Metrical Psalms Research Articles

Disciplinary Measures from the Metrical Psalms to Milton. Kenneth J. E. Graham. London: Routledge, 2016. xvi + 206 pp. $149.95.

Disciplinary Measures from the Metrical Psalms to Milton. Kenneth J. E. Graham. London: Routledge, 2016. xvi + 206 pp. $149.95.

Hateful Hills and Joyful Dread: Emotive “Filler Words” in the Old English Metrical Psalms

ABSTRACTThe poet-translator of the Old English Metrical Psalms is widely censured for (among other things) his allegedly mechanical use of filler-words to complete the metre in his lines. This article argues for a more positive purpose for many of these additions, especially those drawn from the semantic field of emotion. Additions to the poet's Latin source can function to reinforce for his Anglo-Saxon audience the theological sense of the psalms he translates, to add a degree of exegesis, and even (at times) to create a moment of poetic intensity. Such possibilities do not entirely acquit the poet of the charge of pedestrian verse production, but they do suggest that he has not always been given enough credit for his achievements. Within the context of his general approach to translation—which is sometimes thoughtful and always orthodox—this poet’s deployment of so-called filler words may frequently be defended as apt and occasionally as successful in its ambition.

Community in Children’s Hymn-Singing

Community in Children’s Hymn-Singing Alisa Clapp-Itnyre (bio) If there was ever a Victorian institution that inculcated community and a bringing together of disparate groups, it was congregational hymn-singing. Indeed, hymns are, by their very nature, communal. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines hymns as “sacred poetry set to music and sung in the course of the services of the Church … to express doctrine or the devotion of individuals” (681). Hymns are sung by societies of singers, in contrast to solos sung by individuals; further, they are sung by amateurs, in contrast to choral music performed by professional choirs. In a sense, they are an aesthetic uniting all singers, children included, who come together to express and affirm common Christian doctrine. Victorian literature is filled with scenes of communities gathered together to sing: the Hayslope community gathers to sing the hymns introduced by Dinah Morris in George Eliot’s Adam Bede, friends gather to hear Alice Wilson sing fragments of hymns on her deathbed in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, and Bathsheba overhears a children’s church choir learning a hymn in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. Clearly Victorian society saw much unifying agency in hymn singing. Though congregations had sung in church settings since the Reformation, usually this practice was limited and, instead of singing hymns, congregations repeated back metrical psalms “lined out” by a precentor. Or they would listen to a “west-gallery” choir and instrumentalists (later, a barrel organ) sing the psalms (in parish churches) or listen to a trained cathedral choir and organ (in cities, college towns) (see Bradley, ch. 1, and Temperley, Music, chs. 8–9). Congregational singing was launched in an extremely powerful way with the eighteenth-century Methodist movement. As is well noted,1 the Methodist [End Page 26] movement achieved success and influence because of its passionate, engaging hymns and hymn-singing in which ordinary congregants could join in the music instead of mechanically singing back the words of the parish clerk or passively listening to a parish choir. Though favouring simple tunes, John Wesley nevertheless encouraged heartfelt, emotional singing and therefore turned to popular, if controversial, sources—from operas to tavern tunes—for the music for his brother’s and other Methodist hymns. Using engaging tunes and unrestricted singing, often in the open air, Methodists enticed many followers through music. Following their example, Dissenters of the turn of the century also composed “rousing and thrilling tunes” that greatly popularized hymn writers of the previous century: Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and John Newton (Bradley 18). Erik Routley points in particular to the evangelicals who “explosively increase[d] the vocabulary of their congregations. These people did not have to get along on six metrical psalm tunes. The massive choirs … led the singing and everybody joined in enthusiastically, carried along by the attractiveness of the music” (50–51). Once the Anglicans joined forces,2 hymnody became a major congregational force throughout nineteenth-century British churches. Hymn-singing created large communities of Victorians gathered to sing praises to their Maker, across denominational, social, national, and class lines. Hymn-singing permeated Victorian children’s lives, too, not just in churches and chapels on Sundays, as might be the experience for contemporary children, but throughout the week in schools and in the home. Children were furnished with their own liturgical hymn-singing spaces: in working-class Sunday schools, in middle-class children’s services, and as part of upper-class boarding schools. By the late 1870s, one hymn-book editor was able to write, Hymn-singing has found its way into nearly every family circle; the Sunday School has been largely developed within the Church of England; Children’s Services have multiplied; Guilds, Bands of Hope, and kindred societies have been formed in hundreds of parishes; and the demand for hymns suited to the young, on all subjects within the range of their interests, is becoming daily more and more urgent. (Brock v) Children wrote about hymn-singing in their diaries, writers incorporated hymns into children’s scenes in their novels, and adults of the twentieth century reflected upon hymn-singing’s influence on their Victorian...

