Genevan Psalm 4

In my guitar journey through the melodies of the Genevan Psalter, my latest performance is of Psalm 4. This leaves me with only 20 tunes remaining before completing this project, which began in earnest last November. Many of these last tunes I have found especially challenging, and this includes Psalm 4, which is unusually long at 10 lines and has an irregular metrical pattern of 98 99 89 89 98. Lines 3 and 6 repeat, but there are no repetitions in the other lines. These factors make it difficult to memorize. It is one of only 6 tunes in the Aeolian mode, which is equivalent to our minor scale. I played it at a fairly brisk pace, because, at such length, it tends to drag when being sung. The entire Genevan Psalter playlist can be accessed here. I will, of course, alert readers to the completion of this project when and if the time comes. Stay tuned. 

Click on this link to see the full text of this Psalm.

Calvin Seerveld (1930-2025)

Calvin Seerveld was the longtime senior member in aesthetic philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. I myself was a junior member (student) there in the late 1970s and had the privilege of sitting in one of his seminar courses. Although he was not my principal mentor, I recall his inimitable teaching style and the enthusiasm he brought to the subject matter.

As I write, I am looking at my notes from one of Seerveld's lectures from 20 September 1978. In my youthful handwriting, I quoted him: "The world is a created theatre of God," and "One finds meaning in Jesus Christ." Seerveld was above all a faithful servant of Christ and a memorable teacher.

Is the LORD God a sun and shield? A follow up

After I posted last week on a solar metaphor for God, I looked back at my own metrical versification of Psalm 84 and discovered that I too had paraphrased this text, eliminating the reference to the sun, but following through on its meaning:

Better by far one day to be
within your courts than live to see
a thousand years while elsewhere dwelling.
The threshold of your house, O Lord,
is vastly thus to be preferred
to where the wicked make their dwelling.
For God the LORD, our source of life,
will be our shield amid the strife.

I am currently exploring publication options for my English-language Genevan Psalter collection.

Is the LORD God a sun and shield? LXX: perhaps not

Not long ago I was reading a book that quoted Psalm 84:11: "For the LORD God is a sun and shield." I have observed in the past that the Greek Septuagint translation (LXX) of the Old Testament tends to avoid rock metaphors for God, substituting another word such as strength. For example, Psalm 95:1 runs as follows in the RSV: "let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation," while the New English Translation of the LXX (NETS) has it as such: "let us make a joyful noise to God our savior!" Might the LXX do something similar with a sun metaphor for God? After all, ancient peoples around the world, from Egyptians to Aztecs, worshipped the sun as a god. Might the LXX translators have exhibited a skittishness about inadvertently identifying the God who has created and redeemed us with the sun?

The church modes in Scotland and Geneva

In my previous post, I linked to a choral rendition of Psalm 43 from the Scottish Psalter, as sung to the haunting tune MARTYRS, one of only two tunes in that collection in the Dorian mode. I should immediately clarify that the edition of the Psalter to which I am referring is the 1929 edition published by the Church of Scotland. This includes tunes ranging from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The edition shown here is a split-leaf psalter, in which tunes and texts can be mixed and matched according to the preferences of ministers and congregations.

Psalm 43 to MARTYRS

Here is Psalm 43 from the 1650 Scottish Psalter sung to the tune MARTYRS. Note that it is in the Dorian mode, whose use is quite rare amongst the tunes to which this 17th-century collection has been set. This gives the text an unusually plaintive feel, although the Dorian mode covers an emotional range beyond the plaintive as well. The Genevan Psalter, by contrast, sets just over a third of the Psalm texts to tunes in the Dorian or Hypo-dorian modes. One explanation for this difference is that the tunes of the Genevan Psalter were influenced by gregorian chant and the traditional church modes, while the Scottish Psalter was less dependent on these historic elements, having originated at a time when western music was transitioning from its mediaeval form and assuming the tonal patterns more familiar to us today.

Laurence on the imprecatory Psalms

Trevor Laurence has published a book titled, Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor University Press, 2023). Here is a conversation between Adriel Sanchez and Laurence on the book's controversial subject matter:

My own thoughts on the Psalms we may find difficult to pray can be found here: God as judge: praying the imprecatory Psalms.

The Lukan canticles and the Synod of Dort

Although the Reformed Churches are best known for singing the Psalms, other biblical canticles have played a role in Reformed liturgies in several settings. Here is article 69 of the Church Order of Dort of 1618:

In the Churches only the 150 Psalms of David, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Twelve Articles of Faith [Apostles' Creed], the Song of Mary, that of Zacharias, and that of Simeon shall be sung. It is left to the individual Churches whether or not to use the hymn “Oh God! who art our Father.” All other hymns are to be excluded from the Churches, and in those places where some have already been introduced they are to be removed by the most suitable means. 

The hymn, O God! who art our Father, seems to refer to a metrical paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, possibly a reference to Martin Luther's familiar elaboration of the biblical text.

Here are my own guitar performances of the three Lukan canticles, beginning with the Song of Mary (Magnificat), then the Song of Zechariah (Benedictus), and finally the Song of Simeon (Nunc Dimittis), all, of course, from the first two chapters of Luke:

Psalm 29

Psalm 29 is a hymn to God's power and might, especially as manifested in natural phenomena. It's possible that the biblical author was caught in a thunderstorm and thought to express his awe through this text. William L. Holladay believes that it is one of the oldest of the Psalms, although one might quibble with his reason for so assuming. Psalm 29 appears near the climax of Charlotte Mary Yonge's The Heir of Redcliffe, which had a huge influence on Abraham Kuyper's walk with God. It is the last Psalm sung at evening prayer on the 5th day of the month in the Book of Common Prayer.

