For
millennia
the biblical psalter has been the chief
liturgical book of God’s people of the old and new covenants.
The
Psalms
are unique in that they simultaneously reflect the full range of human
experience and reveal to us God’s word. In them we hear
expressions of
joy and lament, cries for revenge against enemies, confession of sin,
acknowledgement
of utter dependence on God, recitations of his mighty acts in history,
and finally songs of praise and adoration. With the rest of
the
Old
Testament, Christians share the biblical Psalter with the Jewish
people,
with whom it originates. Many of the Psalms are ascribed to
David
himself, and there is even a tradition making him the author of the
entirety
of the book. While there is no certainty to the ascriptions
traditionally
prefacing each psalm, it is likely that many of them do indeed
originate
with the revered founder of the Judaic dynasty. If the latest
of
the psalms were composed during the Persian and perhaps even into the
Hasmonean
eras, then the Psalter was compiled over the better part of a
millennium
of Jewish history before being finalized sometime during the second
temple
period. Translated into Greek as part of the Septuagint, the
Psalms
naturally found their way into early Christian usage as well.
The
New Testament
writers see in several of the Psalms,
for example Psalms 2, 8, 22, 41, 69, 110 and 118, a foretaste of the
coming
Messiah. The early church fathers added to this number, seeing Jesus
Christ,
not only in several other individual psalms, but in the whole of the
Psalter
itself. Thus the psalms of lament came to be seen as
describing,
not merely the miseries of the human authors, but the very sufferings
of
Christ. Further, the imprecatory psalms were no longer cries
for
vengeance by a hurting and oppressed people, but invocations of the
very
judgement of Christ against the enemies of his coming kingdom.1 While
there is nowadays a certain reluctance to see too many gratuitous
references to Christ in a prechristian liturgical collection,
nevertheless
insofar as the Psalms partake of the larger redemptive-historical
narrative
of Scripture, we are fully justified in seeing in Christ the ultimate
fulfilment
of the salvation spoken of in these poetic stanzas. Thus in
some
Christian communities the singing of a psalm is ended with a
trinitarian
doxology.
The
Psalms were,
of course, meant to be sung, as
they in fact were from ancient times by God’s
people. Exactly how
they were sung we can only speculate.2
Psalm 136 at least was
meant
to be sung antiphonally, perhaps between a cantor and the assembled
congregation. This is implied by the structure of Hebrew poetry, which
proceeds, not according to the strict rhyme and metre familiar to
especially protestant Christians, but by means of parallelism and
repeated stresses in the parallel lines. The
ancient
Hebrew psalmists delighted in repeating a thought twice, but in
different
words. And contrary to the strict metrical structure of modern
Christian
hymnody, that of the Hebrew
psalms is much closer to the “sprung rhythm” of our
children’s nursery rhymes
in that, while the basic
rhythm is repeated in successive lines
or groups of lines, the number of syllables varies from one line to the
next.3
A
recent attempt to recover
something
of this original poetic flavour can be seen in Gelineau psalmody,
invented
in the 1950s by the French priest, Fr. Joseph Gelineau.4
In
many Christian
traditions the singing of Psalms
has been eclipsed by hymns of more recent vintage. This is a phenomenon
common to Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy and the various forms of
protestantism. All the same, many of the church’s
most famous hymn-writers, such as
Martin
Luther and Isaac Watts, turned their efforts to the versification of
the
biblical Psalter. The former’s A
Mighty Fortress is a
christological
rendition of Psalm 46. The latter’s O
God, Our Help in Ages Past is
a
free paraphrase of Psalm 90. Yet many churches today go
through
an
entire Sunday worship service without singing even a single
psalm. Thankfully, this is being rectified in most traditions,
as psalmody is
increasingly reincorporated into the liturgies of Catholic, Lutheran,
Reformed,
Methodist and other churches. Many of these have opted for
metrical
versifications of the psalms. Moreover, there are still a few churches,
such as the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America and the Free
Reformed Churches, which, as a matter of principle, sing only the
Psalms in the liturgy.
The
Genevan Psalter
The
Genevan Psalter was a project that began in the late 1530s as part of
an effort to make available to the newly reformed congregations a way
to sing the biblical Psalms, initially in Strasbourg and later in
Geneva. How were they to be sung? Up to that point the western church
had chanted the psalms in Latin according to the method ascribed to
Pope Gregory I the Great (c. 540-604). The chanting of Psalms in course
over a specified period of time had developed in the monasteries under
the influence of the Rule of St. Benedict, shaping into what is known
as the Daily Office or Liturgy of the Hours. Rooted in ancient Jewish
usage (see, e.g., Psalm 119:164 and Daniel 6:10), the Liturgy of the
Hours consists of regular prayer offices said or sung throughout the
day at approximately three-hour intervals (cf. Acts 10:9). In the
Orthodox Church the Psalter is divided into twenty kathismata,
or sittings, during which the entire Psalter is sung in course.
The
Liturgy of the Hours survived the Reformation in some places, but not
everywhere. In England the Book of Common Prayer combined the two
offices of Matins and Lauds to make up Morning Prayer, and joined
together Vespers and Compline to form Evening Prayer, or Evensong. In
the Lutheran tradition, where there was an attempt to incorporate
monastic piety into the daily lives of ordinary Christians, the Liturgy
of the Hours continues to survive in some fashion.5
However,
it did not continue in those places influenced by such nonLutheran
reformers as Zwingli and Calvin. Nevertheless, the singing of the
psalms was retained, to be incorporated into the ordinary Lord's Day
worship service.
|
| Clément
Marot |
What
would eventually become the Genevan Psalter began in Strasbourg when Aulcuns pseaulmes et
cantiques mys en chant were
published in 1539 at Calvin's direction during his sojourn in that
city. This small collection contained 19 metrical psalms, 13 of which
were set to verse by the French court poet Clément Marot and
six others by Calvin himself, as well as three canticles from elsewhere
in scripture, viz., the Decalogue, the Song of Simeon (Nunc Dimittis)
and the Creed, thereby making a total of 22 texts used by the
French-speaking congregation there. These psalms were not sung as
plainchant; rather the texts were reworked into poetic form to be sung
in the language of the people set to fresh tunes composed explicitly
for this purpose by Matthias Greiter (c. 1495-1550) (Psalm 36/68),
Louis Bourgeois (c. 1510-1560) and a certain Maistre Pierre.6
In these early partial collections of psalms, including Aulcuns pseaulmes, La
forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques
(1542) and Cinquante
psaumes en françois
(1543), the number of psalms increased with each subsequent edition.
