Psalm 113 to its original tune?

Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura's thesis is controversial and definitely open to question, but it is intriguing to think that her theory may have enabled us to recover the original tunes to which the biblical Psalms were set. Here is a particularly lovely example:

Here is an account of Haïk-Vantoura's apparent discovery broadcast over NPR in 1986:

More of Michael Levi's reconstructions of the Psalms according to Haïk-Vantoura's reading can be found here.

Psalm 100: Korsen

Here is one more psalm performed very nicely by the Rev. Detlef Korsen:

Genfer Psalter: the Psalms in German

Ever since Ambrosius Lobwasser (1515-1585) first rendered the Genevan Psalms in German, speakers of that language have sung from this historic collection, although perhaps not in great numbers. In recent months, the Rev. Detlef Korsen has been posting videos of himself singing from the Genevan Psalter. Korsen is a pastor in the Evangelish-lutherische Landeskirche Hannovers in the greater Bremen area of northwest Germany. The texts are from several sources. Some of the Psalms he sings a cappella, and others he accompanies with guitar. The full collection of his videos can be found here. Here he is singing Psalm 3:

Take some time to visit his YouTube channel and explore his posted videos of the Psalms.

Reformation celebration: two psalm paraphrases

Although the tradition of metrical psalmody is more associated with the Reformed than with the Lutheran tradition, Martin Luther himself penned a very few psalm paraphrases. The most familiar to us is undoubtedly A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, a free paraphrase of Psalm 46. Here it is in its original rhythmic form:

The second of Luther's psalm paraphrases is From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee, paraphrasing Psalm 130:

Psałterz Poznański: Psalms 22 and 68

I've been listening quite a bit to the new CD of music from the Psałterz Poznański. Here are two psalms posted on the Cithara Sanctorum YouTube channel, Psalms 22 and 68:

 

Psałterz Poznański: book and CD

Last month I wrote of meeting and spending time with Andrzej Polaszek, a Reformed pastor from Poznań, Poland, during his visit to North America. Last week I received in the mail from Polaszek a booklet containing music and fresh Polish-language texts for one-hundred Genevan Psalms, published in 2017, and a just-published CD containing recordings of 12 Genevan Psalms in Polish. The performing musicians include Andrzej and his wife Agata and three more members of the Polaszek family, along with several others. The instrumentalists play a selection of unusual instruments, some of which have mediaeval and renaissance origins. Among those listed are the romantic lute, Irish bouzouki, Renaissance mandora, hurdy-gurdy, zither, psaltery, alto and tenor rebec, and several different kinds of flutes and flute-related instruments.

How to read the Psalms for all they're worth

Here is a very fine article at Anglican Compass on How to read the Psalms for all they're worth, by W. David O. Taylor, a theologian at Fuller Seminary and author of Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life. He offers his advice in seven points. An excerpt:

2. Read the Psalms consistently, rather than occasionally and sporadically.

This was Eugene Peterson’s advice to me as a seminary student at Regent College in 1995: to read a psalm a day as a life’s habit. It’s also advice that Christians throughout the centuries have taken to heart. Consider then how you might read a psalm a day yourself. Begin with Psalm 1 and march your way to the end, to Psalm 150, and then start over.

Don’t become too anxious if you miss a day or two, however, or if you get bogged down with the longer psalms. The point isn’t to read the psalms perfectly. There’s no scorecard, thank God. The point is simply to read the psalms over and over again, so that they’ll have a chance to saturate our hearts and minds with the good words of God.

Of course, once you've started to read a psalm a day, you might then move on to take up the 30-day schedule in the Book of Common Prayer's Psalter.

Psalm 24, St. George's, Edinburgh

The Free Church of Scotland faithfully continues its longstanding practice of singing the biblical Psalter. Here is the Scottish Psalter's version of Psalm 24, sung to ST. GEORGE'S, EDINBURGH. Our former congregation often sang this as an entrance hymn during the celebration of the Lord's Supper.

