Music from Conference

One of my favorite parts of General Conference is being able to hear the MoTab (Mormon Tabernacle Choir) sing. Every year they have new and different arrangements of great hymns, especially since Mac Wilberg joined as Associate Director. In the past I've toyed with the idea of downloading the MP3s of the entire conference sessions and breaking out the songs into individual tracks. Thay way I could listen to them in my iTunes and on my iPod. For whatever reason I've never gotten around to it.

This year, however, at the end of the Saturday morning session, the Choir sang an amazing arrangement of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". "Come Thou Fount" was in the old blue hymnal but, for whatever reason, they took it out when they published the new green hymnal. I first discovered the song when Cherie was serving as a missionary and sang it with her companion after we had them over for dinner. Set to an American folk tune, the hymn's text evokes the struggle to bind ones heart to God.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount-I’m fixed upon it-mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, wand’ring from the fold of god;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wand’ring heart to Thee;
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above.

Written by Robert Robinson (1735-1790), the hymn is thought to be an autobiographical sketch. An wholly unverifiable and most likely apocryphal story states:

One day, in his later years, as [Robinson] was riding in a stagecoach a lady asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming. He responded, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."

Regardless of whether or not you believe the story, the performance was amazing and everyone at the Cousins Dinner remarked on how they enjoyed it. It was the motivation to finally download the session mp3s and get the song. In the two hours since I downloaded and split the song out I've listened to it 23 times. Two more times and it will break into my Top 25 Most Played playlist on iTunes.

Some good person posted the performance to YouTube. Enjoy.