Stolz: Psalm 18

Diephouse & Scheer: Psalm 80

Today I was contacted by Greg Scheer, Minister of Worship at Church of the Servant, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Music Associate at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. He informed me that he and David Diephouse, historian at Calvin, have co-authored a paraphrase of Psalm 80 to be sung to the proper Genevan melody. From his blog post:

A month ago, I decided that Psalm 80′s vine themes would fit perfectly with a sermon on “I am the Vine.” But I wasn’t sold on any of the versions I found. The closest thing to something that excited me was a stodgy metrical text paired with a great Genevan tune that I hadn’t heard before, O PASTEUR D’ISRAEL, ESCOUTE.

So I sent David Diephouse an email: I think there could be some kind of rich ties between God clearing a place to plant a vine (Israel), Jesus ingrafting us into himself the Vine, and perhaps even the fruit of the vine and the Tree of Life. Play with it and see what you come up with, whether it’s a literal metrical setting or a looser hymn that treats Psalm 80 through New Testament eyes.

He, like me, works best when a songwriting project is a diversion from a pile of “real” work, and he quickly sent me a first draft. He would insist that the bulk of the final draft is my words, but the fact is he established the basic structure and set up key phrases like “graft us into the Living Vine.” Add a bit of advice on Goudimel’s harmonization from our church’s local music historian, Cal Stapert, and you end up with a really solid metrical Psalm that revives an overlooked, but beautifully singable Genevan tune.

The text is a free paraphrase with a christological focus, similar in many respects to Isaac Watts' psalm paraphrases from the 18th century. Here is a pdf file of the piece: O faithful Shepherd of your people; and here is an mp3 file of the congregation singing it. The harmonization is that of Claude Goudimel.

I myself set this psalm to verse last year and wrote about it here: Updates: Psalms 70 and 80. My own text is somewhat more literal than Diephouse's, as can be seen here for purposes of comparison.

Magyar zsoltár: Psalm 90

A brass band leads the assembled congregation in singing Psalm 90 in the rain, while a man in a bow tie sings along on stage:



A bearded man sings the same song. Obviously not a professional singer, yet his performance is just as obviously heart-felt:

Update: Psalm 33

My 77th psalm versification has been posted. This one is Psalm 33, which has no title in the Hebrew and appears to be a continuation of the previous psalm, which ends with words similar to the opening words of 33. In this psalm we first encounter the command to sing to the LORD "a new song," which recurs five more times in the Psalms, once in Isaiah and twice in Revelation.

What exactly is this new song we are enjoined to sing? Can a church that sings from so ancient a book as the biblical Psalter really sing a song no one has sung before? Is that what new means? Is this a licence for endless liturgical innovation, as some would have it? Not necessarily. In scripture the adjective new often refers to the redeemed life in Christ, in which we turn aside from the old ways that kept us in sin. A new song is one in which we celebrate afresh the grace of God, whose mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). This may be in freshly composed words or, better, in the inspired words of the biblical authors. As Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon writes, "The song of the believers is always a new song, because it springs from an inner divine font. It is the song of those who are born again in Christ and therefore 'walk in newness of life' (Romans 6:4)."

My own text is a rhymed versification in six stanzas. The traditional rhyming scheme is ABABCCDEED, which I have modified to ABCBDDEFGF to reflect better the stresses in the melody and thus to render it more singable. The metre is highly irregular: 98 98 66 56 65. As for the tune, which is in the dorian mode, it has had a special allure for at least two composers, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Zoltán Kodály. Commercial recordings of Sweelinck's music often begin with his arrangement of this psalm. I am unable to locate an online performance of Kodály's arrangement, but here is Sweelinck's:



In the Genevan Psalter Psalm 33 shares its melody with Psalm 67, which I set to verse a decade ago. Revisiting the tune presented an opportunity for me to alter, and hopefully improve, the arrangement I composed at that time. Its flavour is mostly the same, but there is now more movement in especially the lower voices.

Then sings my Seoul . . .

More from the Samyang Presbyterian Church in Korea:

János Pálúr: Psalm 50

In general I am not an enthusiast for the ubiquitous organ improvisations on the Genevan tunes appearing so often on the web. However, organist János Pálúr's improvisation on Psalm 50 is a notable exception and is worth hearing. This was recorded on 5 July 2009 at the Great Reformed Church in Debrecen, Hungary:

Singing the Psalms 2012

There was a good turnout last week for my most recent lecture on Singing the Psalms at Redeemer University College, and I am grateful that it was so well received by those in attendance. One of my former students attended for the second year in a row and was kind enough to present me with a copy of the 1912 Psalter, whose centenary we mark this year. He is a member of the Free Reformed Churches, whose members sing from this collection at their worship services.

I will take this opportunity to remind readers that I am available to lecture on this topic, complete with a multimedia presentation including visuals and sound files. If interested, please contact me at dkoyzis[at]redeemer[dot]ca for more information.

Psalm 119: voice and guitar

Stolz: Psalm 17

Psalm 15: voice and guitar

I recorded this last week at the First Christian Reformed Church, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada:

Singing the Psalms: Korea

The Genevan Psalms are being sung in some unexpected venues. Over the past week or so, a member of the Samyang Presbyterian Church in Seoul, Korea, has posted videos of the congregation singing the Genevan Psalms in their own language. These can be found at this youtube channel. Stay tuned, as more will undoubtedly be posted in the coming days. Here is a sample below:

Mozarabic chant:: Psalm 1

Am I alone in thinking this Mozarabic chant from Spain sounds remarkably Byzantine in flavour? It's sung in Latin, of course, but it could just as easily be Greek.



