Psalms in Our Time

2. John Calvin and the Genevan Psalter

The first reformers in Switzerland, led by Ulrich Zwingli, absolutely forbade every kind of music in worship. This position, bizarre as it might seem today, was not unusual among radical reformers. Many reasons have been suggested for it: the reformers did not accept the degenerate tradition of professional performances, and determined to work out all their forms of worship on strictly Biblical authority; the traditional hymns were filled with "idolatrous and superstitious horrors"¹; congregational singing raised questions of possible conflicts with the Biblical command for women to "be silent in the assembly" or with the presence of "unregenerate" or "unfaithful" participants. And it was not easy to provide Biblical songs suitable for congregational use.

John Calvin tried, at first unsuccessfully, to introduce congregational singing. In his 1537 Articles he wrote, "We cannot estimate the benefit and edification that can be derived from congregational singing until we experience it. Certainly the prayers of the faithful are now so cold that we should be ashamed and confounded." While in exile in Strasbourg, he heard the spirited Lutheran hymn-singing and encouraged it in the Reformed congregation. A visitor described the worship there:

... we sing a psalm of David or some prayer from the New Testament. It is sung by everyone, men and women, together, with a beautiful unanimity. You see, each one has a music book in his hand; that is how they keep up with each other. Never did I imagine that it could be so pleasing and delightful...at first, as I beheld this little company, exiled from countries everywhere for upholding the honor of God and the Gospel, I would weep, not from sadness but from joy at hearing them sing so heartily, giving thanks to the Lord that he had led them to a place where his name is honored and glorified. No one could believe the joy experienced when singing the praises and wonders of the Lord in his own native language, as we do here.

Unlike some of his followers, Calvin did not categorically repudiate newly written hymns. But he did say that "we will not find better, or more appropriate songs" for praising God than those "the Holy Spirit composed and spoke through David" and "when we sing, we may be sure that God puts the words in our mouths as if he himself sang to us to exalt his glory."² And he acted on that belief, creating a hymnal consisting almost exclusively of the 150 Old Testament Psalms³.

The process, begun in Strasbourg in 1541 with about forty metrical psalms, was completed in 1562. By then Calvin was back in Geneva, and had overcome resistance to introduce congregational singing from his hymnal. The practice spread even into Catholic areas, leading to desperately and progressively oppressive edicts from the authorities: psalm-singing was eventually forbidden in all French territories.⁴

Calvin was no musician at all, and not much of a poet. But he enlisted the famous poet Clement Marot, the distinguished scholar Theodore de Beza, and several musicians (including Louis Bourgeois and Charles Gaudimel) to do the work. The Marot and Beza texts, revised to account for four centuries of changes in French linguistic usages⁵, are still in use.

In English, several Genevan Psalms⁶, translated by puritan exiles, formed the impetus and core of the first English and Scottish psalters. And the entire psalter (in the original meters for the original tunes) was translated into many languages including German⁷, Dutch, Hungarian, and even English⁸.

The Music

The Genevan psalm tunes constitute one of the world's greatest musical achievements. The entire corpus of 125 tunes has been in continuous use in French-speaking areas and in other Reformed traditions; many of the tunes have been widely used with hymn texts in various languages, including English⁹ and German¹⁰.

The reason for this success is simple: they just work. The melodies, following Calvin's criteria,¹¹ are "not light or flighty, but have weight and majesty" for the sake of reverence. They are mostly "through-composed", that is, each line of music is different: which makes memorization slightly more difficult, but makes singing many verses of a psalm less monotonous than with typical "Sunday School Songs" containing three practically identical lines out of four.

No organs (or any kind of musical instruments) were tolerated in Reformed worship, and the tunes were first published without harmony¹². Beginning about 1547, Bourgeois and others composed various harmonizations, ranging from simple note-against-note harmonies (like most hymns today) to complex motet-style arrangements.¹³ But all of these were still intended to be used at home, or elsewhere outside the congregational worship¹⁴.

When Bourgeois attempted to introduce four-part harmony into the worship (as the Lutherans had been using for 40 years), the town council threw him in jail for disturbing the worship -- some people had been confused by the new form of tunes. Calvin interceded to have him released, and eventually four-part harmony was tolerated in worship. The "melody" in those early arrangements was usually given to the tenor voice, although probably most men and women simply sang the melody. A "precentor" with a strong voice led the congregation (sometimes with hand motions to indicate the beat.)

