Kaʻahumanu

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. However, this particular hīmeni (hymn) is an exception. It bears no European-American hymn tune name, suggesting the composition originated in Hawaiʻi. It is also worth noting that the structural makeup of this three-part hymn is unique, with neither the soprano nor tenor line clearly standing out as the melody. Additionally, the striking minor key appears in no other source of hīmeni; its use here emphasizes the decidedly funereal text.