Cheryl C. Boots. Singing for Equality: Hymns in the American Antislavery and Indian Rights Movements, 1640–1855.

Seldom utilized effectively by today's interpreters, hymns and metrical psalms are fundamental sources for the history of American religious culture. These ritual texts and their paired tunes were ubiquitous in colonial and antebellum America, legitimating cultural institutions and practices while also holding the potential to inspire change. In this ambitious study, Cheryl C. Boots explores hymns as agents of change before the Civil War and their role in the struggle to achieve racial equality for African Americans and Native Americans. Boots begins her survey with John Eliot's efforts to share Puritan psalmody with his indigenous “praying towns” in seventeenth-century Massachusetts and ends with hymn texts in the abolition fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Wells Brown. Along the way she offers short treatments of hymns in the work of Samson Occom, Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, Richard Allen, Jarena Lee, William Apess and Mary Apess, Lydia Sigourney, Lydia Maria Child, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot and Harriet Gold Boudinot, Catherine Beecher, David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Maria Weston Chapman, and William Lloyd Garrison. She contrasts hymn use by these egalitarian writers with references to singing in white establishmentarian works like Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682), Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), and James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826). She also examines four important egalitarian hymnals, Occom's A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs: Intended for the Edification of Sincere Christians of All Denominations (1774), Allen's The African Methodist Pocket Hymn Book (1816), the American Anti-Slavery Society's Freedom's Lyre (1840), and Brown's The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings (1848).

The English Poems of Richard Crashaw by Richard Crashaw

Reviewed by: The English Poems of Richard Crashaw by Richard Crashaw Ryan Netzley (bio) Keywords devotion, baroque, confessional allegiance, transnationa, print culture, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw Richard Crashaw. The English Poems of Richard Crashaw. Edited with an Introduction by Richard Rambuss. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. lxxxvi + 450 pages. Cloth. $39.95. Finally. A modern edition of Richard Crashaw’s verse. Richard Rambuss has given those of us who work on Crashaw that for which we have long pined: a critical edition that allows those unfamiliar with the author’s work, including students, to see his volumes’ original seventeenth-century sequence and organization. This has always been the chief problem with the most recent edition, George Walton Williams’ The Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw (1972). Its disarticulated structure—which groups poems according to language, number of versions, whether they are translations, and whether they are sacred or secular—requires that readers already know the layout of the 1646 Steps to the Temple (and probably the 1648) and the 1652 Carmen Deo Nostro in order to reverse-engineer an early modern reading experience. In addition, the structure of the Williams edition has contributed to the critical denigration of Crashaw as alien or un-English, a sentiment that Rambuss carefully rebuffs in his introduction. Restoring the original sequence is especially important for Carmen Deo Nostro given its indebtedness to liturgy, as Rambuss notes. His edition has the added benefit of allowing us to recognize shifts in Crashaw’s own generic proclivities, especially the transition from epigram in Steps to the Temple to hymns and odes in Carmen Deo Nostro. In short, in addition to being out of print, the Williams edition’s organization makes it very difficult to use if one is not already familiar with Crashaw’s work. Thus, it is well-nigh impossible to use it as a teaching text. Rambuss is to be commended for remedying this defect and, moreover, for doing so with a decidedly affordable edition. Preserving the organization of the 1646 Steps to the Temple and the 1652 Carmen Deo Nostro is, then, the most striking change from Williams’s edition [End Page 107] and it leads to some important insights. Most notable is the comparison that Rambuss draws in the introduction between Crashaw’s 1646 volume and Milton’s 1645 Poems, both published by Humphrey Moseley: “Indeed with respect to genre—hymn, ode, metrical psalm, paraphrase, epigram, epitaph—Crashaw’s Steps to the Temple has more in common with Milton’s Poems (1645) than it does with Herbert’s The Temple” (xxxv). In addition, both Milton and Crashaw populate their volumes with occasional devotional material—poems on Christmas, the circumcision on New Year’s Day, and the Passion. Rambuss’s comments in this respect, and throughout the introduction, are in keeping with recent scholarship that questions the preeminence that we often grant to confessional allegiance in our discussions of the act and experience of devotion. Such a focus, Rambuss maintains, leads us to treat Crashaw’s conversion to Roman Catholicism as the telos toward which all of his poetry tends, so much so that we read him “as being a Catholic even before he himself decided to become one” (xix). The introduction emphasizes Crashaw’s participation in an English poetic and devotional tradition, but it also smartly queries some of our prevailing assumptions about the author’s relationship to Herbert. Rambuss briefly reviews differences between the 1670 and 1648 frontispieces to Steps to the Temple, noting that the earlier volume may not be quite as deferential to The Temple as we have often assumed. Rambuss is never tendentious in the introduction, but his brief reading of these frontispieces and the anonymous “Preface to the Reader” hints at some important reconsiderations of the relationship between the two poets. I offer here just one example: is the phrase “steps to the temple,” unlike “the shadow of the temple” (as in Christopher Harvey’s The Synagogue; or, The Shadow of the Temple [1640]), a tacit suggestion that there’s something impractical, even monumentally forbidding, about The Temple—that one needs pedagogical steps to get there? Such suggestions for future reexamination and research also serve as the primary...

