Hymns are an important part of the history and worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

The current hymnal used by the church is Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Use Many meetings in the LDS Church, including sacrament meeting, begin and close with a congregational hymn. Additionally, hymns sung by a choir or the congregation may be included as an intermediate number. Families in the church are encouraged to sing hymns at home during Family Home Evening and other family gatherings.

Early LDS Hymns In July 1830, Joseph Smith stated he received a revelation from God for his wife, Emma, to select hymns for the Church of Christ:

And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church. For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.Doctrine and Covenants 25:11-12. Compare "Revelation, July 1830–C [D&C 25]," p. 35, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed May 20, 2019

Initially, it seems that this revelation was interpreted to mean that Emma Smith was commanded to select which hymns were appropriate for use in the worship services of Latter Day Saints and not necessarily to compile a hymnbook.See Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 10 Due in part to this ambiguity in the revelation and in part to persecutions and the constant uprooting of the church in those early days, she was not able to compile a hymnbook for several years. However, in the meantime, other followers continued to write, arrange, and collect hymns.

The first Latter Day Saint hymns were published by W. W. Phelps in June 1832 in Independence, Missouri. These appeared as text only (no music) in The Evening and the Morning Star, the church's semimonthly newspaper. Many of these lyrics were written by Phelps, while others were borrowed from various Protestant sources and edited by Phelps. The first of these hymns published by Phelps was "What Fair One Is This".

On July 20, 1833, a mob destroyed the church's printing office in Independence, and the publication of the Star was moved to Kirtland, Ohio – the headquarters of the church at that time. In December, 1834, The Evening and the Morning Star was replaced by a new publication: The Messenger and Advocate. Phelps continued to write and collect hymn texts, with assistance from Frederick G. Williams and others.

1835 hymnal

On September 14, 1835, at a meeting of the high council and the First Presidency at Kirtland, Emma Smith was again counseled to begin compiling a hymnbook in a joint effort with W. W. Phelps:

It was further decided that Sister Emma Smith proceed to make a selection of Sacred Hymns, according to the revelation; and that President W.W. Phelps be appointed to revise and arrange them for printing.

It appears that final publication of the new hymnal may have been pushed back into early 1836. The book is small – just 3" by 4" in size. An indication of the poverty of the church members in Kirtland at that time is that the hymnal was published in "sexadecimal" form, the least expensive publishing format for books in those days: sixteen pages were printed on both sides of a single sheet, which was then folded, cut, and sewn into the leather binding. Thus, the entire hymnbook could be printed on just four large sheets of paper. The completed hymnal contained ninety hymns, but only the words were included. As a result, today it is difficult to determine which tunes were used with many of the hymn texts.

Many of the hymns which had previously been published in The Evening and the Morning Star were inserted into the 1835 hymnal as a block, almost exactly in the same order as their earlier publication. Eleven of the hymns were also published in The Messenger and Advocate between December 1834 and January 1836:

Although the book was printed in 1836, it is still referred to as the "1835 hymnal" because of the publication date on the title page. The Kirtland printing of the hymnbook was probably very small – perhaps 500 copies at most. Today, original copies of this hymnbook are extremely rare; less than a dozen are known to exist. On December 5, 2006, an original 1835 hymnal was sold at Christie's Auction House in New York City for $273,600.

Nauvoo hymnal

In Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1841, Emma Smith published an expanded version of the 1835 hymnal. The new hymnal contained 304 hymns (340 pages before the index), still in words-only format. Of these, 77 hymns had been included in the 1835 hymnbook. Many of the hymns included in the 1841 hymnal were more focused on grace, the blood of Christ, and the cross than other LDS hymn collections. Examples include "Amazing Grace", "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing", and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross". After the succession crisis in the early Latter Day Saint movement following Joseph Smith's death, this hymnal was largely ignored in favor of the Manchester hymnal by those church members who followed the Quorum of the Twelve and moved to the Salt Lake Valley. In the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, however, the opposite was true.Richard Clothier, 150 Years of Song: Hymnody in the Reorganization, 1860-2010 (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House), 8, 19

Editions of this hymnal are very rare – in 2007, Swann Galleries in New York auctioned one, along with a first edition of the Book of Mormon, for $180,000.

Manchester hymnal

In 1840, Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor published a words-only hymnal for the church in Manchester, England, entitled A Collection of Sacred Hymns for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Europe. This "Manchester Hymnal", or "Small Hymnal", as it came to be called, was by far the longest-lived of all LDS hymnals, with 25 editions published between 1840 and 1912. Over the years, publication of this hymnal moved from Manchester to Liverpool, and finally to Salt Lake City. As more hymns were added, the book grew from 323 pages in 1840 to 456 pages in the 1905 edition. However, it was still a words-only hymnal; the tunes were sung from memory.

