Dutch psalters and service book

I have recently acquired a small stack of liturgical books from the library of a recently deceased minister in the Christian Reformed Church. These include metrical psalters from three Reformed denominations in the Netherlands and an intriguing service book showing the influence of the 20th-century Liturgical Movement.

The first book I want to highlight here is a psalter and hymnal used in the former Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), a denomination that lasted from 1892 to 2004. I have had more than one copy of this collection over the decades, one of which (with quite small print) I recently gave to a younger friend headed for seminary. This volume reflects the decisions of the General Synod of Middelburg of 1933 and contains the 1773 versification of the Psalms in use from that year until well into the late 20th century and even into the 21st in many places.

One assumes that this volume is similar, if not identical, to what Abraham Kuyper, who engineered the merger that created the GKN, would have sung from in the churches he pastored and attended. 

The second volume in this small collection is a more recent entry into Dutch liturgical life, namely, the Gereformeerd Kerkboek of 1986. On first examination, I assumed that it was a product of the former GKN only around two decades before its absorption into the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland (PKN). But it soon became evident that, despite the front material claiming use in the GKN, mention of synods of several Dutch cities rule this out, leading to the conclusion that the denomination is almost certainly the GKN Vrijgemaakt, that is, the group that split with the main body of the GKN in 1944. This is the group whose emigrants started the Canadian Reformed Churches and the Free Reformed Churches in Australia. The authors of the texts are listed on p. 370.

The language is fairly up-to-date, discarding the obsolete noun and definite article case forms in favour of a more contemporary idiom.

 

A third book is a psalter and hymnal used in the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK), the large mainline Protestant church in the Netherlands that existed from the 16th century until 2004. Its pages are severely yellowed and the print exceedingly small. The texts of the Psalms are from 1773. The volume is the 19th printing of the 1938 edition offered by the General Synod of the NHK. 

The final volume is not a psalter but a service book for use in the NHK, showing the influence of the 20th-century Liturgical Movement. The Dienstboek voor de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk of 1955 is not a psalter or a hymnal. In fact, it bears some similarity to the Book of Common Prayer and to the liturgies and service music typically found in Lutheran hymnals. It represents an effort to recover the ancient liturgical forms discarded in many places during the Reformation era. It thus includes texts and music for the Gloria in Excelsis, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, and so forth, namely, the ancient hymns not typically found until recently in many Reformed liturgies. The NHK did not mandate the use of these recovered forms but offered them as a resource to the churches.

The Gloria in Excelsis (in Dutch of course):

The Agnus Dei ("Christ, the Lamb of God"):

The Sanctus ("Holy holy holy"):

The Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God", another version):

 

To what extent this Dienstboek was used in the former NHK and now in the PKN I cannot say. But it does stand in a line of liturgical renewal that has affected Protestants and Catholics alike, the latter especially after the Second Vatican Council. In this respect the book is broadly ecumenical in flavour.