This meant that some psalms were versified before others. John Witvliet
takes note of the relative absence of the psalms of praise with which
we ourselves would likely begin if we were to undertake a similar
project. Instead the first psalms to be sung at Strasbourg included
those emphasizing confession and forgiveness, wisdom/law and protection
from foes.7
Witvliet concludes
that “Genevan
spirituality was formed primarily by psalms of penitence and
lament.”8
Moreover, as
it turns out, if the Liturgy
of the Hours proper was not exactly retained in its traditional form at
Geneva, Strasbourg and elsewhere, the discipline of congregational
psalm-singing was not altogether dissimilar to that practised in
Benedictine monasticism.9
The
Genevan Psalter would come to exert a considerable influence on the
liturgical life of Reformed churches elsewhere as well. A Reformed
minister in the Low Countries, Petrus Dathenus (Pieter Datheen,
1531-1588), in addition to translating the Heidelberg Catechism,
versified the psalms in the Dutch language only four years after their
publication in French. Thereafter his rhymed psalms became the dominant
liturgical psalter until a new, Enlightenment-influenced version was
introduced in 1773 by the States General of the United
Netherlands.10
This was
despite the fact that it was translated
directly from Marot's and Théodore de Bèze's
French text rather than from the Hebrew. To this day some 30 Reformed
congregations in the province of Zeeland hold fast to Dathenus'
version.11
Not
quite a dozen years after the publication of the Genevan Psalter, the
legal scholar Ambrosius Lobwasser (1515-1585), who had heard the psalms
sung by the Huguenots during his sojourn in the Berry region of France,
published a German translation primarily for private use directly from
the French text, something for which he was roundly criticized by his
fellow Lutherans. The Lobwasser Psalter was published in 1573 and would
eventually find its way into the public worship of the Reformed
Churches in, e.g., Zürich.12
The Lobwasser Psalter
would in turn serve as the model for Czech and Hungarian versifications
of the Genevan Psalms.
Jiří
Strejc (also known as Georg Vetter, 1536-1599) was born in the Moravian
village of Zábřeh and became a minister in the Unity of the
Brethren, also variously known as the Unitas Fratrum, the Bohemian
Brethren and Moravian Brethren, who were heirs of the pre-reformer Jan
Hus (c. 1369-1415). Strejc spent some time in the Prussian city of
Königsberg, where Lobwasser was teaching. Whether the two met
I have been unable to determine, but Strejc was sufficiently impressed
with the Lobwasser Psalter that he undertook to translate the German
text directly into the Czech language in 1587.
13
It was still
being used as recently as the turn of the last century.
The Calvinist Reformation spread also into Hungary, especially the
eastern parts of that country under Ottoman Turkish control and thus
exempt from the Habsburg enforced Counter-Reformation. Shortly after
the turn of the 17th century, the widely-travelled Reformed pastor
Albert Szenci Molnár published his own translation of the
Lobwasser Psalter to be sung to the Genevan tunes. Molnár's
psalms would come, along with Gáspár
Károly's 1590 translation of the Bible, to influence the
development of the Hungarian literary language.
| In the
Genevan Psalms I felt that I had discovered a huge and largely untapped
source
of great riches. |
In
his famous Stone Lectures delivered at Princeton Seminary in 1898, the
Dutch statesman and polymath Abraham Kuyper discusses the Genevan
Psalms in his lecture on “Calvinism and Art.” Here
he manages to pass on to his hearers two misconceptions about the
Psalter's tunes. First, he repeats the now-discredited view of Orentin
Douen that they were not original to the Psalter, but were taken from
existing songs already familiar to the people.14
Second, he
surprisingly avers that
It
was this same [Louis] Bourgeois who had the courage to adopt rhythm and
to
exchange the eight
Gregorian modes for the two of major and minor
from the popular music; to
sanctify its art in consecrated hymn,
and so
to put the impress of honor upon that musical arrangement of tunes,
from which all modern music had its rise [emphasis mine].15
The
first misconception has been cleared up since Kuyper's day, as Hendrik
Hasper recounts: “It is the great merit of Emmanuel Haein to
have consigned the views of Douen to the realm of fancy. . . .
”16 The
falsity of the
second misconception would not
have been obvious to Kuyper and his contemporaries, who knew the Psalm
tunes according to their 19th-century arrangements, which suppressed
their original modal flavour. In fact, the melodies of the Psalter were
indeed based on the gregorian modes, as reflected in 20th-century Dutch
Psalters, which indicate the modes (Jonisch,
Phrygisch, Dorisch,
&c.) above the tunes. Because the tunes were fresh compositions
and thus not familiar to the people, Calvin urged that they be taught
first to the children, who would then teach them to the rest of the
congregation.17
Perhaps
the most surprising development of all was the 17th-century translation
of several of the Genevan Psalms into Turkish, the language of a
predominantly muslim country. Wojciech Bobowski (1610-1675) was a
musically-gifted Polish-born Reformed Christian who had the misfortune
to be kidnapped as a young man by Tatars and sold as a slave to the
Ottoman Sultan. However, what began in slavery turned out, as with the
biblical Joseph, to be very nearly a smart career move. He became
translator, treasurer and court composer for the Sultan, converting (at
least nominally) to Islam and changing his name to Ali Ufki. Among his
many impressive achievements, he translated the Bible into Turkish and
versified the first 14 Psalms in that language, enabling them to be
sung to their proper Genevan melodies. This small collection was
published in 1665.18
Except
for a very few tunes, the Genevan melodies largely failed to take root
in England and Scotland, where psalm-singing took on a somewhat
different flavour. Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins published The
Whole Booke of Psalmes in 1562, the very year that saw the completion
of the Genevan Psalter. This metrical psalter would dominate the
English church until the end of the 17th century, when it was
supplanted by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady's so-called “New
Version” Psalter. It was bound into copies of the Geneva
Bible, along with Miles Coverdale's prose psalter from the Book of
Common Prayer. Tate and Brady’s Psalter was itself bound
together in a single volume with the Book of Common Prayer.19
With this collection began a tradition of metrical psalmody relying on
a very few metres, with one metre dominating, known variously as iambic
heptameter, ballad metre or common metre (CM), with a metrical
structure of 8.6.8.6. This pattern was carried into the Scottish
Psalters of 1635 and 1650, as well as into Tate and Brady in 1696. So
regular were the metres for these psalters that the 1929 edition of the
Scottish Psalter has split pages, enabling worshippers to mix and match
tunes and texts easily.20
By
contrast, one could hardly do this with the Genevan Psalms, which boast
a wide variety of metres, thereby making each tune very nearly unique.
