"The Sweet By-and-By" is a Christian hymn with lyrics by S. Fillmore Bennett and music by

Joseph P. Webster Joseph Philbrick Webster, also known as J.P. Webster (February 18, 1819 – January 18, 1875), was an American songwriter and composer most notable for his musical compositions during the antebellum and American Civil War periods of United S ...

. It is recognizable by its chorus:

Background

Bennett described the composition of the hymn in his autobiography.

Performance history

The hymn, immensely popular in the nineteenth century, became a Gospel standard and has appeared in hymnals ever since. A crowd of admirers in New Zealand sang the hymn in 1885 at the railway station to the departing American temperance evangelists

Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt (September 22, 1830 – February 5, 1912) was an educator and successful orator who became the first round-the-world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Setting out on virtually non-stop wor ...

of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and Blue Ribbon Army representative R.T. Booth. In the New Orleans jazz tradition, the song is a standard dirge played in so-called "

jazz funeral A jazz funeral is a funeral procession accompanied by a brass band, in the tradition of New Orleans, Louisiana. History The term "jazz funeral" was long in use by observers from elsewhere, but was generally disdained as inappropriate by most New ...

s". The American composer

Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...

quoted the hymn in several works, most notably in the finale of his ''

Orchestral Set No. 2 Orchestral Set No. 2 is the title of a three-movement work by the American composer Charles Ives. A typical performance lasts around seventeen minutes. Composed between 1915 and 1919, it represents musical reminiscences of the composer. Like its ...

'', written between 1915 and 1919. Translations of the text exist in a number of world languages. It continues to be regularly performed. Noteworthy recordings over the years have been made by Elvis Presley,

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

, Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn and Kenny Rogers. The hymn is also heard in films, including '' The 39 Steps'' (1935), ''

Sergeant York Alvin Cullum York (December 13, 1887 – September 2, 1964), also known as Sergeant York, was one of the most decorated United States Army soldiers of World War I. He received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine ...

'' (1941), ''

Benny and Joon ''Benny & Joon'' is a 1993 American romantic comedy-drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about how two eccentric individuals, Sam ( Johnny Depp) and Juniper "Joon" (Mary Stuart Masterson), find each other and fall in love. Aidan Quinn also s ...

'', ''

A Prairie Home Companion ''A Prairie Home Companion'' is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed ''Live from He ...

'', '' Supervixens'', '' Django Unchained'' (2012) and Suburbicon (2017).

"Placentero" text

The 1907 Spanish-language hymnal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) contained a similar song, "Hay un Mundo Feliz Más Allá", and set to the same tune modified by adding to all parts the notes of the traditional first response in the call-and-response division of the refrain. This hymn was copied with permission from the American Tract Society's ''Himnos evangélicos''. During the era of the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...

, Andrés C. Gonzalez, an early LDS Church missionary in Mexico, sang "Hay un mundo feliz más allá" in public and was arrested for "stealing" the Protestants' song. While incarcerated, he rewrote the lyrics, which appeased the police. This revised version appears in place of the original in every iteration of the church's hymnal from 1912 on. It was titled "Despedida" until the 1992 version of the hymnal, when it changed to match the first line: "Placentero nos es trabajar".

Parodies and satire

Beadle's half-dime singer's library ; no

During the American Civil War, veterans sang a song devoted to "The Army Bean" which used a tune derivative of "The Sweet By-and-By".

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

made fun of the song's ubiquitous popularity, along with the demographic groups in which it became popular. The melody is mentioned in ''The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton'' (1878) and ''The invalid's Story'' (1882); in both stories the melody is sung out of tune. Also in chapter 17 ("A Banquet") of his 1889 satirical novel '' A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court''. The protagonist, Hank Morgan, a visitor from the future, attends a lavish court dinner given by Morgan Le Fay, King Arthur's sister, during which guests are regaled with music:

In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner.

The hymn was parodied by Joe Hill in 1911 as ''

The Preacher and the Slave "The Preacher and the Slave" is a song written by Joe Hill in 1911. It was written as a parody of the hymn "In the Sweet By-and-By". Copying or using the musical style of the hymn was also a way to capture the emotional resonance of that style o ...

'', in which the phrase " pie in the sky" was coined as a satirical comment on the Christian conception of heavenly reward. The parody ''In This Wheat By and By'', written from the perspective of

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

s, was published in ''Beadle's Half-Dime Singer's Library'' in 1878. These singing grasshoppers became a common motif in advertising at the time.See e.g. here and here

References

Bibliography

*Bennett, S. Fillmore (w.); J.P. Webster (m.). "The Sweet By And By". Chicago: Lyon & Healy (1868). *Sankey, Ira D. ''My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns and of Sacred Songs and Solos''. Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times Company (1906).

External links

"In The Sweet By And By"
Artisan Band (2006-08-13: Artisan iMix 2.0 Bluegrass Wee
(CC2.5)
mdas
''Internet Archive''

at the Cyber Hymnal

at steamboat-electric
In the Sweet By and By - Free Piano MP3
at HymnPod {{DEFAULTSORT:In The Sweet By-And-By 1868 songs Glen Campbell songs American Christian hymns Songs written by Joseph Philbrick Webster 19th-century hymns