In the Sweet By and By

Background

Bennett described the composition of the hymn in his autobiography.

Mr. Webster, like many musicians, was of an exceedingly nervous and sensitive nature, and subject to periods of depression, in which he looked upon the dark side of all things in life. I had learned his peculiarities so well that on meeting him I could tell at a glance if he was melancholy, and had found that I could rouse him up by giving him a new song to work on.

Performance history

The hymn, immensely popular in the nineteenth century, became a Gospel standard and has appeared in hymnals ever since. In the New Orleans jazz tradition 'Sweet By-and-By' is a standard dirge played in so-called "jazz funerals". The American composer Charles Ives quoted the hymn in several works, most notably in the finale of his Orchestral Set No. 2, written between 1915 and 1919. Translations of the text exist in a number of world languages.

'Sweet By-and-By' continues to be regularly performed. Noteworthy recordings over the years have been made by Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn.

The hymn is also heard in films, including Sergeant York (1941), Benny and Joon and Django Unchained (2012).

"Placentero" text

The 1907 Spanish Latter-day Saint hymnal contained a similar song, titled "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, Andrés C. Gonzalez, an early LDS 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 Spanish LDS hymnal from 1912 on. It was titled "Despedida" until the 1992 hymnal, which changed the title to match the first line of the song, "Placentero nos es trabajar".

Parodies and satire

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 made fun of the song's ubiquitous popularity, along with the demographic groups in which it became popular, 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", in which the phrase "pie in the sky" was coined as a satirical comment on the Christian conception of heavenly reward.