Hoʻokani Misionari

When the brig Thaddeus first arrived in Hawaiian waters in April 1820 carrying the Pioneer Company of the Sandwich Islands Mission, members of the company sang several psalms and hymns for the Hawaiian Royal party. Liholiho—King Kamehameha II (1797-1824)—was apparently pleased. By 1823 the Hawaiians had advanced well enough in hymn singing and in reading the Hawaiian language to warrant a printed hymnal. In that year, the mission press put out the first hymnbook in Hawaiian: Na Himeni Hawaii: He Me Ori Ia Jehova, Ke Akua Mau (“Hawaiian Hymns and Songs to Jehovah, the Eternal God”). The publication of Na Himeni Hawaii helped to widely promote the practice of hymn singing.

In 1834, hymn singing reached a new stage of sophistication when the great missionary Hiram Bingham (Binamu) published the first Hawaiian hymnal containing musical notation and even explicit instructions in both singing and reading music.

The hymn tunes used in the early Hawaiian hymnals were not composed in Hawaiʻi, but mostly of British and American origin. These were well-known and loved by the Calvinist missionaries, many of whom were well-educated in music and active in the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston.

Given the actively colonizing nature of the text, performers are encouraged to clearly relate to audiences the cultural and historical context of the piece. Programmatically, placing this piece in the context of other Hawaiian music—especially other hīmeni—is strongly encouraged and is preferable to a performance of this piece in isolation.