4 Oct 2022

Links to Genevan and Sternhold & Hopkins Psalters

I have placed in the right sidebar links to Les Pseaumes mis en rime francoise, par Clement Marot, & Theodore de Beze, that is, a scanned copy of the first complete edition of the 1562 Genevan Psalter, and to The Whole Book of Psalms collected into English metre, better known as the Sternhold & Hopkins Psalter, also completed in 1562. These are, of course, the two major metrical psalters that would come to influence continental Europe and the English-speaking world respectively. In fact, some scholars believe that Thomas Sternhold (1500-1549) virtually invented ballad metre, or what our hymnals call common metre (CM), consisting of alternating iambic lines of eight and six syllables. Ballad metre became the standard for successive metrical psalters, including Tate & Brady's "New Version" Psalter of 1696 and the Scottish Psalter of 1650.

No comments: