Placentero nos es trabajar

“Placentero nos es trabajar” (also “Despedida” or “It is pleasant to work with the Lord”) is a popular Latter-day Saint hymn written by Mormon missionary Andrés C. González during the Mexican Revolution.

Early LDS Spanish Hymnals

The earliest Spanish hymnals used in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were produced by the Mexico Mission. The three major editions of the Spanish hymnal were published between 1907 and 1927 and were collections of texts, primarily translations from the English hymnals or Protestant hymnbooks. There were several texts unique to these hymnals, however, that were written in Spanish by missionaries, Anglo-American colonists in Mexico, and native Mexican Latter-day Saints. The 1912 edition, which included 23 hymns written in Spanish by Latter-day Saints.[1]

The 1992 Spanish translation of the current English hymnbook has retained only three out of the twenty-three original Spanish texts published in the 1912 Spanish hymnal: “¿Por qué somos?” by Edmund W. Richardson, “Despedida” or “Placentero nos es trabajar” by Andrés C. González, and “La Voz, ya, del eterno” or “¡La Proclamación!” by José V. Estrada G

Writing the hymn

The 1907 Spanish-language hymnal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) contained a similar song to In the Sweet By-and-By", and was 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.[2][3]

During the era of the Mexican Revolution, 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.[4] While incarcerated, he rewrote the lyrics, which appeased the police.[4] This revised version appears in place of the original in every iteration of the church's hymnal from 1912 on.[5][6] It was titled "Despedida" until the 1992 version of the hymnal, when it changed to match the first line: "placentero nos es trabajar".[5][7]

Current use

The results of an extensive survey performed in 2017 by Samuel Bradshaw at SingPraises.net indicated that “How Pleasing It Is to Work” was the hymn to be sung most often in sacrament meetings that were written by a Latter-day Saint in a language other than English and not included in the English hymnal.[8] The hymn has also been included in other Latter-day Saint hymnbooks, such as the 2012 Qʼeqchiʼ (Mayan) hymnal as "Sa naqil lix yalbʼal li qaqʼe".

Lyrics

See also

References
  1. John-Charles Duffy and Hugo Olaiz, “Correlated Praise: The Development of the Spanish Hymnal,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 35, 2:89-113.
  2. "Hay un Mundo Feliz Más Allá". Himnario Mormón. Mexico: Talleres Tipograficos de Müller Hnos. 1907. p. 63. Note that page 2 mistakenly attributes the song to the Himnario evangélico, which did not in fact contain any rendition of "The Sweet By-and-By".
  3. "Hay un mundo feliz más allá". Himnos evangélicos. New York: American Tract Society. 1895. p. 140.
  4. Fallick, Don (February 2009). "Placentero nos es trabajar". Gospel-friendly Guitar Tabs. Blogger.
  5. Duffy, John-Charles; Olaiz, Hugo (2002). "Correlated Praise: The Development of the Spanish Hymnal" (PDF). Dialogue. 35 (2): 90–92.
  6. Gonzalez, Andrés C (1996). Placentero nos es trabajar. p. 88. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  7. "Títulos y primeras frases". Himnos. Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1996. Este es un índice de los títulos actuales de los himnos y de la primera frase de cada uno de ellos, en el caso de que ésta sea muy diferente del título, así como de los títulos que llevaban en el himnario Himnos de Sión. Todas las partidas que no sean el título actual de un himno aparecen en letras itálicas.
  8. https://singpraises.net/statistics/sacrament-meeting, accessed 25 March 2019.
  9. Himnos de Sión (Independence, MO: LDS Church, 1912)
  10. Translation by Chad Nielsen for use on Wikipedia
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