Does anyone sing the women’s and men’s arrangements?

At the back of the hymnal, there are 29 hymns that are designated as being for women or for men, either because of the text and/or because of the musical arrangement. This is a continuation from the previous hymnal, which contained many more arrangements, including choir pieces with special piano accompaniment. I don’t think these hymns are intended to be sung as congregational hymns in sacrament meeting and with a few exceptions, I don’t think they’re sung much at all. Let’s look a little closer at these arrangements.

Types of Women’s and Men’s arrangements

We can classify these hymns into a few different categories. First, we can group them based on the type of musical arrangement. Some of the hymns, like A Key Was Turned in Latter Days (310) or Come, All Ye Sons of God (322), look like most other hymns because they’re arranged in a normal SATB format with four voices throughout. Two of the women’s hymns, As Sisters in Zion (309) and We Meet Again As Sisters (311), look a little more like primary songs since the left hand is simplified, which makes sense because it would be somewhat strange to hear men singing either of those two. Similarly, the men’s hymn, The Priesthood of Our Lord (320) does not have full harmony lines written and appears that it is intended to be sung in unison. These two types of arrangements are both labeled “Women” or “Men” in the hymnal.

The other main type of musical arrangement is where it a special arrangement geared towards the voices of the gender they are for. For the women, this means it’s a SSA arrangement, with the alto on a separate staff as in Love At Home (318). The piano gets its own lines, meaning the hymn has a total of four staves, which is potentially confusing for some people at first glance. The men get TTBB arrangements, as in Oh Say, What Is Truth? (331). These are written with a tenor clef centered around C, which is essentially a treble clef but down an octave, which is intimidating at first glance and sometimes tricky to play on the piano. We could even further subdivide the men’s arrangements based on which tenor part has the melody. In most of these arrangements, the highest part has the melody, as in Come, Come Ye Saints (326). For three of them though, the highest singer gets a harmony line and the melody is below that, as in Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (335). The women’s hymn The Lord is My Shepherd (316) and the men’s hymn School Thy Feelings (336) does a mix of these two, and the melody switches from one part to another. All of these special arrangements are labeled “Women’s Choir” or “Men’s Choir”.

The other way of classifying these 29 hymns is whether the hymn appears elsewhere in the hymnal or not. This classification is pretty closely correlated with the musical arrangement as well. For example, among the 10 women’s hymns, three are unique to women and don’t appear anywhere else in the hymnal; these three are also the ones arranged in a SATB-like format. The other seven women’s hymns are special arrangements of hymns that occur earlier in the hymnal in a SATB format.

For the men’s hymns, the correlation is not quite so tight. Of the six men’s hymns that are not full TTBB arrangements, four do not occur elsewhere in the hymnal. The last is Rise Up, O Men of God (324), which has a unique melody but the same lyrics as the TTBB arrangement, Rise Up, O Men of God (323), on the previous page. Of the 14 Men’s Choir arrangements, five are unique and don’t occur elsewhere in the hymnal (like See, the Mighty Angel Flying (330)), while the rest are arrangements of existing hymns, like Come, Come Ye Saints (326), including some pretty infrequently sung hymns, like Thy Servants Are Prepared (261). Then of course, Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (336) has unique lyrics, but the music is the same as Should You Feel Inclined to Censure (325).

A summary of all these classifications can be found in Table 1 and Table 2.

Table 1: Women’s Hymns

#	Hymn Name	Arrangement type	Found elsewhere?	Sung in Sacrament?
309	As Sisters in Zion	Two-Part	Unique	yes
310	A Key Was Turned in Latter Days	Two-Part	Unique	no
311	We Meet Again As Sisters	Two-Part	Unique	no
312	We Ever Pray for Thee	SSA	Hymn 23	no
313	God is Love	SSA	Hymn 87	no
314	How Gentle God’s Commands	SSA	Hymn 125	no
315	Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee	SSA	Hymn 141	no
316	The Lord is My Shepherd	SSA	Hymn 108	no
317	Sweet is the Work	SSA	Hymn 147	no
318	Love at Home	SSA	Hymn 294	yes

Table 2: Men’s Hymns. Asterisks indicate which tenor part has the melody.

