Comments on: You Have Been Listening to the Sunday Evening Broadcast: “The Morning Breaks, the Shadows Flee”

By: Anne (U.K)

Anne (U.K) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:06:07 +0000

Bookslinger, I must visit your ward and show some solidarity with your loud and proud elderly single sister- although the description sounds frighteningly familiar!

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:13:04 +0000

Our ward occasionally sings it, but sort of limps along.

Anne, I understand about the carry-over from a previous faith. There’s an elderly single sister in one of our wards, an adult convert from another faith, who sings the “standard” tunes by memory, not by what’s in the LDS hymn book. And to compound it, she sings “loud and proud”.

She discombobulated me once, not due to different lyrics, but due to a different _arrangement_. I finally figured out afterwards that she was singing a popular Protestant (Baptist?) arrangement (of “Onward Christian Soliders” maybe?), not the one in our hymn book. And being the “loud and proud” singer, she couldn’t hear the piano nor what everyone else was trying to sing, but she was throwing off those around her.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:48:09 +0000

Two memories…

I’ve always loved The Morning Breaks, so several years ago when I was choosing the music for sacrament meeting, I chose it for an opening song. It was an absolute disaster! It takes either a large, fairly well trained congregation or a good choir to pull off, and while I don’t think that it reduced the ward to hysterics, I can sure see that happening!

Back when I was a child, one of the radio stations would play a Sunday morning church service from some random Christian denomination. We always thought it was so very funny that the broadcast began each week with The Morning Breaks, since it’s one of the most restorationist of all the restoration hymns.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:38:07 +0000

Not to my knowledge, kevinf. I don’t think they were recorded in the first place — I think the live performances just vanished into the ether.

By: kevinf

kevinf — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:03:55 +0000

I’m quite enjoying this series. It would be fun to hear them. You may have already covered this, but are there any recordings of these old broadcasts?

By: Anne (U.K)

Anne (U.K) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:03:12 +0000

I’ve only ever sung The Morning Breaks once, when our regular organist was away and the deputy decided to stretch us a bit. It was such a disaster that the entire congregation ended up in hysterics and we literally staggered to the end.

Quite a lot of the hymns were set to hymn tunes from the Anglican faith, LDS doctrine friendly lyrics added. This causes a problem for those of us who sang the ‘original’ hymns at school or in our previous religious lives; such was the inculcation, some of us (ahem) have been known to drift into the original lyrics during immense lapses in concentration!

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:07:30 +0000

I just checked the Mormon Migration Database to see if the two accounts match. They do, mostly! George Careless immigrated on the Hudson, which sailed from London on 3 June 1864 and landed in New York on 19 July. But the MMD says she had 1038 Mormon passengers, not “some 800.” Just to confuse matters, the first “account” of the voyage linked to at the site says it was 863, and I don’t have time or inclination to fix that 225 person discrepancy.

I’m not familiar with the Rossini tune that the Wesley hymn is set to. I had so hoped that it would be the Overture from “William Tell,” but, alas, it was not so.

Finally, I love the setting for that hymn that Bro. Careless wrote. But, please, could we have one that an average congregation could sing!! Maybe we could start with the Creation or the Duke Street hymntunes. Duke Street is our #90, From All that Dwell Below the Skies, which is nice, but hasn’t the majesty. Creation, in my humble opinion, is a winner! (If only we could get organs–and organists–like that in every congregation!)

I’ll let the real musicians tell me I’m all wet, but I think I can hear Bro. Careless’s inspiration in that Creation hymntune.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:36:21 +0000

I hadn’t thought about that, Joseph, but you’re right. They didn’t need a lifetime of absorbing and understanding the doctrines — they somehow were able to distill and interpret those new revelations into musical forms so good that we’re still relying on them.

By: Joseph Smidt

Joseph Smidt — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:57:24 +0000

What has always amazed me about the hymns is that so many were written by the early converts to the church. (When the church was very small and in its infancy.) The fact that so few people, new to the church and new to the doctrines, could write so many great hymns astounds me.