Matthew Parker's Psalter (1567)

Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504-1575) played a minor role in the development of English metrical psalmody during the Reformation era. He managed to survive Queen Mary's brief reign (1553-1558) and reluctantly accepted appointment by Queen Elizabeth to the See of Canterbury. While occupying this office, Parker presided over the convocation that developed the Thirty-Nine Articles, the principal confession of the Reformed English church.

In 1567, he published a Whole Psalter translated into English metre, which contayneth an hundreth and fifty Psalmes. The texts were set to eight tunes composed by the renowned Thomas Tallis (1505-1585). On the fate of Parker's texts, Timothy Duguid writes:

For many reasons, Parker's [collection] should have eclipsed the Sternhold and Hopkins versions. First, Parker's eventual position as Archbishop of Canterbury should have conferred authoritative status on his psalms. More than that, his versifications were arguably superior in both poetic beauty and translational accuracy than the Sternhold and Hopkins psalters. By providing collects and arguments for each psalm, his psalter was also better suited to the liturgy of the English national church. It was musically much simpler than the Sternhold and Hopkins psalters, employing eight tunes—by no less a composer than Thomas Tallis—which could fit all 150 of Parker's psalm versifications. Despite the advantages of Parker's psalter, one significant factor ensured that it would remain in relative obscurity: the simple fact that he was neither Sternhold nor Hopkins, whose names had become synonymous with English metrical psalmody. Theirs were the psalms that martyrs sang as they were burned at the stake during Mary's reign; theirs were the words that sustained others in exile. The strength of this pedigree would prove insurmountable for Parker's or any other psalm versifications in England until the eighteenth century [Duguid, 119].

Here are the Tallis Scholars performing Tallis' Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter:

1. Psalm 1: Man blest no doubt
2. Psalm 68: Let God arise in majesty
3. Psalm 2: Why fum'th in sight (THIRD MODE MELODY)
4. Psalm 95: O come in one to praise the Lord
5. Psalm 42: E'en like the hunted hind
6. Psalm 5: Expend, O Lord, my plaint
7. Psalm 52: Why brag'st in malice high
8. Psalm 67: God grant with grace (TALLIS' CANON)
9. Veni Creator: Come Holy Ghost, eternal God (TALLIS' ORDINAL)

The third tune in the collection is especially well known because the 20th-century English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams used it as the basis of his transcendently beautiful Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), about which I wrote here on the centenary of its first performance. In 1971 American composer Fisher Tull based his Sketches on a Tudor Psalm on the same melody. (Do listen to both! They are amazing pieces in their own ways. While Vaughan Williams' piece is for strings, Tull's is for brass and woodwinds, giving each a quite different feel. Vaughan Williams' treatment is pastoral and rooted in a remote pre-industrial past, while Tull's is agitated and energetic.)

Although Parker's texts failed to catch on over the long term, at least three of Tallis' tunes have found their way into our standard hymnals.