Oremus Metrical Psalter

Our friend Steve Benner informs us that the online Oremus Metrical Psalter is now complete. Each Psalm offers a musical score, followed by an organ recording of the music, then the lyrics, and finally the sources. The tunes are mostly familiar ones easily sung by most congregations in the English-speaking world. The Psalms are organized according to the 30-day schedule found in the Book of Common Prayer.

I have put a link to the Oremus Psalter in the right sidebar of this blog.

O Legado Litúrgico de Cranmer

The Brazilian web publication Lecionário has republished my recent post on Cranmer's liturgical legacy in Portuguese: O Legado Litúrgico de Cranmer.

A publicação brasileira Lecionário republicou minha postagem recente sobre o legado litúrgico de Cranmer em português: O Legado Litúrgico de Cranmer. Um trecho:

Havia algum propósito por trás do trabalho de Cranmer que escapou aos reformadores litúrgicos do século passado? Isto nos leva ao livro de Hicks, uma análise fascinante da gramática teológica que condicionou o trabalho do Arcebispo.

Psalm 150: Kodály

Cantemus Choral Institute recently posted this compelling performance of Zoltán Kodály's arrangement of Genevan Psalm 150 by the Pro Musica Girls' Choir conducted by Dénes Szabó:

Psalm 24: Sweelinck

So many of us love to hear Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's arrangements of the Genevan Psalms. Here is the Semper Reformanda Vocal Ensemble of Gáspár Károli University of the Hungarian Reformed Church performing his arrangement of Psalm 24:

Psaume 25: A toy, mon Dieu, mon cœur monte

Here is the Ensemble Lamaraviglia of Winterthur, Switzerland, singing Claude Goudimel's arrangement of Psalm 25. The tenors sing the melody line.

Cranmer's liturgical legacy

Last month I acquired two fascinating books which I strongly recommend to Christians from a variety of traditions interested in the church's liturgy: Alan Jacobs, The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography, and Zac Hicks, Worship by Faith Alone: Thomas Cranmer, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Reformation of Liturgy. Although both writers take on the same subject, they approach it in quite different ways. Both volumes made for pleasurable reading over the Christmas holidays, and they prompted me to reflect further on the relationship between how we worship and how we live our lives before the face of God.

Jacobs' book recounts the history of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), beginning in Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's library at the archiepiscopal palace at Croydon, south of London. The holder of the see of Canterbury was and remains the premier hierarch of the English church, and Cranmer ascended to that position at a time of great political and religious instability. Initially serving the mercurial King Henry VIII and then his devout son Edward VI, who died before reaching adulthood, Cranmer would be martyred for his evangelical faith under Henry's eldest daughter, Queen Mary I, who violently sought to drag England back to its previous Roman allegiance. During the years he led the church, Cranmer became persuaded of the truth of the doctrines of grace and embraced the Reformation. Church reform became possible after the King declared himself head of the church and severed it from Rome in 1534.

Liturgical standards and living faith: the case of the Evangelical and Reformed Church

My latest post in Kuyperian Commentary can be found here: Liturgical standards and living faith: the case of the Evangelical and Reformed Church. An excerpt:

So what was this Evangelical and Reformed Church? It was created by the merger of two predecessor bodies, the (German) Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) and the (German) Evangelical Synod of North America. The German Reformed were the descendants of Reformed Christians who had immigrated from German-speaking Europe, especially Switzerland and the Palatinate, the latter of which was once ruled by Elector Frederick III “the Pious” (1515-1576), who commissioned the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563. The German Reformed began in 1725 and were initially under the care of Classis Amsterdam of the Dutch Reformed Church until 1793. During the late 19th century, efforts to unite with the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America were unsuccessful.

Read the entire article here.

The Grail/Gelineau Psalter: Psalm 23

Thirty-five years ago I published an article in Reformed Worship titled, Straight from Scripture, in which I treated briefly Gelineau psalmody, a method of singing the Psalms using The Grail translation. Roman Catholics have sung the Psalms in this way for nearly seven decades, beginning in France with the publication of La Bible de Jérusalem. Here is an excerpt from my article:

One of the more interesting ways of singing the psalms was developed by Joseph Gelineau of France. Of all the methods of singing the psalms, Gelineau's chant best preserves the Hebrew poetic style, retaining both the parallelism and the metrical structure of the original. Ancient Hebrew meter is somewhat like early English meter (e.g., nursery rhymes) in that it focuses on the number of stresses within a line rather than on the number of syllables. Gelineau psalmody is often sung to the Grail translation, which was produced specifically for this purpose. The following passage (again from Psalm 54) is "pointed" to indicate the regular rhythmic stresses in each line:

Psalms as the Engine of the Church with Susannah Black Roberts

Susannah Black Roberts: "Singing the Psalms, chanting the Psalms moves the plot of God's kingdom forward." What an intriguing thought! Here is the larger context: Psalms as the Engine of the Church with Susannah Black Roberts.