Although the melodies are almost exclusively diatonic (and hence easier to sing than the chromatic tunes of the romantic and modern movements) they achieve great emotional and tonal variety by use of various medieval church modes. The harmonies (composed by Bourgeois, Gaudimel, and other distinguished musicians of the day) pre-date any harmonic music heard today outside of esotoric "medieval art song" concerts, and thus have their own fresh beauty for singers who are willing to stretch their ears; they can form a refreshing contrast to the Victorian and Gospel harmonies that dominate thoughtlessly traditionalistic hymnals.

The tunes provide for a wide variety of verse forms (representing over 100 different poetic meters). The ideal¹⁵ was for each psalm to use a meter best suiting its poetic requirements, and to have its own tune (that is, a "proper" tune) which met its musical requirements, fit its mood, and helped the people remember the associated words.

Unlike Gregorian chant, the musical beat is simple (using only two note lengths: "beat" and "half-beat"), making it easy for congregations to sing the tunes briskly,¹⁶ together. That, in turn, allowed the music to be an effective vehicle for the words -- fast enough to maintain the coherence of words and phrases without getting lost in crosstalk. The musical beats are not forced into static march- or waltz-time measures, but are combined in an almost endless variety of patterns. This is not music to dance to, or perhaps even to listen to; but it is glorious music to sing: which is exactly what is required.

The tunes have never been completely forgotten: indeed, "Genevan 134", better known as "Old Hundredth", is probably the best-known hymn tune in English-speaking countries. But their current wide use outside the Reformed tradition is due to Robert Bridges' 1899 Yattendon Hymnal and Ralph Vaughan Williams' 1906 English Hymnal, which re-introduced many of these fine tunes into broader English usage.

Notes

¹For instance, praising Mary as "Queen of Heaven," "Mother of God," and "only mediator;" or commemorating people or events from pious church legends. See the discussion in Christian Singers of Germany, online at CCEL.

²Preface to the Genevan Psalter, online at CCEL.

³It included several other Biblical songs, such as the "Song of Simeon" from the Gospel of Luke .

⁴Shortly afterwards, the Catholic authorities and the French people solved the problem by a massacre of all the protestants in France: an atrocity that dwarfed the Nazi genocides.

⁵Just as the sixteenth-century English Bible translations are frequently unintelligible to the average twenty-first-century reader.

⁶Including Psalms 100 and 104.

⁷By Lobwassar: see Christian Singers of Germany, online at CCEL.

⁸First in 1632; most recently, in 1987 for the Psalter Hymnal produced by Reformed Churches in North America; and including a rather botched attempt by Francis Parkinson, signer of the Declaration of Independence, for Dutch Reformed churches in New York.

⁹See "Old Hundredth" and "Genevan Hundred Eighteenth"; "Old Hundred Thirteenth" comes to us through Genevan sources; The Anglo-Genevan "Old Twenty-Fifth" is in a similar style.

¹⁰The Chorale Book for England, online at CCEL, included several Genevan tunes that had been adopted in German hymnals: see its musical index.

¹¹In the "Epistle" (preface) to the 1542 edition of the psalter.

¹²Like Gregorian chant, which they somewhat resembled.

¹³The fuging tunes and gospel-song imitations of them share the same defects, considered from the point of view of the ability to convey a text clearly: this alone should caution us to limit their use, and to consider carefully before using them at all.

¹⁴Like Luther, Calvin proposed to teach the new tunes first to children, either at home or in the classroom. The elaborate motets were, of course, never suitable for congregational use.

¹⁵This was not fully realized. 125 tunes served 152 texts; a few tunes were used with two, three, or in one case even four texts. Contrast the ideal of "common meters" and "common tunes" in the English and Scottish psalters.

¹⁶At a pace described in Pierre Vallete's preface to one edition as each half-note taking one beat, shown by the raising and lowering of the hand. In Renaissance music, according to the Psalter Hymnal Handbook, the beat was equivalent to the pulse rate of a quietly breathing adult. This would correspond to a metronome marking for quarter notes of about 120-140. Later generations sang these tunes much more slowly.

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