In 1889, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published their first hymnbook with lyrics and music combined:

   The Psalmody was one of the final projects undertaken by John Taylor, third President of the Church. Under his direction, the Church Music Committee - George Careless, Ebenezer Beesley, Joseph J. Daynes, Evan Stephens, Thomas C. Griggs and others - composed over 350 entirely new hymn tunes to accompany the words-only Manchester Hymnal, which had been the Church's standard hymnbook for nearly 50 years. This is a phenomenal outpouring of music in the space of just two years, and the crowning achievement of President Taylor, the "living martyr" who had sung at Carthage Jail in 1844.

   Of the 353 hymns included in the 1889 Psalmody, ninety-eight still survive in some form in the current 1985 LDS hymnal. Of these, some sixty are still sung to the same tunes selected by the Church Music Committee for the Psalmody in 1889, including the following favorites:

The Morning Breaks
A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief
He Died! The Great Redeemer Died
Though Deep'ning Trials
Come, Listen to a Prophet's Voice
Prayer is the Soul's Sincere Desire
An Angel from on High

   The level of musicianship in many of these hymn tunes is extraordinary, and would test  the abilities of our ward and stake choirs today - and yet, these were intended to be congregational hymns. The brethren of the Church Music Committee must have assumed (perhaps rightly at that time), that every choir and congregation in the Church could sing just as well as the Tabernacle Choir. Many of these tunes are extremely complex, and in some cases the soprano lines ascend to a high g' in the scale. The Psalmody thus set the musical "bar" to a level never exceeded in the Church, before or since.