A new Dutch psalter: De Nieuwe Psalmberijming

One of the features of language is that it changes over time, usually slowly and incrementally, but sometimes surprisingly quickly, as in the shift from middle to modern English. It is good to keep this in mind as we look more closely at the new Dutch versification of the biblical Psalms produced in 2021. Called De Nieuwe Psalmberijming, it follows at least four previous versifications of the Psalms, as set to the historic Genevan tunes. But we should also be aware that liturgical language tends to lag behind contemporary usage, as I noted in this article more than a decade ago: Liturgy and archaic language. Thus many updates of liturgical material leave some archaisms untouched, primarily because parishioners are used to them and prefer to worship in familiar albeit older words. This explains the continued affection in some circles for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the King James Version of the Bible, the 1650 Scottish Psalter, and even the Revised Standard Version's retention of the old second-person-singular pronouns in addresses to God, a usage now in decline amongst English-speaking Christians.

Psalm 51 in Aramaic

This is a plaintive rendition of Psalm 51 (50 by Septuagint numbering) sung in Aramaic by the Trio Mandili. Who could fail to be moved by this?

Psalm 121: De Nieuwe Psalmberijming

Singing from the new Dutch versification of the Psalms: Psalm 121:

Advent I: Psalm 25 and Wachet Auf

Ancient tradition associates Psalm 25 with the First Sunday in Advent. Here is our new friend, the Rev. Detlef Korsen, singing the Genevan version of this Psalm while accompanying himself on guitar:

And while we are on the subject of Advent, here is Korsen singing Philip Nicolai's famous Advent hymn, Wachet Auf, or Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying, in its original rhythmic form:

New England Psalm Book, 1758

I recently heard from the Rev. Jeremy Bullen, of Wallace, Idaho, who alerted me to a website that he has posted devoted to the 1758 revision of the New England Psalm Book. The original Bay Psalm Book was published in 1640 and is generally regarded as the first English-language book printed in the Americas. This newer edition was the creation of the Rev. Thomas Prince (1687-1758), who pastored the Old South Church in Boston and was a supporter of the First Great Awakening of the 18th century. An archived version of this psalter can be found here as well.

Bullen has included a brief comparison of the two versions from Psalm 1:3, a list of metres, a list of possible tunes to match the metres, and metrical canticles from other parts of the Bible. In short, this is a psalter from which people can still sing, using the resources that he has provided. Thanks are due to Bullen for the work he has put into this website.

Psalm 51: Sweelinck

Here is the Gesualdo Consort singing Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's arrangement of Genevan Psalm 51:

Everypsalm Psalter: a review

Here is a brief review of Jesse and Leah Roberts' Everypsalm Psalter, based on the complete digital version of the Psalter found here. I am assuming that the bound volume is identical to the pdf copy available for download. There are 250 pages in total covering all 150 Psalms, along with three indices: Psalms by Category, Psalms by Author, and Psalms by Theme/feel. Among the authors listed are included David, Asaph, Korah, Solomon, Moses, Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman the Ezrahite. The third index includes Psalms for Courage, Justice, Suffering, Gathered Worship, Rest, Dancing, and the Messiah.

Everypsalm Psalter

Just over a year ago, I called readers' attention to a pandemic-era project of singing through all 150 Psalms with original music under the general title of Poor Bishop Hooper's Everypsalm project. This was the work of Jesse and Leah Roberts, whose YouTube channel can be found here.

Happily, in response to listeners' demands, they have now produced a bound copy of the Everypsalm Psalter, which is now available for purchase. I hope to review this collection soon. Stay tuned.

Psalm 81 to 100's tune

A member of the Lovers of Metrical Psalmody Facebook group alerted us to this metrical psalm performed by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers: To God Our Strength. The text is a metrical version of Psalm 81 with music arranged by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw, but, remarkably, it's sung (altogether too quickly) to the Genevan melody for Psalm 100. The recording was released in 1993.

Addendum: I have corrected one of the sentences above. Parker and Shaw arranged the music, but the text is from Henry Ainsworth's Psalter, from which the 17th-century community known to Americans as the Pilgrims sang. Here is the text of stanzas 1, 2, and 7:

To God our strength, shout joyfully;
To Jacob’s God shout triumphing.
Take up a psalm, and timbrel bring,
The pleasant harp with psaltery.
     
Blow up the trumpet at new‐moon:
In set time at day of our feast.
For it to Isr'el is an heast:
To Jacob’s God due to be doon.
    
Jehovah God of thee I am,
Which thee ascending up did guide
From land of Egypt. Open wide
Thy mouth, and I will fill the same.

A copy of the Ainsworth Psalter can be purchased here.

Psalm 103: Korsen

One more Genevan Psalm auf Deutsch by the Rev. Detlef Korsen:

Psalm 99: Bahasa Indonesia

Here is a group of Indonesian Christians singing Genevan Psalm 99 in their own language. The musical notation is fairly easy to read because it's based on numbers.