#	Hymn name	Arrangement type	Found elsewhere?	Sung in Sacrament?
319	Ye Elders of Israel	Men	Unique	yes
320	The Priesthood of Our Lord	Men (unison)	Unique	yes
321	Ye Who Are Called to Labor	Men	Unique	no
322	Come, All Ye Sons of God	Men	Unique	yes
323	Rise Up, O Men of God	T*TBB	Hymn 324 (lyrics)	no
324	Rise Up, O Men of God	Men	Hymn 323 (lyrics)	yes
325	See the Mighty Priesthood Gathered	T*TBB	Unique	yes
326	Come, Come Ye Saints	T*TBB	Hymn 30	no
327	Go, Ye Messengers of Heaven	T*TBB	Unique	yes
328	An Angel from on High	T*TBB	Hymn 13	no
329	Thy Servants are Prepared	TT*BB	Hymn 261	no
330	See, the Mighty Angel Flying	T*TBB	Unique	no
331	Oh Say, What Is Truth?	T*TBB	Hymn 272	no
332	Come, O Thou King of Kings	T*TBB	Hymn 59	no
333	High on the Mountain Top	T*TBB	Hymn 5	no
334	I Need Thee Every Hour	TT*BB	Hymn 98	no
335	Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy	TT*BB	Hymn 235 (music)	yes
336	School Thy Feelings	T*T*BB	Unique	yes
337	O Home Beloved	T*TBB	Unique	no

Let’s now turn to the actual question of which of these are actually sung in sacrament meeting.

Women’s arrangements

Just two of the women’s hymns were ever sung in sacrament meeting in my sample. As Sisters in Zion (309) was sung eight times, which is actually more often than almost 100 other hymns. So, still quite unusual—about once every 14 years on average—but more common than many other hymns (see Figure 1). The other women’s hymn that was sung in sacrament meeting was Love at Home (318). This though was sung just one time in all my data. I don’t know the circumstances surrounding it, but I can’t help but wonder if it was a mistake and the music coordinator intended to just do Hymn 294.

Hymn 318 was actually sung in the ward next door to me, but before I moved in. I suppose I could ask!

There’s really not much more to say about the women’s arrangements! They’re hardly ever sung!

Figure 1: Women’s and men’s arrangements

Men’s arrangements

The men’s hymns appear to have a bit more currency in sacrament meetings than the women’s hymns (see Figure 1). Seven of these 19 hymns were sung in at least one of the sacrament meetings in my sample. The most common was Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (335), which was sung, on average, once every six years, or about as often as something like That Easter Morn (198). Even though it is somewhat familiar to many Latter-day Saints, it would probably be somewhat confusing for some people to sing it in sacrament meeting because it is arranged such that what appears to be the “soprano” part is actually a harmony line. Next was Ye Elders of Israel (319), which was sung 10 times in my sample. The others were only sung once or twice. Musically, the hymns Come, All Ye Sons of God (322) and Rise Up, O Men of God (324) are like Ye Elders of Israel (319) and would be less awkward to sing in church because their arrangements are perfectly fine as SATB and wouldn’t throw off the organist or the congregants. But, it would be very strange to sing See the Mighty Priesthood Gathered (325) and Go, Ye Messengers of Heaven (327) because either the melody is in the “alto” line, like Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (335), or the melody is too high for a typical member to sing since it is arranged for a high tenor.

My recommendations for the next hymnal

To summarize, very few of the women’s and men’s arrangements are sung in sacrament meeting, and those that are are rarely done so. Based on this data, I believe these hymns should probably just be removed from the hymnal. There is little reason to print tens of thousands of these 29 hymns that hardly anyone uses. As mentioned above, the previous version of the hymnal had more arrangements—some of which were full-on choir pieces—and they were removed in this 1985 edition. It makes sense to continue that trend. We don’t need to remove them completely though—I think they should be part of an online-only supplement that would be accessible through the church’s apps and website.

It may be the case that these hymns were kept in the hymnal with the intention of them being sung in Relief Society and Elders Quorum meetings. But now that we do not begin those meetings with hymns anymore, there is little reason to keep them. Maybe there is value in singing one of these hymns in some stake priesthood meeting or a women’s session of General Conference, and if the hymnal is treated as “canon” for what can or cannot be sung in church meetings, then it might be worth it to keep some in there simply to hold their place as canon. In my opinion though, an online supplement can serve that purpose.

Some of these hymns can and probably should be repurposed and brought into the main collection of hymns. For example, Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (335) appears to be the most common of these 29 hymns and it would be a shame to lose it. But, there is no reason to keep it as a men’s-only arrangement: simply rearrange it as an SATB piece and I suspect it could become a more popular one.