In this respect, there is a close family connection between the Genevan
melodies and the 16th- and 17th-century German chorales, with the
former having some influence on the latter. As one example, the tune Mit Freuden Zart
(whose German text was written by the same Jiří Strejc whom
we met earlier) bears more than a passing resemblance to the Genevan
tune for Psalm 138, a relationship made more obvious in the
Dutch-language Liedboek voor de
Kerken.21
Furthermore, the tune to which the German Advent hymn, Tröstet,
tröstet meine Lieben
(Comfort,
Comfort Ye My People), is
sung to the proper melody for Psalm 42. It is by no means coincidental
that the one Genevan tune best known to English-speaking Christians is
in Long Metre (LM, 8.8.8.8), the second most frequent metre in the
English and Scottish psalters. This is the tune to Psalm 134,
renumbered as Psalm 100 (“OLD HUNDREDTH” in the
back of our hymnals) in the Scottish Psalter of 1650. Some Genevan
tunes do share the same metres, e.g., Psalms 12 and 110 (11.10.11.10),
and Psalms 100/131 and 134 (LM). Yet many more have unusual metres that
appear to have been created especially for certain texts. Such include
9.8.8.9.5 (Psalm 5), 10.11.11.10.4 (Psalms 14 and 53) and the quirky
9.8.9.8.6.6.5.6.6.5 (Psalms 33 and 67). Some have very long stanzas,
such as Psalm 19 (6.6.6.6.6.6.6.6.7.6.6.7), which would make them
difficult to replicate elsewhere.
There
are two exceptions to this tendency towards regular metres in
English-language psalters. First, Henry Ainsworth's Psalter was
published in Amsterdam in 1612 and was brought to America by the
Pilgrims in 1620. It contained at least 12 Genevan tunes, assigning
them to at least 62 psalms, but not necessarily to the ones with which
they were associated at Geneva.22
This collection did not long
endure. Just as the Pilgrim's settlement at Plymouth was overshadowed
by the Puritan colony at Massachusetts Bay, so also did the latter's
Bay Psalm Book of 1640, with its characteristically regular metres,
supplant the Ainsworth Psalter, with its continental roots and
irregular metres.23 Second,
a
translation of the complete
Genevan Psalter into English was published in 1632 under the lengthy
title, All
the French Psalm tunes with English Words BEING A COLLECTION OF PSALMS
Accorded to the verses and tunes generally used in the Reformed
Churches of France and Germany.24 The
verses therein are not especially poetic, and they ultimately
failed to catch on in the English-speaking world, having little if any
influence on subsequent collections. Here is the first stanza of Psalm
150, which appears to be translated directly from the original French
version:
Why
did the Genevan tunes have so little impact among English-speaking
churches? There are a number of factors to be considered. To begin
with, metrical psalmody itself requires paraphrasing a text so as to
fit a somewhat artificial metrical and rhyming scheme – a
scheme obviously foreign to the ancient Israelite authors of the
Psalms. Lobwasser, Dathenus, Strejc and Molnár translated
their own versified Psalms from French or German, and not from Hebrew.
The Bay Psalm Book was created at least in part because of the
Puritans' belief that Sternhold & Hopkins’ metrical
psalms were too paraphrastic and insufficiently close to the biblical
text. Yet, given the limitations of the metrical and rhyming schemes,
any attempt to remain faithful to the original will tend to yield verse
that violates the rules of English syntax and is difficult to
understand, much less to sing. This literary factor may account in
large measure for the decline in Psalm-singing in protestant churches
by the end of the 18th century.
Given
the parallelism of ancient Hebrew poetry, could it be that English
versifiers judged the even-numbered lines of Common Metre better suited
to convey this pattern than the sometimes odd-numbered lines of the
Genevan tunes? Or might it be that the feminine (i.e., unstressed)
endings of so many lines in the Genevan tunes were deemed less suited
to a language in which masculine (i.e., stressed) endings tend to
dominate? Whatever the truth of the matter, English-speaking Reformed
Christians became accustomed to singing Psalms in sometimes
monotonously regular metres – something their descendants
eventually abandoned in favour of noncanonical metrical hymns of better
literary quality. The appeal of Isaac Watts’ and Charles
Wesley's great hymns is felt even today. Small wonder they were
attractive to worshippers then.
To be
sure, the Genevan Psalms were eventually retranslated into English,
though their use was largely restricted to those denominations with
continental European roots. At the beginning of the 20th century the
Rev. George Ratcliffe Woodward published Songs of Syon,
subtitled, “A Collection of Psalms, Hymns, &
Spiritual Songs set, for the most part, to their ANCIENT PROPER
TUNES.”25 It
is an
exceedingly comprehensive
collection, containing plainsong melodies, metrical melodies of the
13th to 16th centuries, Lutheran chorales, “Old English and
Scotch psalm-tunes” and old French psalms and canticles.
Woodward himself put a few of the Genevan Psalms into English verse,
though not necessarily set to their proper melodies. His versification
of the first part of Psalm 150 follows:
Although
metrical psalmody once had a place within the liturgical life of the
Church of England, Ratcliffe’s efforts to revive especially
the Genevan collection fell short over the long term. Only a very few
Genevan tunes remain familiar to English-speaking protestants,
especially those for Psalms 42, 66/98/118 and 124, in addition to 134.
The
only denomination that continues to sing from the complete Genevan
Psalter in English is the Canadian Reformed Churches, a small group of
some 54 federated congregations originating in a 1944 schism within the
Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in
Nederland). The English versifications were largely penned by Americans
and Canadians of Dutch ancestry, such as Dewey Westra, William Helder,
William W. J. VanOene, and Wolter van der Kamp, in keeping with the
rhyme schemes of the original French texts.26 The
Christian
Reformed Church (CRC), which largely abandoned the Genevan Psalter when
it embraced English as its liturgical language, has included a number
of Genevan Psalms in successive editions of its Psalter Hymnal,
although it is unclear to me to what extent they are still sung in
worship. The 1987 edition brought back a number of Genevan tunes that
had been omitted in the 1934 and 1957 editions. Those that had been in
the previous editions and were sung isometrically were returned to
their original syncopated rhythms. A new Psalter Hymnal is now being
planned in collaboration with the Reformed Church in America (RCA),
whose members are even less familiar with the Genevan tunes. Increasing
use of the Genevan Psalms does not look especially promising in the CRC
and RCA. On the other hand, the Canadian Reformed Churches have just
published an Authorized Provisional Version of their 1984 Book of Praise,
in which the Genevan Psalms continue to claim pride of place.
Nevertheless,
despite the relative lack of familiarity with the Genevan Psalms among
most English-speaking Christians, they are holding their own elsewhere
in the world, as reflected in a number of recent recordings, some of
which come out of surprising places, such as Japan, not usually
associated with the Genevan tradition. A perusal of youtube videos, for
example, indicates that the Genevan Psalms, with
Molnár’s versifications, continue to have a firm
place in the Hungarian choral repertoire. Because of their ready
availability virtually around the globe through internet sources, these
new media resources are already reviving interest in the Psalms in
North America at least.
For
love of the Psalms
It
is appropriate
to recount something of my own
experience with the psalms, noting what led me to undertake this
project.
I grew up in an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation, where we
were
accustomed to singing the psalms, although I rarely knew we were doing
so, since the OPC’s Trinity
Hymnal
scattered the psalms among
the
other hymns.27 Those
psalms we
did sing came largely from the
1912
Psalter. In my youth our family began worshipping in a
non-Reformed
church which sang from a nondenominational hymnal heavily oriented
towards
the revival songs of Ira Sankey, Charles Gabriel and Fanny
Crosby. Needless to say, there were almost no psalms in this
collection, except
possibly the Scottish Psalter’s ubiquitous 23rd Psalm, which
has
managed
to find its way into most hymnals. In short, in moving from
one
denomination
to another, we had lost the singing of psalms, yet I did not feel this
loss, because I was never aware of our having sung them to begin with!
