What hymns are sung around General Conference?

General Conference is next week and many wards will be singing hymns about it. Of course, no one has sacrament meeting on General Conference Sunday, but many wards “celebrate” it by singing hymns the Sunday before. Let’s take a look at what those hymns are and what patterns we can uncover.

General Conference hymns

There are two hymns that stand out as “General Conference hymns”. The first is We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19), which is 3.50 times more likely to be sung within a week of General Conference than all the other weeks of the year combined. The second is Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (21) and is 2.81 times as likely to be sung within a week of General Conference than any other week.

However, to be clear, while the hymns are somewhat common, not all wards sing them around General Conference. Generally, We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) is sung about every 37.5 weeks in a ward. But, only 28.7% of wards sing it within a week of General Conference. To put it another way, a ward might do so once every seven General Conferences. The other, Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (21), is less common generally and is sung once every 1.74 years, or rather, only 57% of wards will sing it in a given year. Within a week of General Conference, only 17.4% of wards will sing it, or a single ward might do it once every 5.5–6 years. So, singing General Conference hymns is not a terribly common thing.

We can take a closer look at the annual trends of these two General Conference hymns. General Conference takes place on the first Sunday of April and October. So, I’ve taken the dates of all the times those two hymns are sung and counted how many weeks they are until or since the nearest General Conference. I then tallied all the data, by hymn and by Conference (April vs. October), and produced the plot shown in Figure 1. General Conference itself is indicated by the dotted blue line. The shaded region is around the time that is seven days or less from General Conference.

Figure 1: Annual trends of General Conference hymns.

Here we can see that these two hymns are literally centered around General Conference. In general, We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) (top panels) is the more common hymn. Around the April General Conference, it’s most common the week before, and two weeks after. In the October General Conference, it’s more common he two weeks before and one week after. Since it’s a popular hymn and a stable in LDS hymnody, it’s sung throughout the year.

Brief soapbox/rant

I don’t think We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) should be thought of as a hymn about prophets. Yes, the first two lines are about prophets who guide us in these latter-days. But look at the rest of the lyrics. We thank Thee for the gospel and every blessing and we want to serve Thee. The second verse is about how the Lord will deliver us. The third verse is a bit of a grabbag of topics, but prophets are not mentioned. This is not a hymn about prophets; it’s a prayer of gratitude and praise.

However, it has become the prophets hymn. I mean, look how often it’s sung in General Conference! I think the reason for this is because the first line happens to mention prophets. Although, again, it’s within the context of a prayer of gratitude.

Recommendation for the next hymnal

We should give this a new title and/or a new first verse. A simple change like calling it, “We Thank Thee, O God”, I think would go a long way. (Thanks, Daniel for the recommendation!) I think it’s appropriately placed in the “restoration” section of the hymnal, but I think it should be moved further from “prophets” subsection.

Recommendation for music coordinators

Consider singing this hymn around Thanksgiving to highlight its message as a prayer of gratitude.

Meanwhile, Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (21) (bottom panels) is less common overall. Around the April General Conference, there’s a slight increase in how often it’s sung, but not as clear of a spike. And I’m not really sure why there is a secondary spike four weeks after. There is a clearer spike after the October General Conference, and is most common two weeks before and one week after.

In general, the April spikes are smaller than the October spikes. This is most likely because General Conference competes with Easter in April, so wards are more likely to sing Easter hymns instead. So, around the October General Conference is when you’re most likely to hear these hymns.

I can glean two interesting things from Figure 1. First, the General Conference “season” appears to start two weeks before and ends two weeks after the conference itself. I could imagine wards assigning speakers topics related to general conference (prophets, revelation, etc) leading up to it, and “what did you learn” or “what was your favorite talk” topics afterwards. Anything beyond that though, and there’s no evidence, at least in the hymns we sing, that General Conference is the focus of sacrament meeting.

The second interesting thing I see in Figure 1 is something we’ll see with other holidays too: music coordinators choose the less popular hymns further from the holiday itself and the more popular ones closer to the holiday. Looking at October, we see that the largest spike in the entire figure is for We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) the week before conference. Meanwhile, Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (21) actually has a drop during that same week. It seems like music coordinators don’t want to “waste” a “good” hymn on a less-than-ideal week.

When are these hymns sung in sacrament meeting?

Now that we’ve established which hymns are sung and how often they are, let’s zoom into the sacrament meetings themselves. Figure 2 shows that these two hymns are both the most common as opening hymns. Interestingly, We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) is also pretty common as a closing hymn, but Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (21) is not. I’m not sure why there’s a difference in when these two hymns are sung during sacrament, but it would be intriguing to figure out why.

Figure 2: When during sacrament meeting are General Conference hymns sung?

Stats for nerds :)

A \(\chi^2\) test suggests that the different patterns between these two is actually not statistically significant: \(\chi^2\) = 3.712, df = 2, p = 0.156.

Splitting this plot up by weeks leading up to and following General Conference, we see that the clearest trend overall is to sing We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) as the opening hymn the week before General Conference. Besides that, it’s hard to point out any clear patterns, probably because we’ve stretched the data too thinly. (You can submit your ward’s data here!)

Figure 3: An even deeper look into when these hymns are sung in sacrament meeting by week

Other prophet-related hymns

There are more than two prophet-related hymns in our hymnal, but it turns out that very few of them can be considered “General Conference hymns.” Not only are they rare generally, but also there’s no noticeable increase in frequency around General Conference. Figure 4 shows a plot of all the hymns listed in the Topics index under the heading “Prophets,” in order of how common they are generally.

Figure 4: Annual trends of other prophet-related hymns.

As you can see, there are no appreciable spikes around conference season. The most common, Praise to the Man (27) is most common earlier in the Spring, presumably around the time of the First Vision. In people’s defense, Praise to the Man (27) is about a particular prophet, and doesn’t seem like the most appropriate hymn for General Conference. Come, Sing to the Lord (10) is more about the Restoration. Most of the other hymns are just not very common any time of the year.

The surprise for me is how uncommon other hymns that are very clearly prophet-related, that would be no less appropriate than the two more common ones, and that are right near the other two hymns in the hymnal are. We Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (22) is only sung once every 4.79 years per ward, or rather only 20.9% of wards sing it in a given year. There is a slight increase in frequency around General Conference, but, going back to saving the “good” ones for the prime slot, it’s most common two weeks before the October conference and one week after. We Ever Pray for Thee (24) is once every 6.76 years per ward, or in only 14.8% of wards. And God Bless Our Prophet Dear (25) is once every 7.66 years per ward, or in only 13.1% of wards. Both of these have very small spikes around General Conference.

Recommendation to music coordinators

Use these prophet-related hymns more, especially if your ward has General Conference–related sacrament meetings around then. We have enough of them to sprinkle throughout the two weeks before and after conference.

Conclusion

Even though we have several prophet-related hymns, the two most common are We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet (19) and Come, Listen to a Prophet’s Voice (21). While they’re sung throughout the year, they’re most common within two weeks of General Conference, especially as opening hymns. April conferences are less likely to see prophet-related hymns than October conferences because of competition with Easter. Some other prophet-related hymns are very occasionally sung around the General Conference “season.”