Music of Christmas 4

When John Menzies Macfarlane, a Scottish convert to Mormonism, needed a special song for Christmas 1869 for the choir that he conducted in St. George, Utah, he wrote one.  (St. George had only been founded in 1861, and it was still a very small and rough little settlement struggling to survive in an arid desert climate; its tabernacle and temple were still several years in the future.)

Here is the song that he wrote, in a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-12-0031-far-far-away-on-judeas-plains?lang=eng

“Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains” was first published in Salt Lake City’s Juvenile Instructor twenty years later, in 1889.  Since then, it has become a popular Christmas carol well beyond the confines of the Latter-day Saint community — one of the relatively few Mormon hymns to travel across denominational lines.

Brother Macfarlane got “Judea’s Plains” wrong, though.  There are none.  Judea is hill country.