In
my
undergraduate and graduate student years I
began to discover the liturgical practices of the most ancient of the
Christian
churches, including the Roman Catholic and Orthodox, many of which
survived
within the Anglican and Lutheran churches. My initial
introduction
to this tradition came in the form of a little volume purchased at the
bookstore of Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota:
Herbert
Lindemann, ed., The Daily
Office: Matins and Vespers, Based
on
Traditional
Liturgical Patterns, with Scripture Readings, Hymns, Canticles,
Litanies,
Collects, and the Psalter, Designed for Private Devotion or Group
Worship
(St. Louis: Concordia, 1965).28 It
is a
marvellous
book, filled with all the riches of the Christian ages, some of which
were
familiar to me but much of which were not. Since I was not
part
of
a community that worshipped in this way, I privately followed the
pattern
of the daily office prescribed in its pages for perhaps a year or two,
before making other discoveries that would further enrich my devotional
life.
In
the Episcopal
Church’s revised 1979 Book of Common
Prayer I discovered the Daily Office Lectionary, which takes the reader
through much, if not most, of the Bible in the course of two
years. It prescribed for each day of the church year,
beginning with Advent,
an
Old Testament reading, one or more Psalms, a New Testament epistle
reading
and a gospel reading. At about the same time I began attending an
Anglican church which followed a similar pattern for each Sunday of the
church calendar, following the three-year ecumenical lectionary.
This too prescribed a psalm to be said or sung between the Old
Testament
and epistle readings. It is no exaggeration to say that I fell in
love with this rich pattern of going through so much of Scripture in
the
course of the liturgy. Although my present church community has
not
discovered this pattern for itself, I continue to follow the daily
office
in the course of my own personal prayer regimen, though I have
sometimes
abbreviated it as my own circumstances have changed. (Try praying
the psalms while a screaming toddler is tugging at one’s
trousers
cuffs!)
It
was the use of
the Psalms that most impressed
me. The Lindemann volume took one through the Psalter at an
exceedingly
leisurely pace, prescribing at most two psalms per week. The
Daily
Office Lectionary guided one through the entire Psalter over a six-week
period, with some variations due to the changing seasons of the church
calendar and the occasional interruption of a feast day. I myself
simply read through the Psalms in course, covering approximately two
psalms
a day. At other times I have followed a pattern covering the
Psalter
in four weeks. I have been rather less than legalistic about
all
this, sometimes going through long periods without the Psalms or even
the
remainder of scripture. Yet there they are, always ready to
take
me back and to sustain me through times of joy and adversity.
 |
Psalm
89 from
the Genevan Psalter |
Everyone
goes
through tough
times, and I am no different
in this respect. During such periods I have found it deeply
comforting
to immerse myself in the Psalms, drinking in their praises, complaints,
expressions of sorrow, and individual and corporate confessions of
sin. Even the darkest of the psalms, Psalm 88, regularly takes
my
breath
away
when I read it. Who, after all, has not felt abandoned at some
point
in life? Who has not despaired of both present and
future? And, even though we are loath to admit it, who of us
has
not wished to
call down God’s wrath on someone who has crossed us in some
way? I have sometimes joked that, had Prozac been around two
and a
half
millennia
ago, a third of the Psalms and the whole of Ecclesiastes and Job might
not have been written! Yet the expressions found therein are
part
of the fabric of life – a life lived in a less-than-perfect,
and
sometimes
horrific, world. But a life lived, all the same, in
God’s
presence. God’s love sometimes touches us by means
of the
very suffering that
seems
so vexing while we are going through it. But afterwards, that
suffering
has become such a part of us that we cannot imagine exchanging it for
something
else. Our trials become for us what Sheldon Vanauken famously
called
God’s “severe mercy,” a mercy without
which we would
surely be lesser
persons.29
At
least since the
Enlightenment many Christians
have claimed to find the psalms something of an
embarrassment. Even
so indefatigable an apologist for the Christian faith as C. S. Lewis
refers
to some expressions therein as uncharitable and even
“devilish.”30 The
great Isaac Watts once wrote: “Some of them are almost
opposite to the Spirit
of the Gospel: Many of them foreign to the State of the New Testament,
and
widely different from the present circumstances of
Christians.”31 In
Dostoyevsky’s celebrated novel, The
Brothers
Karamazov,
there
is a scene in which the protagonist Alyosha’s recently
deceased mentor,
Father Zosima, is being memorialized prior to burial. Because
Father
Zosima was a “priest and monk of the strictest rule, the
Gospel, not
the
Psalter, had to be read over his body by monks in holy
orders.”32 When
I first read this part of the book, I couldn’t help pitying
Father
Zosima, because he was departing this life without the benefit of the
Psalms. But, of course, the author’s point was that,
for the mere monk not
subject
to such a strict discipline, the Psalms would have to
suffice. I
could not bring myself to accept this implied inferiority of the
Psalter. Indeed, I and many others have found in the Psalms
the very lifeblood
of
the believer.
The
current collection
I
can hardly weigh in on the Genevan Psalms without mentioning their
impact on my own spiritual walk and my efforts to set them to verse in
a contemporary idiom. My initial contact with the Genevan Psalms came
during my childhood in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as mentioned
above. My second contact came at age 21, when during a visit to Prague
I purchased a Czech-language Psalter and Hymnal containing
Jiří Strejc's versifications, although I did not recognize
these as Genevan Psalms for another decade. In 1985 a friend alerted me
to the Canadian Reformed Book of
Praise, containing the Genevan Psalms
in English. I found it an impressive collection in many ways, although
it struck me that the versifications therein showed, among other
things, the limitations of the original rhyming schemes, in which the
stresses in the music and those in the text did not necessarily match.
An example from the French will suffice to illustrate. Here is the
first stanza of Psalm 13:
Jusques
à quand as establi,
Seigneur de me mettre en oubli?
Est-ce à jamais? par combien d'aage
Destourneras-tu ton visage
De moy, las, d'angoisse rempli?
