The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography

249 Pages·2015·2.845 MB·English

by  Michael Hicks

The MorMon
Tabernacle
choir
Music in aMerican life
A list of books in the series
appears at the end of this book.
The Mor Mon
Taber nacle
choir
a biography
Michael hicks
universiTy of illinois Press
urbana, chicago, and sPringfield
© 2015 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hicks, Michael, 1956–
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir:
a biography / Michael Hicks.
pages cm. — (Music in American life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-252-03908-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-252-09706-5 (ebook)
1. Mormon Tabernacle Choir—History.
I. Title.
ML28.S27M674 2015
782.506’0792258--dc23 2014033692
“Music is divine because in iTs essence iT is so huMan.”
—adolf WeissMann

conTenTs
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
1. Books and Angels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. Buildings and Professors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3. “My Tabernacle ‘Mormon’ Choir” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4. The Power of the Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5. From within the Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
6. A Cultural Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7. Soft Sell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
8. The Endless Postlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Illustrations follow page 84

inTroducTion
At BArAck OBAmA’s secOnd inauguration on 21 January 2013, Senator Charles
Schumer announced that “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was about to be
sung by the “award-winning Tabernacle Choir.” Then, with a playful smile, he
added, “the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.” The audience laughed, because who
could not be in on the joke? The Mormon Tabernacle Choir had been the only
“tabernacle choir” to sing at a presidential inauguration before—six times, to be
exact. Since Ronald Reagan dubbed them America’s Choir at his first inaugura-
tion, they had been known by that nickname. They had become the state choir
of the republic to which the battle hymn was devoted—and the group that won
a Grammy for its version of the “Battle Hymn” in 1959. As one writer put it, the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir was “the anointed voice of America’s civil religion.”1
But the pivot toward a new tabernacle choir seemed fitting, not only for a new
era, but for the specific circumstance: Obama had beaten Mitt Romney, a Mor-
mon, in the election.
The moniker America’s Choir seems both ironic and inevitable for the Mor-
mon Tabernacle Choir. In the mid-1840s, Mormons fled the boundaries of the
United States to set up their own kingdom, ostensibly the Kingdom of God,
which all generations of U.S. Protestants, at least, had themselves preached and
pursued. Mormons thought it not only unlikely but impossible that they could