Psalm 116 and a young organist

Who could fail to be inspired by the competence at the organ of a very young Cameron Oostdyk playing Genevan Psalm 116? This video was posted seven years ago. Oostdyk is now grown and studying at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA. May God bless his studies, and may he continue to accompany God's people as they sing their praises.

Psalm 23 and Herzliebster Jesu: A derivative relationship

The Genevan Psalter provided the basis for several tunes that would come to be matched to unrelated hymn texts. A few of these would be borrowed verbatim, such as the tune for Psalm 42 and the beloved Advent hymn, Comfort, Comfort, Ye My People, a free versification of the initial verses of Isaiah 40. Other tunes would be altered to fit a new text, such as the tune for Psalm 23 and HERZLIEBSTER JESU, usually translated as Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended. Here are the two tunes below:

 

Three paschal hymns

My affection for the tradition of German chorales is related to my love for the tunes of the Genevan Psalter, as I've written before in this space. Here are three chorales for Easter:

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

A Holy Week hymn: O Sacred Head

During Holy Week, especially Good Friday, western Christians throughout the world sing this beloved hymn, O Sacred Head, Now Wounded. Written in German by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), it is based on a hymn by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153). The tune was composed by Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612). The tradition of German chorales, bequeathed to us by the Lutheran churches, bears considerable similarity to that of the Genevan Psalms. Repeated initial phrases, irregular metres, and a plethora of feminine endings are the signs of a shared continental heritage.

Psalm 11

I have now added a performance of Genevan Psalm 11 to my YouTube channel and playlist. The full Genevan Psalter playlist now consists of 78 such performances with more forthcoming.

Lift Up Your Hearts: a hymnal review

From 1934 until quite recently, the Christian Reformed Church in North America worshipped with a succession of Psalter Hymnals, the most recent of which was published in 1989 and sported a grey cover. This volume sat in the pews of congregations until the grand shift to overhead slides with words, and in some cases music, projected onto screens, enabling parishioners to sing without books in their hands, as well as to sing songs not contained in the books.

Our own congregation replaced the grey Psalter Hymnals some years ago with a collection jointly produced by the CRC and the Reformed Church in America (RCA), called, Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs (LUYH). We read this on the hymnal's website:

Psalm 10

My Genevan Psalter recording project continues apace with the addition of Psalm 10. The entire playlist can be found here: The Genevan Psalter.

Psalms 28/109

Given their subject matter, Psalms 28 and 109 are probably among the less sung psalms in the church's liturgy. But the metrical psalters of the 16th and 17th centuries included all 150 Psalms. Here is my guitar performance of the shared Genevan tune, which can be found in my Genevan Psalter playlist on my YouTube channel.

Revised New Jerusalem Bible, review

As a young man raised in a Christian home, I became enamoured of The Jerusalem Bible, a translation based on La Bible de Jérusalem, published in France in 1956. I had tried such paraphrases as J. B. Phillips' New Testament in Modern English and Kenneth Taylor's The Living Bible. In fact, I had received a copy of the latter at Christmas 1970 and read it from cover to cover over the next six months or so. I was so put off by its obvious anachronisms and excessive literary breeziness that I quickly abandoned it for something better. The Jerusalem Bible (JB), published in 1966, seemed an obvious alternative. It reads very well and has a certain literary quality that appealed to me. I found it intriguing as well because it included those extra books in the Old Testament that Protestants group together as part of the Apocrypha.

YouTube channel organized

Over the past two months I have uploaded quite a large number of videos to my @ByzantineCalvinist YouTube channel, mostly guitar performances of the Genevan Psalm tunes and a very few hymns and canticles. But I have also posted videos relevant to my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions. Last week I reorganized the material in my channel, grouping them into playlists devoted to 

• Political Visions and Illusions
• Interviews and conversations
• Commentaries and lectures
• Citizenship Without Illusions
• Hymns for guitar
• The Niagara Psalter, and
  
• The Genevan Psalter

Some of these playlists include videos from other channels relevant to my work, including reviews of my books and personal interviews. I will be adding more to these lists over time. In the meantime, take a moment to click on some of the links immediately above and see what's on offer.

Liturgy page amended

As visitors to this blog will note, the right sidebar contains several pages devoted to matters related to the Genevan and other psalters. One of these is a page titled LORD'S DAY LITURGY  for Reformed Churches. I have now updated this page by adding several performances of tunes from my YouTube channel, especially the Genevan Psalter playlist. I have also provided two alternative settings of the Decalogue, to be used depending on whether the law is read according to its first or third use. The setting and metrical versification for the Creed are my own.

The Genevan Psalter: YouTube channel

My work at uploading guitar performances of the Genevan Psalm tunes continues apace. The entire playlist can be accessed here: The Genevan Psalter. As of the beginning of 2025 the playlist consists of 63 such performances. Here are two recent uploads:

Psalm 122:

Psalm 149:

Incidentally, I have received a second grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in support of further editing of my Genevan Psalter collection. I have chosen as a general title, "The Genevan Psalter for Everyone," and will shortly be seeking a publisher. If anyone knows of a possible publisher for my collection, I would be grateful for any suggestions. Thanks in advance.