This material is loosely modelled on "Hymnal Companions" and collections of "Hymn Stories", but its subject matter ("metrical psalm versions") imposes a different focus and format.
A "hymn" may be shaped by the writer's own experience: so understanding that experience illuminates the meaning of the hymn. A "psalm version" is formed around the Biblical text: so it involves personal and communal reflection about the nature of God's Word and our worship, and a study must consider each version's relationship to the Biblical text. Both psalms and hymns represent not only an author but also a worshipping community: their purpose grows out of that community's concept of worship, and their forms are defined by the poetic and musical culture of that community.
All across the Europe of the late fifteenth century, communities of worshippers began to question the traditional forms of worship. The standard Latin texts simply couldn't be "sung with understanding" by most congregations (and Gregorian chant had never been intended for exactly that). A new form was required: both more closely related to scripture and more publicly accessible. The "metric psalm version", often sung in four-part harmony, was a fundamental part of that new form.
Here then are examples and histories of metric psalm versions, from six languages and five centuries. There are individual psalms and representatives from complete psalters; and versions written by poets famous, obscure, and anonymous. All of these are still suitable for use as the dawn of the fourth millenium of the Psalms of David.
The background of a psalm version is not so much its author's biography, as a history of the communities who demanded or were offered the means to praise God in song, and a review of the issues facing them as they prepared to offer that praise.
Here is what the authors thought of their work: its proper duty and its proper use; and how they addressed the social and aesthetic challenges of their day. This should highlight how much the wider world of hymnody must owe to the influence of the psalms, and it is presented in hope that it will lead to thought and insight concerning the issues which we also must face.
And, last and least, here are lots of footnotes. They aren't to give an appearance of scholarship: anyone who takes the trouble to tabulate the sources referenced will quickly see how few sources, and to how little profit, have been consulted. This is not "the most assured results of modern scholarship," to be accepted uncritically and taken up into the tradition in toto, but merely sources and ideas meant to encourage others to study and think for themselves about issues that we have often ignored. There are therefore four kinds of footnotes:
If this stimulates further thought, or enables better study of these important issues, it will have been successful.
The "Psalms of David" have been used in worship and devotions for some three thousand years. And "metrical" poetry is one of our most ancient artistic traditions, practiced in pre-classical Greece even before David was composing psalms. But the two concepts would not meet for 2500 years.
A regular poetic meter is not essential for singing: several traditions of chant1 for non-metrical texts appear in modern English hymnals. But, despite considerable effort, no form of chant has found widespread acceptance among congregations of dedicated singers. Metrical hymns and songs dominate the repertoire. This is no accident: the metrical form grew out of a desire for congregational singing in worship. Now, by daily repetition, a dedicated community could memorize and sing the entire psalter to complex, rhythmically-nuanced Gregorian chant. And with a modicum of training and practice, a choir can sing almost any text clearly and beautifully to Anglican chant. But untrained folk must be able to sing without preparatory memorization or practice -- in short, they need "folk" psalms.
The musical solution was a tune with fixed metrical accents and fixed relationship of notes to syllables. These tunes were short enough to be easily memorized (even if the psalm had hundreds of lines), and could easily be sung to any text with matching poetic accents. Metrical spiritual songs could be memorized (as in the monastery), or read from a book, or at the worst, "lined out"2. And with the new simplified musical notation, many people could even read the music. In the fifteenth century, many cultures already had a tradition of "folk songs" like this; the Moravian communities were already singing hymns from hymnals with recognizably modern musical notation; and even in Catholic Germany, "carols" were sung by the people in church on special occasions. The idea simply worked -- it made congregational singing possible. Martin Luther simply extended the concept to encompass the Biblical psalms.
John Calvin, determined to purge worship of the unscriptural and unspiritual accretions of Medieval hagiolatry and sentimentality, excluded almost all songs except the psalms. Neither a poet nor a musician, he obtained the assistance of some of the most skilled poets and musicians in Europe to build a complete psalter (the "Genevan Psalter") that continues to shape our worship.
The first English psalters were influenced by Calvin's concept of worship. But different circumstances and ideals required different approaches, entailing more flexibility in the music, and less in the poetic forms. But English is not a static language any more than Latin was: every generation must answer the same questions: given that no translation can be perfect, how can the various ideals of "good" translation be balanced? How can we create good translations, or recognize them when they are created? How ought we use them in worship? How can we best provide music for them?
Eventually, the Scottish reformers passionately demanded a psalter that was true to the original, as well as simple enough for everyone to sing; in extraordinarily difficult times they gave up almost all else -- sometimes even life -- to attain it.
In the early eighteenth century, "independant" Isaac Watts insisted on hymns that expressed Christian thoughts and feelings, but still believed that the psalms should provide essential models, if not the exact words, for Christian song.
In the early nineteenth century, American writers -- whether following Anglican, presbyterian, or congregational traditions -- found it necessary to revise texts and music to produce psalm versions usable on the edge of civilization. And as the Church of England gained the freedom to sing hymns "of human composition", they also found the psalms (or earlier metrical translations) important as sources and models for their hymns.
Even in the twentieth century, both in America and Britain, new psalters continued to be written, and older psalters to be revised. And a late-twentieth-century "renaissance of hymnody", drawing both on the five-hundred-year-old European tradition and on recent composition from all over the world, produced psalms representing the old ideals in modern idiom.
Verbal language is not the only dynamic of human expression: musical styles and tastes and styles also shift continually. Tunes from many sources, including folk music and classical compositions, are included. Even different theoretical foundations of music, reflected in different musical modes are represented. But in all this variety the fundamental musical issues remain constant:
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Copyright © 2002,2003,2004, Stephen Hutcheson
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| These studies are created by members of the West Allen Church of Christ in Allen, Texas |