Note
that the rhyming scheme is A-A-B-B-A. However, the alternation of
masculine and feminine endings in the tune does not quite match this
scheme: M-F-F-M-F. Hence the French verse fails to flow in the way one
might expect, which makes for somewhat awkward singing. This same flaw
has found its way into all the translations of the Psalms of which I am
aware, due to a somewhat slavish fidelity to the traditional rhyming
scheme found in the original French.
 |
Frontispiece
to Genevan Psalter,
1618 edition |
Around
the same time I came into
possession of a copy of the Hungarian Psalms recording mentioned above
through what was then called the Board of Publications of the Christian
Reformed Church. I was immediately taken with what I heard, especially
the Cantus’ performances of Psalms 23 and 121, which I found
particularly moving. Thus began a near obsession with the Genevan
Psalms with which I have been (probably terminally) afflicted for just
over a quarter of a century. At this point I began to compose my own
arrangements of the tunes. Unable to play the piano, I generally worked
out these tunes on guitar, where they took on something of the flavour
of John Dowland’s compositions for the lute. In my head I
heard these
tunes in their Renaissance context, where their similarity to the works
of Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons seemed evident. In
addition to arranging these marvellous melodies, I began also to
versify the Psalms in a contemporary idiom so they could be sung to
them. In so doing, I departed to some extent from the traditional
rhyming schemes and, in some cases, from rhyme itself.
With
respect to the versifications, I
admit that, having next to no knowledge of Hebrew, I have relied on the
major English translations of the Psalter, such as the Revised Standard
Version, the New International Version and the New Jerusalem Bible. I
have not sought a word-for-word translation, which would, in any case,
be impossible within a fixed metrical scheme. The Scottish Psalter of
1650 comes close to a word-for-word translation, but largely at the
expense of comprehensibility and, I would judge, singability. My own
versifications are paraphrases – sometimes close to the text
and
sometimes merely communicating the overall sense of the text, as seems
appropriate in each case. While the biblical scholar, with her exacting
standards, may not like my approach, the poet will be more
understanding. Some of the versifications are rhymed (e.g., Psalms 23
and 51) and some are not (e.g., Psalms 24 and 119). To an extent it has
been possible to retain something of the parallelism of the Hebrew
poetic form, but this has not always worked within the constraints of
the Genevan metres. I have not been overly literalistic or legalistic
on this score and have taken poetic licence where necessary. It must
also be recognized once more that it is not always easy to write in
English for the Genevan tunes. The Genevan metrical schemes and the
French language both have an abundance of feminine endings, that is,
phrases ending on unstressed syllables. By contrast, English has
relatively fewer of these, which in large measure explains why
English-language psalters have tended towards the uniformity of common,
long and short metres. Thus in my own renditions certain kinds of
words, e.g., those ending in -ing and -tion, will be noticed to
reappear with some frequency. In any case, I have attempted to match
the stresses in the melodies with those in the text.
Here
is my own versification of Psalm
13, which departs from the traditional rhyme scheme, using instead
A-B-B-A-C, which in my judgement better corresponds to the metrical
structure of the music and eliminates the entirely unnecessary melisma
in the fourth line:33
How
long, O
LORD, must I endure?
Will you forget me for ever?
Shall I look on your visage never?
How long shall my soul constant pain endure,
and my poor heart be in sorrow?
Shall my foes have the victory?
Answer me, LORD; hear my pleading!
Lighten my eyes – my voice be heeding –
lest mortal sleep should overpower me,
and enemies think me vanquished.
Though my foes sneer at my distress,
yet your love is my foundation.
My heart is glad at your salvation.
I raise my song the faithful LORD to bless,
for he has treated me kindly.
As
for the harmonizations, these
were worked out, with the single
exception of Psalm 8, in 1999 and following up to the present. I have
attempted to recover something of the modal flavour of the
arrangements, taking as my inspiration the music of those Renaissance
masters mentioned above. Some of the harmonizations may sound a little
dissonant to those familiar with the arrangements traditionally sung in
the Dutch or Hungarian churches. Moreover, if one follows the suggested
tempos, the traditionalist is likely to find them entirely too rapid.
To such a person I have a two-fold answer: First, I am rendering them
as I have heard them in my head. Coming fresh to the Genevan tradition
means that I am working without the benefit and the burden alike of
having grown up hearing them sung a certain way. Second, at a time when
so much traditional hymnody is being neglected in favour of (to my
mind) vastly inferior praise music, with its repetitive phrases and
transparently derivative tunes, we need to affirm that the singing of
the Psalms need hardly be a dreary business. The liveliest of the
Psalms, e.g., 47 and 92, would even seem to call for a supportive
percussion instrument, such as the tambourine. At the same time, we
should never shrink from singing the laments, which sorely need to be
reincorporated into our liturgical life. Our individualistic,
consumer-oriented churches often seem to suffer from a lamentable
inability to lament. Our congregations need to learn once again to sing
Psalms 88 and 137, among many others.
Among
the first psalms I set to verse in the 1980s and early ’90s
were Psalms 8, 23, 46, 47, 91, 121, 130 and 150. In 1999 I began to
post these on a website devoted to the Genevan Psalter. Over the past
dozen years I have
added more texts and musical arrangements to this website, such that at
present there are 85 Genevan Psalms in English verse, eight metrical
psalms in the regular metres of the English and Scottish psalters, 12
biblical canticles outside the Psalter, and five extra-biblical hymns,
including a Credo
and Te
Deum. One of these texts has
been published in three hymnals of the Christian Reformed Church and
one of the Mennonite Church,34 while
three others were
published in a nondenominational Reformed hymnbook.35 My
text
for Psalm 98 was recently recorded by Canadian soprano Cathy Rempel
Quicke in a collection called Psalms
for Pilgrims,
released in 2010.
Suffice
it to say that this project, which takes me well outside my field of
professional competence, has been for me a genuine labour of love
– of love for the Psalms and for the God who inspired their
writers. St. Athanasius wrote of the Psalms that they are a kind of
compendium of the whole of scripture. As each book of the Bible is like
a garden bearing its own unique fruit, the Psalms bear all the fruit
found in the other books.36 Calvin
famously labelled the
Psalter “‘An Anatomy of all the Parts of the
Soul;’ for there is not an emotion of which any one can be
conscious that is not here represented as in a
mirror.”37 I
hope and
pray that this project may help
the larger church to recover the liturgical use of the Psalms. After
all, the Psalms are simultaneously the most confessionally Reformed and
the most ecumenical worship resource we have. First, the Genevan Psalms
are the common heritage of the Reformed churches. Second, the Psalms
themselves we share with our fellow Christians of virtually every
tradition. Third, the Psalms we have in common with the synagogue, or,
as Pope John Paul II called them, our Jewish elder brethren, even if we
might interpret differently especially the messianic psalms.
Additional
material
Finally
it should
be noted that the metrical psalters,
including the Genevan, almost always included a few biblical canticles
outside the Psalter proper, and my own collection reflects this.
Here is a description of the additional material, most of which is of
non-Genevan origin:
1.
Eight
non-Genevan psalms
written largely in the mid-1980s in the style
of the English and Scottish psalters, with their regular metres. With
the exceptions of Psalms 23 and 29, I
wrote these prior to discovering the Genevan tunes, and they are posted
for purposes of comparison with the more lively, and less regular
metres of the latter. Included are Psalms 23, 25, 29, 51, 95, 98, 130
and
137.
