- Michael Rudy Scherzinger on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Congratulations to you” May 21, 20:27
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Thanks for sharing this thoughtful and charitable assessment of an arduous process. I had no idea of its complexity, and so your insights are most welcome. I like your hymn lyrics, and I hope you find another venue through which to share them.” May 21, 17:24
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “I submitted a hymn to the Church Music Festival a few years ago, and it ended up being selected. It is now available on the Church website, and my bishop talked about printing it out and including it with the other new hymns. I think it would be great for stakes to do that for other hymns online, especially if a member of the stake wrote it.” May 21, 14:59
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Since the authors whose submissions weren’t selected own all rights, there are still things they can do with their songs. They can perform the song at church as a special musical number or with a ward or stake choir, submit it to publishers of church music, self-publish it, share it online, or record it and share the performance on YouTube or streaming sites. Plus the church music submission contest is still open every year. As for the digital collections, I suspect another likely use case will be holiday songs that don’t make it into the general hymnbook. For the English or U.S. digital supplement, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the pioneer songs end up there.” May 21, 14:41
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Dirk, I think you’re spot on. So far, the committee has used language that leaves either option open to them – the hymns they’ve released may or may not end up in the physical hymnbook, while any that are not chosen out of them will be part of the digital hymnal.” May 21, 11:14
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “DaveW, I think it will be more than 100 that we lose. The 375 includes selections from the children’s songbook (currently 268 songs), hymns (currently 341 songs), and newly added songs (72 to 100). That means we’ll be losing over 300 songs from the combined set in the current hymnal and children’s songbook, about half of what’s in them on average.” May 21, 11:11
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “Are all of the songs being released digitally actually going to appear in the new hymnal? Releasing them in batches of a dozen or so every few months feels more like focus-grouping them to see which ones get more use — and comments — than an actual preview of the new hymnal. Maybe some of them (most of them?) won’t make the printed volume after all but will be part of the digital supplement(s) that everyone will have access to.” May 21, 11:09
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “The statement that the new book will have about 50 of the submitted hymns is interesting, because by my count, 42 of the 72 hymns that have already been released are “new”. With two more batches of hymns still to be released before the full hymnal comes out (I’ve heard from a source that would be in a position to know) I would expect to pass 50 “new” hymns before the full book is even published. The difference may be from the categorization. I’m counting anything within the last 25 years or so as “new”. I know someone who wrote one of the new hymns, but it was submitted to the Church 15 or 20 years ago, prior to this project. Perhaps the church isn’t including it as one of the 17,000 submitted. Having a book with 375 hymns and then “more” hymns available digitally is interesting. Will anyone really use the digital hymns? Or will this just be patriotic songs or other niche use cases? (I can’t think of any other cases, but maybe someone else can.) I’m very curious to see just how many songs from the current hymnal we lose (100+?) and which ones they are.” May 21, 09:45
- on Hymns Officially Rejected: “I’m not a music person myself (although I was raised in a music family, so I’m kind of familiar with the culture), so I was surprised when it seemed like every other person in my LDS spaces had submitted a hymn. That was the point when I realized that the submitters had NYC publisher slush pile-level odds of success.” May 21, 09:18
