Confessing Evangelical

I'm still waiting for the Lutheran Service Book to hit Amazon.com so I can buy it without having to pay CPH's transatlantic shipping charges (I think they charter a plane for each individual order...). In the meantime, I've been revisiting one of the hidden treasures of the Christian church: the 1998 Book of Praise of the Canadian and American Reformed Churches.

What makes this little volume special is that it is (as I understand) the only full edition of the Genevan Psalter currently available in English. The Genevan Psalter was published in 1562, to provide congregational music for Calvin's church in Geneva. Most of the tunes were written by Louis Bourgeois, and many were subsequently harmonised by Claude Goudimel.

The full edition of the Book of Praise is available as a free PDF download, with separate files for the psalms (1.1 MB) and the hymns (320 kB) (the hymns include a mixture of Genevan and other hymns). English readers can purchase a copy of the book from Norwich Reformed Church (a snip at £11 inc. P&P).

Musically, the Genevan Psalter is by far the most interesting and enjoyable of all metrical psalters. It is characterised by the dance-like syncopation that led Elizabeth I famously to dub its tunes "Genevan jigs". The effect is rather similar to the original version of "A Mighty Fortress" (MIDI) - a "Wittenberg jig", perhaps? - and can sound similarly strange to ears trained in the more four-square rhythms of English hymnody.

Some of the most famous tunes from the Genevan Psalter are as follows (numbers given are from the Book of Praise, with a preceding "H" indicating a hymn):

• Psalm 68, "the battle-hymn of the Huguenots", which I posted on recently (MIDI);


• Psalm 134, better known as "Old Hundredth" after it was adopted for that great English paraphrase of Psalm 100, "All People That On Earth Do Dwell" (Vaughan Williams' glorious arrangement can be heard as a Real Audio track here; contrast the Genevan-style MIDI version, particularly in the last line);


• Nunc Dimittis (H18): this gorgeous tune (exceptionally pleasant MIDI here) is best-known today as the tune for Robert Bridges' translation of Phos Hilaron, "O Gladsome Light"


• Psalm 98, with a tune (MIDI, a little too "jiggish" IMO) used in the communion hymn "Bread of the world in mercy broken".

Some other good ones, less well known, include:

• Psalm 1: for me, the first test of any psalter is "What's its Psalm 1 like?": a test that the NRSV fails miserably, but which the Genevan Psalter passes with flying colours, musically speaking (MIDI);


• Psalm 42 (also used for Isaiah 40 (H11)) (MIDI);


• Psalm 99: a real jig, this one (MIDI);


• Psalm 140, also used for the Ten Commandments (H7) (MIDI).

For more links to materials relating to the Genevan Psalter, including Duck Schuler's three-part history of the psalter in Credenda Agenda, see this list on my del.icio.us page.