Psalms 23, 29, 51, 95 and 137 are set to original melodies composed
especially
for these texts. The tunes are titled
QOL ADONAI, VOX
DOMINI, MISERERE,
VENITE
and
HICKORY ROAD
respectively. I set Psalm
23 to my own tune,
GATEVIEW in 2013, and Psalm 25 to
Thomas
Tallis' haunting
THIRD
MODE MELODY,
for which I composed transitional music between the stanzas. The tune
was
further immortalized in 1910 by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his
magnificent
Fantasia on
a Theme by
Thomas Tallis, one of my all
time favourites. In 1971
Texas
composer
Fisher Tull used this same tune as the basis of his
Sketches
on a
Tudor Psalm. Psalm 98 is one of
the earliest metrical psalms I wrote and it is set here to the familiar
KINGSFOLD,
which I arranged in 2003.
All
but one of these six metrical psalms could easily be matched to another
tune in common metre double (CMD) or long metre double (LMD).
However, given the plethora of CM and LM tunes and the relative paucity
of
CMD and LMD tunes, I decided to compose tunes in the latter metres to
diminish
the repetitiveness of multiple stanzas in the shorter forms.
Psalms 51
and 137 were published in
Songs
of
Rejoicing: Hymns for Worship, Mediation & Praise
in 1989.
2. Twelve
biblical canticles:
Two versions of the Decalogue, one from Strassbourg and one from
Geneva. My Strassbourg Decalogue was also published in Songs of
Rejoicing.
The
Song of Hannah
appears in I
Samuel 2:1-10 and is ascribed to the mother of one of the greatest of
the earlier Israelite prophets, Samuel. She sings it in gratitude for
his birth after God has answered her prayer to end her barrenness.
Mary's Magnificat
is evidently based on this canticle. My own versification is set to GENEVAN
66/98/118.
The
First Song of
the Servant of the Lord is a paraphrase of Isaiah
42:1-7 and is set to a tune by
Orlando Gibbons, SONG 22.
This passage was
quoted in
Mathew 12 by
Jesus, who applied it to himself.
The
Song of the
Three Youths does not appear in the Hebrew canon,
but it is found in the Septuagint and later translations based on it,
where it is inserted in Daniel 3. This canticle was sung by Shadrach
(Hananiah), Meshach (Mishael) and Abednego (Azariah) in the fiery
furnace, where the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had cast them after
they had refused to worship the idol he had erected. Though not
strictly regarded as canonical by Christians of the Reformation, it has
nevertheless found its way into the church's sung canticles, as found
in the Book
of Common
Prayer
and the Lutheran liturgy. Both text and tune I wrote in June 2007. The
tune I titled BENEDICITE,
after the Latin
name for the
canticle, Benedicite
Omnia Opera.
My
versification
for the Song of Jonah
I wrote back in 1982, before I was acquainted with the tunes of the
Genevan Psalter. Accordingly it too is written in common metre double
(CMD).
The tune is OLD 18TH
from the English Psalter of
1561, with a slight altering of the arrangement from the Scottish Psalter
of
1929.
The Magnificat
of the
Virgin Mary I wrote back in 1987, along with an original tune, which I
named SOUTH BEND.
It is written in the
style of the
English anthem. In 2006 I composed a descant for the
last stanza. Among my liturgical compositions this is one of my
favourites.
The Benedictus
of
Zechariah from Luke 1:68-79 is set to the tune AN
WASSERFLÜSSEN BABYLON,
by Wolfgang Dachstein,
organist for
Martin Bucer in Strassbourg who contributed to the metrical psalter in
use in that city. The name of the tune indicates that it was originally
a setting for Psalm 137. This tune found its way to Geneva and
eventually into the Dutch churches that drew on this tradition.
The Nunc
Dimittis of
Simeon from Luke 2:29-32, and the first version here is set to a tune
composed by Louis Bourgeois
in Geneva. The second is a CMD
text set to
the tune BETHLEHEM.
The
Lord's Prayer is a simple,
unrhymed versification set to the well-known tune, VATER
UNSER,
with which the text is historically associated. The tune is sometimes
ascribed to Martin Luther but originated in Valentin Schumann's Geistliche Lieder
in 1539. In the
Lutheran hymnals each petition of the prayer is assigned its own
stanza, whose words communicate the prayer's explanation in Luther's
Catechism. My own versification consists of only two stanzas.
The
song No
Condemnation is
a versification of Romans
8:1-2,9,11 which I was inspired to write when our pastor was preaching
through this pivotal chapter of Paul's epistle in 2009. The tune is
that of Psalm 110. The great reformer Martin Luther called Romans
the "most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest
Gospel. It is
well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it word for word
but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily
bread of the soul." Setting it to music will surely aid in our taking
Luther's advice.
The
versification
of the Philippians hymn I wrote around 1984 and it
was subsequently published in the 1987 edition of the Psalter Hymnal
of
the Christian
Reformed Church. I had chosen Orlando Gibbons' SONG
34
as the tune to which it should be set, but I was overruled by the
committee, which chose Joseph P. Holbrook's rather pedestrian tune, BISHOP,
instead. More
recently this song was republished in Singing the New Testament
and Hymns
for Worship
(Grand Rapids: Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Faith Alive
Christian Resources, 2008 and 2010 respectively), where it was matched
with Sir Charles
Hubert Parry's JERUSALEM,
to which, in my humble opinion, it is even less suited.
However, when the Mennonites republished my text in 1992, they did
indeed use the Gibbons tune, to my delight. Needless
to say, I here use SONG
34,
which, incidentally, was believed by the late pianist Glenn Gould to be
the
finest piece of music ever written.
My
versification
of the Colossians hymn
I wrote in 1992 and sang with guitar accompaniment along with my sister
at a church event near Boston that summer. I chose another Gibbons
tune, SONG 1,
for this text. It has thus
far not been
published in any hymnal, but it is meant as a complement to the
Philippians hymn.
3.
Five
extrabiblical hymns:
my
Credo
in Septuple
Metre is
a metrical version of the Apostles' Creed, set to a tune,
LUSIGNAN,
which I composed in 2001. It is written with a 7/8 time signature,
unusual in western music but common in Greek music. It is named for the
Frankish dynasty that ruled my ancestral island of Cyprus in the late
middle ages. Much as a western royal house was ruling an eastern
people, so my tune combines a thoroughly western tonality with an
eastern rhythm. The basic tune started out many years ago as little
more than a finger exercise for guitar, but I expanded it and
committed it to "paper" at the beginning of the new century.
The
Phos
Hilaron
(
Φῶς
Ἱλαρόν)
is the most
ancient Christian hymn outside the Bible itself, dating back at least
to the 3rd century AD, if not earlier. It is an evening hymn most
appropriately sung at the beginning of vespers in the Liturgy of the
Hours. It is first recorded in the
Apostolic
Constitutions in the 4th
century. St. Basil the Great spoke
of it as an ancient hymn already in that same century. For the tune I
have taken that for Genevan Psalms 77/86 and somewhat extended it to
fit the length of the single stanza. I may still come up with my own
tune at some point.
