great things happened. First, Brent Yorgason is teaching a Hymnody class (first time ever at BYU) and he is requiring his students to attend one hymn sing AND to get extra credit for attending a second hymn sing. Second, BYU Wellness contacted me about including Hymn Sing on their Wellness Monopoly game.

So this has been hymn sing attendance so far this semester: January, we sang hymns composed by BYU faculty members, and 20 people came. February, hymns that arose from classical music roots, and 50 people came (approximately--there isn't room for 50 in the room, actually, so people came and went, but that is approximately the number in total); and tonight, 18 people came for hymns with the tunes composed by women.

This is what was on the handout (which, you know, I put there):

"Although many women have contributed texts for the hymns found in the 1985 LDS Hymnal, most of the music has been composed by men. Of the 341 hymns, only 18 have music by women! That is just over 5%. That is not really great representation. Maybe that will change going forward?

The 18 hymns have music written by 16 women; two women have two hymns included: Mildred Tanner Pettit and Vanja Y. Watkins. These women are among those whose music appears more robustly in the Children’s Songbook, in which women composers are much better represented. Of hymns in the 1985 Hymnal composed by women, six of these come from the Children’s Songbook, though in different arrangements for the hymnal. Most of the women composers (14) were/are LDS church members."

A couple of days ago, I got an email from one of my irregular attendees, Peggy, to tell me that she had spoken to Janice KP and Janice would like to come to Hymn Sing, but Peggy could not bring her because she would be off traveling, which Peggy does a lot of (hence the irregular attendance). So Janet, who has been working with Janice on bringing her papers to BYU for the archives, called and offered to bring Janice tonight, which she did. This was good timing, because Janice is one of the women composers in the 1985 hymnal.

My star-struck student Goldie nabbed a picture of most of us--she and Rachel, another of the student workers, came for short bits of time when they could get away from the desk. Here are the rest of us:

There are 16 in the picture, though you can barely see the top of Connie's head. We were heavy on the ladies, but then it is Women's History Month. So our ladies were representing well. 

It was nice to have Janice there to tell about how her hymn came to be: she didn't even know a new hymnal was in the works, but Michael Moody (her friend and the chair of the hymn book committee--and he is also my friend these days, though I didn't know him then!) called her and assigned her a poem by Emily Woodmansee to set to music.  Janice wrote an article about that experience, which you can find here.

It was also nice to have Janice add some first hand knowledge about Sister Marianne Johnson Fisher who wrote text and music for "As I search the holy scriptures." That song is made new to me, knowing that Marianne was blind--hence, searching the scriptures, not reading them. Let me quote from the blurb I read: Searching = read, reread, ponder, meditate, search for related passages, underline. But she would have to recopy because you can’t underline Braille. (Braille scriptures are 32 large volumes.) “Those of us who are blind cannot always have our scriptures literally at our fingertips.” --and then my brother quipped that actually, they are the only people who actually CAN have the scriptures literally at their fingertips! They just can't carry them around with them due to their enormous size!

Sara told about her ancestor Ruth May Fox--a lyricist for several hymns, but not a composer, so we didn't sing her works tonight. This information about Sister Fox was especially interesting to Janet, Connie and I, since we invested about two years of our lives, a conference presentation, and an article that is currently out for review before publication, to the Songs and Flowers of the Wasatch, to which Ruth May Fox was a contributor--as was Emily Woodmansee.

At the end, Jessica, the secretary of Global Women's Studies, had brought a button making machine, and we made Rebecca Clarke buttons (famous for her viola concerto) but she said to come to her office, and we can make "I sang 'As Sisters In Zion' with Janice Kapp Perry" buttons. So that will be fun. 

Here is my Rebecca Clarke button. Josie has one too, but hers is purple where mine is pink.

It was actually a very awesome Hymn Sing. There was a lovely spirit of camaraderie and peace in the room. Nights like tonight make Hymn Sing so worth it! Glad I could share the experience with my daughter, my brother, and my sister-in-law.