Psalm 121 from the 1650

Another congregational psalm from the Free Church of Scotland: Psalm 121 to the familiar tune FRENCH:

Sweelinck Ensemble: Psalm 42

Few composers can match Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's arrangements of the Genevan Psalms in beauty and creativity. Here is Het Sweelinck Ensemble performing Psalm 42 at the Grote Kerk in Leerdam, Netherlands:

Psalm 103: Falkirk Free Kirk

Here once more is the congregation of the Falkirk Free Church in Scotland singing the first part of Psalm 103 to the tune of Before the Throne of God Above:

Psalm 122 from the 1650

Here is one more psalm sung by the congregation of the Falkirk Free Church, Psalm 122:

Psalm 2: Sweelinck

Here are the King's Singers performing Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's arrangement of Psalm 2:

Foundations Psalter

SermonAudio has recently published an extensive version of the 1650 Scottish Psalter complete with the texts of all 150 Psalms and multiple possible tunes for each psalm. As I've observed many times before, the vast majority of texts in the 1650 are in common or ballad metre (8 6 8 6) or its double counterpart. Thus one can easily mix and match the texts and tunes. This is the origin of the well-known split-leaf psalters used in Scotland and elsewhere.

This new edition is called the Foundations Psalter whose website can be found here. Once you are in the site, you will see four introductory paragraphs. Below this you will see two tabs, one for the "Psalter" and one for the "Psalter Tunes." If you choose the first tab, you will see each of the Psalms listed by number. Click on an individual Psalm and you will find a playable organ rendition of the tune followed by two tabs, labelled Lyrics and Bible. If you stay on the Lyrics tab, you will see the text from the Scottish Psalter. If you click on Bible, you will see the King James Version's prose translation of the same psalm.

Psalm 121 from the 1650

Here is a heartfelt sung version of Psalm 121 according to the Scottish Psalter of 1650 by the Falkirk Free Church congregation in Scotland:

Polaszek and the Psałterz Poznański

For several years now I have been a fan of the work of Andrzej and Agata Polaszek in rendering the biblical Psalms in singable texts in their native Polish language. Last week I was finally privileged to meet Andrzej, who is visiting North America this month and decided to pay me a visit here in Hamilton. We met at a local Tim Hortons and spent some time in conversation, which ranged from topics related to the liturgical use of the Psalms to the complexities of Polish history. Polaszek is a minister in a congregation in Poznań affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a small denomination of recent vintage centred primarily in the United States. Last year Polaszek completed a PhD at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw on Maciej Rybiński's Polish version of the Genevan Psalter.

West gallery quires and a Thomas Hardy novel

These days we are wont to think of church organs as traditional and worship bands as new, but in England during the 19th century it was just the opposite. Throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th, rural parish churches had their own west gallery quires, groups of amateur musicians who led the singing. There was nothing refined or high brow about this music. It was often quite rough. Too rough for the partisans of the Oxford Movement who preferred gregorian chant and a higher aesthetic.

The transition from west gallery quires to the organ was captured by the English author Thomas Hardy in his second published novel, Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872). Nancy and I recently saw a cinematic version of this, and last week I read the novel itself. Hardy's preface focusses on this transition, leading the reader to think it will be the major theme of the book:

Psalm 1: Gilligan

This metrical psalm is obviously not a strict versification of the prose text, but an interpretation and a contextualization to boot, tailored to the seafarers and the generation that grew up watching television in the 1960s. If anything, it proves that even the versifiers of psalmody can have a sense of humour.

Isaiah, Mighty Seer, in Days of Old

Singing the Psalms is an integral part of Christian worship. But we do well to sing other parts of the Bible in our liturgies too. Indeed, there is an ancient tradition of doing so, and some have claimed that the entire Hebrew text of the Old Testament contains musical notations for chanting. In 1526, nine years after he nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Martin Luther published his Deutsche Messe, or German Mass, which was a reworking of the Latin rite in the German language. Rather than translating directly from Latin, Luther saw fit to elaborate on the songs in the ordinary of the mass, including the Sanctus. In its traditional form, the Sanctus runs as follows:

Psalm 148 and the Benedicite omnia opera

The Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint (LXX), varies from the Hebrew in several respects, including entire books absent from the latter. These are known as Deuterocanonical by Roman Catholics and Apocrypha by Protestants. Included are additions to two books within the undisputed canon, namely, Esther and Daniel. One of the additions to Daniel comes in the third chapter, which recounts the episode in which the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar consigns three Hebrew young men, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, to the fiery furnace for not bowing down to the golden image that the king had set up. In the Hebrew version, the three young men simply emerge from the ordeal unscathed, much to the king's astonishment, but with little fanfare. In the Greek version, the author ascribes an entire canticle to the three youths which they sing during the ordeal. It is generally known by its first words in Latin, Benedicite omnia opera, about which I wrote 16 years ago, and in English as the Song of the Three Youths or the Song of the Three Holy Children.