Evan Stephens — hymnwriter, longtime director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the one man most responsible for the fact that Mormons sing hymns in four-part harmony rather than in unison — has long been one of my most favorite figures from history. He’s had one decent biography written about him (Ray L. Bergman, The Children Sang: The Life and Music of Evan Stephens, 1992), although I’m still waiting for the definitive, scholarly biography. (Jeff, soon, right?)
Stephens could have gone just about anywhere and had a successful musical career. He was, for instance, a brilliant teacher who could take classes of 2,000 — that’s two thousand — small children and keep them engaged and focused on learning music, turning them into amazing choirs in a matter of weeks. Continue reading “The Mountains Shout”: Evan Stephens and the Recording of Mormon Hymns →
Some recent discussion of the Church in pre-World War II Germany suggests that posts about events in that time and place would be of interest … so of course in my skewed way of thinking, the first post concerns a city that isn’t even in Germany anymore.
The city of Wrocław (“Breslau” in German), now in Poland, is part of that historically disputed area that has at times belonged to Germany, Prussia, Poland, Austria, and Bohemia. In the period between the two world wars, it was part of Germany, and assigned to the Swiss-German Mission of the LDS Church. Its population at the time was slightly above a half-million people. And it had been a fruitful field for LDS missionary work – as early as 1910 we had a Breslau branch with 170 members, although in the same year the elders were banished from the country by German officials. Continue reading The Saints Gather in Breslau/Wrocław, 1924 →
Lottie Owens was born in 1877 in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah. Her mother’s family were early Church members in Nauvoo; her father had emigrated to Utah as a convert from Wales.
Among the Owens family’s closest friends during Lottie’s childhood was another Welshman, Evan Stephens, the gifted teacher and composer who would one day transform the Salt Lake Stake’s choir from a good local chorus into the world-class, award-winning Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Lottie learned to sing under the guidance of Evan Stephens and absorbed his techniques for teaching ordinary Saints to sing with extraordinary beauty. Continue reading Charlotte Owens Sackett: Teaching the Sisters to Sing →
Evan Stephens (1854-1930) was the musician who, more than any other, transformed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from an excellent stake choir to the world-famous professional musical voice of the Church. Our English hymnbook still carries 19 hymns written and/or composed by Stephens.
What follows is a selection from a talk Stephens gave in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, on 27 August 1916, during an evening in his honor upon his retirement as director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Continue reading We Sing Those Songs to Remind Us of What We Are →
Where our past is never very long ago