The Te
Deum is an ancient
creedal hymn reputedly composed by Nicetas of Remesiana (4th-5th
century),
though popularly attributed to Sts. Ambrose and Augustine. The
first
three stanzas are an adaptation from Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady's
New
Version Psalter of 1698, while the final three stanzas are my own
versification.
The first tune to which it is set, OLD
22ND, is
from
the Anglo-Genevan Psalter, while FOREST
GREEN
is a
familiar English tune found in most hymnals. My own harmonization of
the latter dates from 2003.
I Belong
is a
versified
paraphrase of Question and Answer 1 of the Heidelberg
Catechism, easily the jewel of
the sixteenth-century
Reformation
confessions. It was originally written in the mid-1980s to be sung to
Jean Sibelius' beloved FINLANDIA,
and I actually sang it to this tune as a solo at the South Bend
Christian Reformed Church. However, in 2001 I composed another
tune, which I named simply HEIDELBERG,
along with
appropriate harmonization.
A Hymn for
Pentecost
is an entirely original text
that I wrote back in 1985. Having recently heard a recording of Ralph
Vaughan Williams' Fantasia
on the
Old 104th Psalm Tune, I
decided to use Thomas
Ravenscroft's tune
for Psalm 104, as found in his Whole Book of Psalms,
published
in 1621. The choice of tune was influenced by the ancient tradition
appointing Psalm 104 to be sung on the feast of Pentecost. The key
to this tradition is verse 30: "When you send forth your Spirit, they
are created, and you renew the face of the ground."
Liturgical
use
of the Psalms
How
ought the
Psalms to be used in the course of
worship? There are at least three possibilities: (1) according
to
a lectionary prescribing a psalm of the day; (2) according to the theme
of the scripture readings and the sermon based on them; and (3)
according
to the focus of a particular part of the liturgy, in which case more
than
one would be used in a single service. Lectionaries have an
ancient
lineage and are used even in Judaism where the reading of the weekly
Torah
portion leads the synagogue congregation through the five books of
Moses
in the course of a year. Most Christian lectionaries are
oriented
to the church calendar and the changing seasons from Advent to
Pentecost. Those Christians critical of the use of
lectionaries argue that they in
effect constitute a canon within the canon – that they unduly
limit the
amount
of Scripture we hear read in the course of the liturgy. Better
perhaps
is a lectio continua which would take a congregation through a single
book
over successive Sundays and cover most of both testaments in the course
of a pastoral term of service. Yet most protestant churches
follow
neither a prescribed lectionary nor a lectio continua but have embraced
the highly subjective approach of topical preaching. This
means
that,
far from avoiding the “canon within the canon,” the
congregation is
simply
exposed to their pastor’s own preferred internal
canon. To be
sure,
the traditional one-year lectionaries of the Roman Catholics, Orthodox,
Lutherans and Anglicans were deficient in that they included little if
any of the Old Testament and covered only a portion of the New. The
adoption
of the three-year lectionary by most of these churches (with the
exception
of the Orthodox) was meant precisely to expand and not to limit the
amount
of Scripture heard in the liturgy over the period covered. This would,
of course, include the Psalms.
| Our individualistic,
consumer-oriented
churches often seem to suffer from a lamentable inability to lament. |
The
Reformed
churches have traditionally used the
Psalms, not as appointed by a lectionary, but as expressions of a
particular
focus in a specific part of the liturgy. Thus the congregation might
sing Psalm 95 or 150 as an opening psalm of praise where Roman
Catholics
or (more recently) Anglicans might sing the Gloria
in Excelsis.
Its
members might similarly sing Psalm 32 or 51 as a confession
of
sin
where other Christians might sing the Kyrie
eleison
or recite
the general
confession in the Book of Common Prayer. The Reformed churches in
Geneva sang Psalm 103 as a post-communion thanksgiving psalm, while the
churches in Zürich sang Psalm 113 at this place. By contrast,
Anglicans following an older version of their prayer book would sing
the Gloria in Excelsis
here. The
disadvantage of this approach
is that,
just as the Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus
Dei
and so
forth, became fixed elements
of the liturgy in the western church, so have Reformed congregations
tended
to alternate among a very few Psalms from one Sunday to the
next. If Psalm 51 suffices as a general confession of sin, why
sing a
different
penitential psalm next week? The net result is that few of the
Psalms
are actually sung over time.
Perhaps
the best
alternative would bring together
these approaches, which need not be mutually exclusive but can indeed
complement
each other. Psalms can be used to reflect the changing seasons
of
the church calendar, the developing themes of a single book read
through
in course as part of a lectio
continua, and to
reflect the
different moments
in the liturgy.
It
is in the
interest of encouraging, among other
things, greater Christian unity, even in liturgical matters, that I am
offering the present collection to the churches. After all, we
do
have the Psalms in common, even if we do not share other elements of
our
liturgies. Since the Genevan tunes are eminently singable, I
hope
and pray that my own effort might, if only in a small way, promote a
widespread
love for singing the Psalms, both within and without the formal
liturgical
setting. “Let everything that breathes praise the
Lord!” (Psalm
150:6)
David
T. Koyzis, 2011
__________________________
NOTES:
1.
Recent examples of interpreting the
Psalms
as the prayers of Christ can be found in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms:
the Prayer Book of the Bible
(Minneapolis: Augsburg
Publishing
House,
1970), and Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ
in the Psalms (Ben Lomond,
California: Conciliar Press,
2000).
2.
One intriguing theory has been proposed by Suzanne
Haïk-Vantoura in The Music of
the Bible
Revealed, trans. Dennis
Weber, ed. John Wheeler (N. Richland Hills, Texas: BIBAL Press, 1991).
Here she proposes that the sublinear signs (te`amim)
in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament were meant to serve as musical
notations for singing the text. In line with her theory, she
subsequently published Les 150
Psaumes dans
leurs mélodies antiques
(Paris: Fondation Roi David, 1991).
3. See
“Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry,” in The
Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Expanded Edition
(New
York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 1523-1529.
4.
See The
Psalms: A New Translation from the Hebrew Arranged for Singing to the
Psalmody of Joseph Gelineau
(New York/Ramsey: Paulist Press, 1963); and The Revised Grail Psalms:
a Liturgical Psalter
(Chicago: GIA Publications, 2010).
5.
See, e.g., Herbert Lindemann, ed., The
Daily Office: Matins
and Vespers, based on traditional liturgical patterns, with scripture
readings, hymns, canticles, litanies, collects, and the psalter,
designed for private devotion or group worship
(St. Louis: Concordia, 1965); and, more recently, Scot A. Kinnaman,
ed., Treasury
of Daily Prayer (St. Louis:
Concordia, 2008). My own contact with the Lindemann volume as a young
man had a decisive formative influence on my own subsequent prayer life.
6.