Later: A perusal of the album on amazon.com reveals that the singer is one Lykourgos Angelopoulos, who was trained in the Byzantine tradition. This explains the apparent similarity between Byzantine and Mozarabic chant as performed above.

Dancing his praise

As a followup to my earlier review posts of the new Canadian Reformed metrical psalter, I want to call attention to an improvement in the translation of Psalm 150:4, which runs thus in one of the English-language versions of the Bible: "Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!" In the 1984 edition of the Book of Praise, the verse is rendered as follows:

Praise Him with the pipe and timbrel.
Praise Him with stringed instruments . . . .

Conspicuous by its absence is any reference to dancing, whose omission from the versified text appears to signal an uncharacteristically paraphrastic approach to the psalm. But this oversight has been rectified in the new edition:

Worship him in exultation
and with tambourine and dance.

Now that this correction has been made, perhaps we shall see more ventures like this taking off amongst Reformed churches:

Please register for Singing the Psalms here.

Smith to praise bands: support congregation

Calvin College's prolific James K. A. Smith has published an open letter to praise bands that is worth reading and pondering. Writes Smith:

In particular, my concern is that we, the church, have unwittingly encouraged you to simply import musical practices into Christian worship that--while they might be appropriate elsewhere--are detrimental to congregational worship. More pointedly, using language I first employed in Desiring the Kingdom, I sometimes worry that we've unwittingly encouraged you to import certain forms of performance that are, in effect, "secular liturgies" and not just neutral "methods." Without us realizing it, the dominant practices of performance train us to relate to music (and musicians) in a certain way: as something for our pleasure, as entertainment, as a largely passive experience. The function and goal of music in these "secular liturgies" is quite different from the function and goal of music in Christian worship.

I might add that this tendency is present, not just in praise bands, but also in organs and traditional church choirs, whose anthems and liturgical responses often substitute for those of the congregation. Although I cannot entirely accept the Orthodox and Reformed Presbyterian proscription of instruments in worship, I do believe there is nothing more beautiful than unaccompanied congregational part singing.

Stolz: Psalm 16

February updates

I have just posted my recently completed text and arrangement for Psalm 15. Coming near the beginning of the Psalter, this psalm bears some similarity to the first, extolling the virtues of the righteous person who avoids evil ways and follows the path of truth. Only such a person can be admitted to God's holy temple. Although this psalm does not refer to the law as such, the substance of its precepts is much in evidence here: the godly person refrains from wronging others, keeping unswervingly to the ways of God.

Of course, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that our own righteousness is insufficient to bring us into God's presence. The author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus Christ "entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption" (9:12). None of us "walks blamelessly, and does what is right" (Psalm 15:2), but Jesus does, and in him we trust for our salvation.

Here is my text below:

Who may abide, LORD, in your tent?
Who may ascend your holy mountain?
Those who are blameless in their walk,
faithfully doing what is right,
who from their hearts the truth have spoken,

who do not slander with their tongues,
and work no evil on their neighbours,
nor bring reproach upon a friend.
Their eyes despise the sinner's ways,
but those who fear the LORD they honour.

They keep the vows that they have made,
even to their own disadvantage.
They freely lend to those in need;
they never can be swayed by bribes.
All who do good shall not be shaken.

The tune has a metrical structure of 89 889 and is in the mixolydian mode. The text is unrhymed. With this text, I have now exceeded the halfway mark, with 76 Psalms: 50 percent plus one of the entire Psalter. (The 50-percent-plus-one threshold is a significant one for us political scientists!) As can be seen below, I have also posted my arrangement on my youtube channel. At some point I may post a slightly different arrangement I have come up with for guitar.

On another matter, I have considerably revised the videos page of the website. I am no longer making an effort to post any and every performance I can find of the Genevan Psalms. Instead I am now posting selected videos, along with links to the youtube channels of those who regularly post such performances. There is also a list of keywords that can be used to locate more performances.

Stolz and Koyzis: Psalm 15

CanRef Church adopts ESV

In my two-part review of the Canadian Reformed Churches' new provisional psalter last year, I made this prediction:

The Bible translation used is the 1984 edition of the New International Version, which is a change from the Revised Standard Version used in the 1984 BOP. However, the NIV 1984 has now been updated and a new edition has just been published, the NIV 2011 (Click here to read my preliminary assessment of this new edition). Whether the CanRef Churches will adopt the update or switch to another translation remains to be seen. In any event, their Authorized Provisional Version was outdated at virtually the moment it was published. My guess is that the authorized final version will use yet another translation – possibly the English Standard Version, which is favoured in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Presbyterian Church in America.

Local pastor Wes Bredenhof has confirmed that his congregation, Providence Canadian Reformed Church, will indeed be adopting the ESV: Switching from NIV to ESV. Bredenhof:

At our last Council meeting we discussed this report and came to a decision. Since the old NIV is no longer available and the new NIV is not acceptable, we are compelled to adopt a different translation. Of the options available (NASB, NKJV, ESV), the ESV is the most attractive. We have therefore decided to adopt the ESV effective September 1, 2012.

Whether the rest of the denomination will follow suit remains to be seen.

Stolz: Psalm 14