Lowell M. Durham

Lowell M. Durham Sr. enjoyed a 40-year career as music professor and Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. He was also the Utah Symphony program annotator, KSL music director, and the Salt Lake Tribune music critic. He was elected president of the National Music Critics Association in 1962.

He is the composer of hymns “With All the Power of Heart and Tongue” (#79) and “As the Shadows Fall” (#168), which he wrote with his son ‘Lowell M. Durham Jr.. Both hymns appear in the 1985 Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His music compositions and arrangements have been performed by the Tabernacle Choir, the Utah Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

He was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a full-time mission to England. Later he served on the Sunday School general board.

He earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the University of Utah. He later completed his PhD in music at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Durham was born on March 4, 1917, in Boston, Massachusetts. He passed away on November 10, 1992. He and his wife, Betty, had one daughter and two sons.