I Will Trust In The Lord: A Song History
"I Will Trust in the Lord" is an African American spiritual, and the hymnal editors indexed by Hymnary.org credit it to tradition rather than to any named author.[1] The earliest printings in that index are in two songbooks, Glorious Gospel Hymns (1931) and Spiritual Songs and Hymns (1935), each with a setting arranged by Haldor Lillenas.[2][3] Lillenas was a Norwegian-born Nazarene minister and songbook compiler who started his own music publishing company in 1924.[4]
Claude Mellan, Seated Woman, Arms Crossed in Prayer, engraving. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
From the 1980s onward the spiritual turned up again and again in denominational and African American hymnals, among them Songs of Zion (1981), the African American Heritage Hymnal (2001) and a Korean-English Presbyterian hymnal published in 2001.[1] Some of these hymnals print newer arrangements: The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) uses an adaptation and arrangement by William Farley Smith, and Lift Up Your Hearts uses one by Jeffrey Radford and Nolan Williams, Jr.[5][6]
Larry Conger includes it, in DAD tuning, in American Spirituals Arranged For The Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of spirituals that its listing describes as fairly easy to play, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "I Will Trust in the Lord" (text).
- Hymnary.org: "Glorious Gospel Hymns, #560: I Will Trust in the Lord".
- Hymnary.org: "Spiritual Songs and Hymns, #481: I Will Trust in the Lord".
- Hymnary.org: "Haldor Lillenas".
- Hymnary.org: "The United Methodist Hymnal, #464: I Will Trust in the Lord".
- Lift Up Your Hearts: "I Will Trust in the Lord".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Arranged For The Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Claude Mellan, Seated Woman, Arms Crossed in Prayer, engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.