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I like introducing this hymn as: "The hymn you didn't know you knew" since many are familiar with the tune “O Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.”

In Stories of Our Mormon Hymns (1975), Joseph Spencer Cornwall states: This hymn was evidently written to stir the Saints against the intrusion of Johnston’s Army in 1856, which came to put down the purported rebellion of the Pioneer settlers in the “Territory of Utah.”

This arrangement uses the lyrics printed in Hymns (1985). The dotted eighth-sixteenth-quarter note rhythm in the introduction and in other parts of the accompaniment is meant to reference trumpets variously signaling an alert for readiness, encouragement, or (in verse 3) the arrival of reinforcements.

01/11/2024: I updated measures 71 and 72 to harmonically transition from the future resplendence of Zion, back to the work of creating and building Zion in the present day. I also added an optional G5 in the sopranos at measure 82, because it just seemed to want one.

07/02/2023: I made updates to measures 13, 14, 16, 56, 57, and 69 because I wasn't satisfied with the previous harmonies. I also swapped the sopranos and tenors with the altos and basses at the pickup to measure 66 thru measure 67.

Up, Awake, Ye Defenders Of Zion by Jason Hunsaker