The Seedbed Psalter

While the singing of metrical Psalms is often associated with the Reformed tradition, Christians in other traditions are making an effort to recover psalm-singing in their own churches. One such effort is the Seedbed Psalter, which comes out of the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition. Julie Tennent and her husband Timothy are the principal compilers of this collection. Julie is an organist, pianist, and composer. Timothy is president of Asbury Theological Seminary, the largest North American seminary standing in the Wesleyan tradition. Julie has done the bulk of the work connected with the Seedbed Psalter.

The genius of the Seedbed Psalter is that, while it does come in a hard copy volume (shown at right), it is largely an online resource enabling the user to choose amongst a variety of texts and settings covering all 150 Psalms. Right on the front page we read the following:

All of Scripture is given to us for “teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness” which, of course, includes the Book of Psalms. We can certainly study the psalms, learn from them, be corrected by them, and be trained by them for righteousness, just like the rest of the Scriptures. But the Psalms are unique – they are the hymnbook of the people of God, and they are meant to be sung. Join us on this exciting journey as we  learn to sing the Word!

What a wonderful invitation! The Seedbed Psalter provides a user-friendly format enabling us to sing the Psalms right from the start. Scrolling a bit further down the page we find the following sections:

HOW TO USE THIS RESOURCE

• LYRICS
• AUDIO METER
• SHEET MUSIC & CHORD CHARTS

QUICK START GUIDE

• THE PSALMS
• METERS & TUNES
• iTUNES AUDIO
• FAQs, including questions about the appropriateness of singing the imprecatory Psalms 

PSALMS FOR LITURGICAL ARRANGEMENT

• ADVENT PSALMS
• CHRISTMAS PSALMS
• EPIPHANY PSALMS
• LENT PSALMS
• EASTERTIDE PSALMS
• PENTECOST PSALMS

How does all this work? We can start with the NAVIGATE THE PSALMS page. Here we find numbers 1 through 150. Clicking on one of these numbers will take us to the appropriate Psalm. Let's start with the very first Psalm. Immediately we read a list a tunes and the hymns frequently sung to them, followed by a versified text:

As you can see, if you are seeking a way to sing this text, you can choose amongst four familiar hymn tunes, one or all of which will likely be familiar to the average North American congregation. Note the metrical structure shown above the tunes (87 87 D). If you do not like these choices, this will allow you to look through the metrical index of tunes in another hymnal and find something you believe will work better. Or you can use Seedbed's own Index of Meters & Tunes. That's the sort of flexibility built into the Seedbed Psalter.

If we go to the familiar and beloved Psalm 23, we find two texts set to different metres: 10 10 10 10 and CM. The second text is well known to virtually all English-speaking Christians because it comes straight from the durable Scottish Psalter of 1650, in which CM (common metre, or 86 86) texts predominate. The editors append a footnote:

The metrical setting of Psalm 23 from the 1650 Scottish Metrical Psalter is so well-known and loved that it seemed right to include it here. This setting has remained unchanged for centuries in hymnbooks and psalters, and has been sung in this form by countless Christians for hundreds of years.

The first text appears to be unique to the Seedbed Psalter.

Whenever I review a psalter, I generally go first to a familiar Psalm, such as 23 or 100, and then to Psalms 88 and 109. Why the latter two? Because Psalm 88 is by far the darkest of all the Psalms, and many collections do not include it for that reason. Psalm 109 includes a long litany of imprecations against enemies, which congregations may shrink from singing. (Both Psalms were altogether absent from the Trinity Hymnal, with which I grew up in the 1960s.) Yet Seedbed contains complete texts for both these Psalms, indicating that the editors do indeed aim at a complete, unabridged Psalter as true as possible to the original texts.

The one reservation I have about Seedbed is that, while the texts and tunes technically match with respect to metrical structure, some lines of the text cannot be easily sung to the designated tunes because the stresses in the text are not the same as those in the tune. (This was already an issue with the Genevan Psalter in the 16th century.) For example, Psalm 27 begins thus, with the stressed syllables indicated in CAPS and boldface:

The LORD'S my LIGHT and SALvaTION—of WHOM, then, SHALL I BE aFRAID?
The LORD'S the STRONGhold OF my LIFE; whom SHALL I FEAR when ON Him STAYED?

Obviously we typically pronounce salVAtion, with the stress on the second syllable and not on the first and third. Similarly, stressing shall, of, shall, and on, which are usually unstressed in ordinary speech, makes singing the phrases somewhat awkward. This problem is found in more than one place, including Psalm 1 pictured above. To rectify these mismatches would require additional editing and, in some cases, choosing different tunes. I can imagine Psalm 27 beginning thus, with the addition of a single syllable to each line:

The LORD is my LIGHT and salVAtion; of WHOM then shall I be aFRAID?
The LORD is my LIFE'S sturdy REFuge; howEVer shall I be disMAYED?

In fact, these lines, which I wrote in 2013, are from my unpublished Niagara Psalter collection and are in a modified anapestic rhythm, which seems better to work with the text. Anapestic rhythm is fairly common in revival hymns, but not in the more traditional Protestant hymns, which are generally iambic or trochaic in their rhythms, which is why I composed my own music for this text. It might thus be more difficult to find an appropriate tune already in use.

Aside from this reservation, which I believe can be easily addressed with some modest editorial revisions, I heartily endorse the aim of this collection, namely, to provide an easy-to-use open-source psalter for English-speaking congregations everywhere.

Note: I have not seen the volume pictured above, so I cannot say whether it includes everything on the website or only a portion. My review is thus based solely on the website.