Unofficial LDS hymnbooks with music Early hymnbooks published by the LDS Church were text-only, with the tunes selected from memory or from tune books. Two unofficial hymnbooks in the 1840s and 1850s began the process of including music in LDS hymnals.

In 1844, G. B. Gardner and Jesse C. Little published a small hymnal in Bellows Falls, Vermont. This unofficial hymnbook is unique in early LDS history, because it was the first Latter-day Saint hymnal to include music with the words. This hymnal includes tunes for 18 of the 90 hymns found in the 1835 hymnbook. In addition, another 17 hymns were printed without music. Hymn number one in this hymnal, "The Spirit of God", may be the very first LDS hymn ever published with musical notation.

The second LDS hymnbook with music was John Tullidge's Latter Day Saints' Psalmody, published in 1857. This collection included music for LDS hymns such as "O My Father", "Praise to the Man" and "An Angel from on High", complete with piano accompaniment. Tullidge felt that many of the pairings of tune with hymns used in LDS meetings were poorly made and that the "freshness and vigor" of their spirit demanded better music for use in "praise for full grateful hearts."Cited in Shane Chism, A Selection of Early Mormon Hymnbooks (Lulu.com, 2011), 233.

The Latter-day Saints' Psalmody

The first official LDS hymnbook to include music was The Latter-day Saints' Psalmody, published in 1889. At that time, many of the familiar LDS Church's hymns that are sung today were finally fixed in place – but not with the tunes that were sung back in 1835.

The Psalmody was a conscious effort by church leaders to develop a hymn style of their own. Budding composers in the church were encouraged to submit new tunes to fit the new and old lyrics. Many Latter-day Saint hymns that had been published in the previous decades in periodicals like the Utah Magazine, the Utah Musical Times, the Utah Musical Bouquet, and the Juvenile Instructor were included. Some tunes were also adopted from non-LDS sources, such as classical composers like Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Rossini. Most of the old tunes were cast aside without ever having been committed to print, and the memory of them was quickly lost.

The Psalmody was intended to be a supplement to the "Manchester Hymnal". Each hymn in the Psalmody was cross-referenced by page number to the "Manchester Hymnal" and only used a few verses of the full hymn text.

In many respects, the Latter-day Saints' Psalmody represented a high-water mark for complexity in LDS hymnody. By today's standards many of the hymns are quite challenging, even for choirs, let alone congregational singing. They were very high-pitched, sometimes ascending above the staff to a high g' or a' in the soprano parts. The tenor parts were written on a separate staff above the soprano and alto lines, making accompaniment difficult. Ninety-five of them are still in use in the 1985 LDS hymnal, including these standards:

"The Morning Breaks, the Shadows Flee" "High on the Mountain Top" "An Angel From on High" "Awake, Ye Saints of God, Awake" "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet" "Come, Listen to a Prophet's Voice"

About half of the new hymn tunes that were composed for the Psalmody were written by members of the Church Music Committee, which included Evan Stephens, George Careless, Ebenezer Beesley, Joseph J. Daynes, and Thomas C. Griggs. These men were accomplished musicians, composers, and Mormon Tabernacle Choir conductors. Many of their Psalmody hymn tunes have a pronounced "instrumental" feel, as if they were more suited for organ performance than choir or congregational singing.

1908 Songs of Zion

In 1908, nine LDS Church mission presidents collaborated to produce a more simple hymnal with music and text. At the time, there were several songbooks and hymnbooks in use in Utah, including the Latter-day Saints' Psalmody, the Manchester Hymnal, the Deseret Sunday School Union Songbooks, Primary hymnbooks for children, etc. The intent of the mission presidents was to provide unity, prevent confusion and reduce the cost of stocking multiple hymnbooks by compiling favorite songs and hymns in one book. It was published in Chicago by the Northern States Mission and contained 246 gospel hymns such as "Do What Is Right," and "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel." The 1918 edition contained 269 songs. It was the most popular and fastest selling LDS hymnbook up to that time. There were 12 printings between 1908 and 1925.

1909 Deseret Sunday School Songs

Before correlation, the church auxiliaries were free to publish their own curricula and hymnbooks. The Deseret Sunday School Union published a series of songbooks beginning in the late 1884. Many of the songs in these early Sunday School songbooks were intended for use with youth and followed the "gospel song" style of bouncy rhythms, repeated pitches, a verse-chorus pattern, melodramatic metaphor, and a tendency to focus on exhortation to the singers.see Hicks, Mormonism and Music, 124. These songbooks were extremely popular and introduced such favorites as "Oh, How Lovely Was the Morning" (now known as "Joseph Smith's First Prayer"), "Improve the Shining Moments", and "Choose the Right".