Pierre Pidoux attributes the last tunes of the Psalter to Pierre
Davantès l'ainé (1525-1561). See Pidoux, Le Psautier Huguenot: Les
Mélodies, vol. 1
of Le
Psautier Huguenot du XVIe siècle
(Basel: Édition Baerenreiter, 1962), p. ix.
7.
John
Witvliet, “The Spirituality of the Psalter in Calvin's
Geneva,” in Witvliet, Worship
Seeking Understanding: windows into christian practice
(Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), p. 208, n. 22.
8. Ibid.,
p. 209.
9. Ibid.,
p. 211.
10.
See Psalmen:
De berijming van 1773
(Amsterdam: J. Brandt en Zoon, n.d.). Although no date is given for
this volume, it was evidently used in the 20th century by the Gereformeerde Kerken in
Nederland.
The impact of the Enlightenment can be seen in the use of het Opperwezen
(Supreme Being) for
God in 16 psalms (7, 8, 21, 33, 38, 40, 68, 71, 77, 78,81, 96, 99, 102,
112 and 113). The 1967 Dutch versification of the Psalms almost
entirely removes Opperwezen
as a reference to God except for a single uncharacteristic reference in
Psalm 68.
11.
This was
reported to me by my colleague, Dr. Harry Van Dyke, Emeritus Professor
of History, Redeemer University College.
12. Die CL Psalmen Davids,
durch D. A.
Lobwasser in Teutsche Reimen
( Zürich: Bürgklicher
Truckerey, 1770).
13.
As
recently as the turn of the last century, Strejc's psalms were
published in Malý
Kancionál (Little
Hymnal) (Kutná Hora: Karel
Šolc, 1900). A brief biography of Strejc is found on p. 783.
14.
Abraham
Kuyper, Lectures
on Calvinism
(Peabody: Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 2008), p. 152; referring to
Orentin Douen, Clément Marot
et le Psautier huguenot
(Paris: l'Imprimérie nationale,
1878).
15.
Kuyper, p.
152.
16.
H. Hasper, Calvijns
Beginsel voor den
Zang in den Eredienst
('s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955),
p. 772; referring to Haein, “Le Problème du Chant
Choral
dans Les Églises Réformées et Le
Trésor
liturgique de la Cantilène Huguenote,” thesis,
Faculté de Théologie Protéstante,
Montpellier,
1926.
17.
Calvin,
“Articles concerning the organization of the Church and of
Worship at Geneva proposed by the Ministers at the Council,”
16
January 1537, in J. K. S. Reid, trans. & ed., Calvin: Theological
Treatises, The
Library of Christian Classics: Ichthus Edition (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1954), p. 54.
18.
I
mentioned Ali Ufki to my Cypriot-born father who, somewhat to my
surprise, immediately recognized his name and was well acquainted with
his work, especially his Turkish translation of the Bible. For a brief
biography of Ali Ufki, see Ali
Ufki - a 17th century Al Jazeera.
19.
See this
copy published in 1800.
20. The Scottish Psalter
1929, Metrical
Version and Scripture Paraphrases, With Tunes
(London: Oxford
University Press, 1929).
21.
See hymn
number 216, Laat groot en klein,
where the tune is attributed both to the 1551 Genevan Psalter and, more
speculatively, to the 1566 Kirchengesang,
Prague.
22.
See Waldo Selden Pratt, The
Music of
the
Pilgrims: A Description of the Psalm-book brought to Plymouth in 1620
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1921).
23. The Bay Psalm Book, Being
a Facsimile
Reprint of the First Edition, Printed by Stephen Daye At Cambridge, in
New England in 1640 (New
York: The New England Society, 1903).
24. All the French Psalm tunes,
&c., perused and approved by judicious divines, both English
and
French (London: Thomas Harper, 1632).
25.
Rev. G. R.
Woodward, ed., Songs of Syon,
4th ed. (London: Schott & Co., 1923).
26.
See Book
of Praise: Anglo-Genevan Psalter,
Revised Edition (Winnipeg: Premier Printing, Ltd, 1984). This has now
been replaced by Book of Praise:
Anglo-Genevan Psalter,
Authorized Provisional Version (Winnipeg:
Premier Printing, Ltd., 2010).
27. Trinity Hymnal
(Philadelphia: The
Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1961). This volume contains metrical
versions of most, but not all, of the Psalms, the bulk of which come
from the 1912 Psalter of the United Presbyterian Church in North
America, one of the predecessor denominations of the Presbyterian
Church (USA).
28.
The daily
office, or liturgy of the hours, is a form of prayer observed in the
monasteries. These are spaced about three hours apart and, in the
western tradition, include Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None,
Vespers and Compline. Each of these offices consists of the following
items more or less in order: opening versicle (e.g., Psalm 51:15 or
70:1); followed by Psalm 95 (for Matins) or another canticle; one or
more additional psalms; readings from Old Testament, Epistles and
Gospels; another canticle (e.g., the Te
Deum, the Benedictus
or Magnificat);
the Kyrie;
petitions; the Our Father;
collects; and a closing doxology or benediction.
29.
Sheldon
Vanauken, A
Severe Mercy (New
York: Harper & Row, 1977, 1980).
30.
C. S. Lewis, Reflections on
the Psalms
(New
York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1958), p. 25.
31.
Isaac Watts, Preface to Hymns
and Spiritual Songs
(London: J. Humphreys, for John Lawrence, 1707), pp. iii-xiv.
32.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The
Brothers Karamazov,
trans. Constance Garnet (New York: The Modern Library, no date), p.
393.
33.
Nearly all
of the Genevan Psalms lack melismata, except for Psalms 2, 6, 10, 13,
91 and 138. Most of these I have dropped in my own versifications.
34.
Christ
Who Is in the Form of God
(Philippians 2:6-11), no. 227 in the Psalter
Hymnal (Grand Rapids: CRC
Publications, 1987); also no. 333 in Hymnal:
A Worship Book
(Brethren
Press, Faith and Life Press, and Mennonite Publishing House, 1992);
also recorded in audiocassette form by the choir of Hesston College,
Hesston, Kansas, as one of the Hymnal
Selections: Volume 2
(Brethren Press, Faith and Life Press, and
Mennonite Publishing House, 1992); republished in Singing the New Testament
(Grand
Rapids: Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Faith Alive Christian
Resources, 2008) and Hymns for
Worship (Grand Rapids: Calvin
Institute of Christian Worship and
Faith Alive Christian Resources 2010).
35. Thus Spoke the Lord,
no. 40; Be
Merciful to Me (MISERERE),
no.
44; and Beside
the Streams of Babylon
(HICKORY ROAD), no. 50; in Songs of
Rejoicing: Hymns for Worship, Meditation, and Praise
(New
Brunswick, NJ: Selah Publishing Co, 1989).
36. The Letter of Athanasius,
Our Holy Father,
Archbishop of Alexandria, to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the
Psalms.
37.
John
Calvin, Commentary
on the Book of
Psalms, “The
Author's
Preface,” translated
by the Rev. James Anderson.
