With a fond nod to the past and encouragement to climb to greater heights of achievement in the future, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir put on its finest face for the hometown crowd Saturday night, looking back on a storied history that includes the longest-running radio broadcast in history.
Celebrating the 75th anniversary of "Music and the Spoken Word," the 360-voice choir joined the Orchestra at Temple Square in a two-hour salute to past choir members, conductors, organists and technicians who have joined to make the choir one of the world's premiere musical groups. An evening thunderstorm downtown wreaked some mild temporary havoc with the lighting in the Conference Center during part of the performance, but the musicians simply carried on.
CBS broadcasting veteran Charles Osgood narrated the evening's performance, complete with video clips of some of the world's best-known musicians, actors and conductors adding their praise for and awe of a choir first inspired by early LDS Church President Brigham Young's admonition: "We can't preach the gospel unless we have good music." Choir members were to "sing the gospel into the hearts of the people," he told the Latter-day Saints gathered for their first meeting in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on April 6, 1867.
That foundation of faith is what sets the choir apart, according to President Gordon B. Hinckley, 94-year-old president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an adviser to the choir for the past several decades. The capacity Conference Center crowd gave him its first and best standing ovation of the night as he approached the podium from the audience, waving his cane and smiling as many in the audience dabbed at tears.
He said the musical splendor the choir provides had its genesis with Emma Smith, wife of church founder Joseph Smith, who was asked by her husband to compile the church's first hymn book in 1830. That was followed by musical highlights in the history of the church, including the 1836 dedication of the Kirtland Temple and the singing of "The Spirit of God" and the anthem of the migration West, "Come, Come Ye Saints," he said.
President Hinckley recounted several highlights in the choir's history of performances, travel and events, in concert halls and before royalty in more than 60 nations. He noted the choir's first trip to a major performance venue was in 1893, when the group traveled to Chicago and sang at the World's Fair, where they were awarded second place and a $1,000 cash prize.
"That was because the judges, I think, couldn't bring themselves to award first place to the Mormons," he quipped to laughter and applause. "That was the last time the choir has been in second place. Wherever it has gone across this broad world, wherever its wonderful music has been heard, it has been acknowledged as No. 1, and it becomes better constantly."
The guiding principles that give the choir purpose today were first voiced by early church President Wilford Woodruff in 1895, he said. They are to be active "as missionaries called for their special work," noting that all "duties of a public nature should be secondary" to their choir commitments. " 'We desire to see the choir become the highest exponent of the divine art in all the land,' " he quoted President Woodruff as saying. " 'This is a noble work and a glorious cause worthy of your noblest efforts and all that requires. . . . Be faithful to this trust.' "
Thousands have done so, President Hinckley said, reminding current choir members that "you stand today on the foothills of a great upward climb. The summit rises before you. The past has been but a prologue to a greater future. . . . Sing to the glory of God," he said, and "spread the gospel of peace to a world weary with conflict."
Osgood said the choir has "become so much a part of America, like the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore," noting members sang for President Ronald Reagan's inauguration and generated marked emotion in him and his wife, Nancy. A video clip showed the first couple visibly moved as the group sang for them. The former president would later dub it "America's Choir," now the title of a new CD, book and documentary.
After the national shock and horror of 9/11, Osgood said, people everywhere searched for flags and patriotic music. He himself was searching for a way to find some meaning in the sorrow, he said, and he sat down to write music to be set to the Pledge of Allegiance.
He was touched to hear the choir first perform his arrangement in the Lincoln Center in New York City last year at the opening of its inaugural celebration. It did so again Saturday night.
To close the evening, hundreds of former choir members, conductors, technicians and organists came up from the audience to the stage to sing the choir's signature anthem and Grammy-winning rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Osgood closed the performance the same way each of the choir's three narrators has done for decades:
"May peace be with you, this day and always."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com