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:

 

Only the last of these made it into the Genevan Psalter of 1562, due undoubtedly to its use at the close of the weekly sunday worship service. I am told that the tunes for Mary's and Zechariah's songs had been used in Strasbourg for Psalms 3 and 137 respectively. From there they made their way into the liturgies of the Dutch Reformed Churches, where they came to be associated with the other two Lukan canticles. In many places they are still used as such today.

In 1781 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved for liturgical use a collection of 67 Scottish Metrical Paraphrases taken from the Scriptures outside the Psalter proper. Like the 1650 Scottish Psalter, these paraphrases were sung to the same tunes as the Psalms which were mostly in common metre (8 6 8 6) and long metre (8 8 8 8). I have in my personal library a copy of the Scottish Psalter printed in 1788. It includes the Scottish Metrical Paraphrases, which had been approved only seven years earlier.