Regina Fryxell

Regina Fryxell, born Regina Holmén (November 24, 1899 – September, 1993) was a popular and influential American composer of Lutheran hymns and was responsible for the Setting Two of the Service Book and Hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, on which she worked between 1948 and 1958. It was called the "Continental Setting" because it reflected the Lutheran liturgy from Northern Europe, including Sweden. Fryxell also wrote the settings of the Bach Sanctus in First Setting and the Danish Amen in Setting 2. She was also commissioned to work between 1974 and 1977 on the updated Setting Three of the successor publication, the Lutheran Book of Worship; the commissioning Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship (ILCW) body however failed to honor the terms of the commission.

Her work was distinguished by her research into Scandinavian and German musical sources (particularly J. S. Bach) for Lutheran hymnody and liturgy, and the success with which she incorporated these sources into a form suitable for the use of modern American congregations.

Mrs. Fryxell was the daughter of the Swedish Lutheran pastor, Johannes Algott Holmén (1859–1948) and his second wife, Amelia. She obtained two degrees simultaneously in 1922 at Augustana College, in Rock Island, Illinois, in music and English, and studied organ at Juilliard.

Besides her composition work, she was a teacher at Augustana College, where she taught music, French and English. She was the wife of the geologist Fritiof Fryxell (1900–1986) who also taught at Augustana, and the mother of the geologist Roald H. Fryxell. The Fryxells had three sons, two of which died at young ages. It has been noted by many musicians that this loss reflected in Regina Fryxell's music which expressed joy, and a voice of the human need.