Psalms in Our Time

Psalm 104: O Worship the King

This 16th-century psalm version praising the paradoxical transcendence and immanence of God was restored to use in the nineteenth century by textual revision according to new poetic ideals; and gained a new tune from the new musical ideals of the classical period.

O Worship the King, all glorious above!
O gratefully sing his power and his love!
Our shield and defender, the Ancient of days,
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.

O tell of his might! O sing of his grace!
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

The earth, with its store of wonders untold,
Almighty, thy power hath founded of old,
Hath 'stablished it fast by a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast, like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills; it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
Thy mercies, how tender! how firm to the end!
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend!

O measureless Might! ineffable Love!
While angels delight to hymn thee above,
The humbler creation, though feeble their lays,
With true adoration shall sing to thy praise.

Text: Robert Grant, 1833

Meter:
Rhyme scheme:

Sir Robert Grant (1779-1838) was a Indian-born British lawyer and statesman. As a member of parliament, he was noted for pushing the resolution for Jewish emancipation through parliament. He wrote a number of hymns. This is an abridged revision of William Kethe's paraphrase in the 1561 English Psalter.

"Lyons": William Gardiner (1770-1853), 1815

Incipit: ;
Melodic scheme:

Gardiner was an English hosiery manufacturer and an avid musical amateur. He took advantage of his business travels to cultivate acquaintances in the musical world: he knew Haydn and Beethoven, and may have been the first to introduce Beethoven's music in England. He published books on musical subjects, including six volumes of "Sacred Melodies" consisting of themes from "Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and other composers," arranged for use as psalm tunes.

Gardiner attributed "Lyons" to "Haydn": until recently speculation focused on the classical master Franz Joseph or his less famous brother Johann Michael. But in the 1990s, this tune was found in a work by Joseph Martin Kraus, published in London with adaptations by a "G. Haydn." The tune was named after the French city.

It is fitting for singing a rejuvenated psalm, especially considering Gardiner's intention to "rejuvenate the singing of psalms." Generally, he failed: throughout the nineteenth century, hymns supplanted psalms almost everywhere (see #72??). But his tunes were widely used, and his method of mining classical music for tunes widely imitated, throughout the nineteenth century: particularly and notably in America by Lowell Mason (see "Antioch").

Notes:

kkSee Psalm 100.
kkFor Arthur Sullivan, see under "St. Kevin". #fng See discussion of adaptation of classical themese
[net] Composer indexes at cyberhymnal.org/ and ccel.org/cceh
[etext] Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

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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