Durham House and the Chapels Royal: their liturgical impact on the Church of Scotland

AbstractEver since the laying of the foundation stone of the present Norman building, Durham Cathedral has had an ambiguous relationship with Scotland – some good (the huge contribution of Dean William Whittingham through liturgy, metrical psalms and the Geneva Bible) and some extremely negative (the cathedral served as the prison for the Scottish prisoners after the battle of Dunbar). Amongst the more negative are the liturgical ideals and practices of the Durham House group, more commonly though inaccurately known as ‘Laudians’. The members of the group, which did include William Laud, were the protégés of the bishop of Durham, Richard Neile, and they met in his house in London. He promoted many as prebendaries at Durham Cathedral, and there they developed their liturgical ideals and practices. These ideals were ones which Neile shared with his contemporaries and close friends, Bishops Lancelot Andrewes and John Buckeridge. This article argues that the origin and precedent for these practices were the Chapels Royal with which most of the ‘players’ had affiliation in some way or other. Elizabeth I insisted on liturgical ceremonial and furnishings that supported or matched the grandeur of court ceremonial. It was a style which she hoped would also be adopted in English cathedrals. It was a style of worship which also appealed to James VI and through the Chapels Royal in Scotland he attempted to introduce a similar liturgical style. He also sought to conform the Church of Scotland to the Church of England, both in polity and liturgical text. The policy was continued by Charles I, who attempted to extend it to the Scottish cathedrals. Opponents of this court liturgical style and ‘Englishing’ of the liturgy found it convenient to blame the bishops who were given the task of implementing the liturgical changes rather than attack the source, namely the monarchy. The ultimate outcome was that, rather than the Church of Scotland adopting the 1637 Book of Common Prayer and Durham House ceremonial, it eventually even lost the liturgy which Scottish tradition had ascribed to John Knox, but the lion's share of which was more probably the work of Dean William Whittingham. Instead the Church of Scotland accepted the Directory of Public Worship, itself mainly the work of English divines. It became one of the few Reformed churches that did not have a set form for its public worship.

The Genevan Psalter in Eighteenth-Century Indonesia and Sri Lanka

ABSTRACTThe spread of Protestant Christianity to Indonesia and Sri Lanka in the early modern period involved large-scale translation projects and, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, the publication of metrical psalms in languages spoken by local communities: Portuguese, Malay, Tamil and Sinhala. Selected psalms from the Genevan Psalter, as well as complete versions, were translated and published in South and Southeast Asia on several occasions in the eighteenth century, representing the earliest printing of Western staff notation in Jakarta and Colombo. These psalters were issued in numerous editions, and some were prefaced with a short explanation of the musical scale. Christian communities in Indonesia and Sri Lanka appear to have used the psalters regularly in religious devotions and services. This article explores the processes involved in the translation, production and distribution of these psalters, considering musical and cultural aspects of their adoption into local communities.

Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation by David J. Davis (review)

Reviewed by: Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation by David J. Davis Ian Green Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation. By David J. Davis. [Library of the Written Word, Vol. 25; The Handpress Word, Vol. 19.] (Boston: Brill. 2013. Pp. xvi, 243 pages. $146.00. ISBN 978-90-04-236010-1.) This study of religious images printed as woodcuts and engravings in English publications from 1535 to 1603 is based on the author’s doctoral research under the supervision of Alexandra Walsham at the University of Exeter. Setting the scene in the first two chapters, David Davis reviews the rapidly expanding literature on the print trade in sixteenth-century England and on contemporary attitudes toward the use of images. This literature has already done much to discredit older assumptions of a sharp divide between Catholic and Protestant positions, and to tease out the relationships between images and text in various contexts, but the author feels these ideas can be taken further. In the remaining chapters he analyzes the meaning and deployment of a wide range of images and symbols—the Virgin, the Holy Monogram, the Crucifixion, the Agnus Dei, the Good Shepherd, visions of God, and the tetragrammaton—and concludes that developments in England should not be “graphed along strict confessional or ideological lines” (p. 7), but seen as producing “religious identities” (p. 9) that, although remaining aware of the differences between Catholic and Protestant, were able to embrace the common ground between them as well. The monograph is well written and throws numerous shafts of light on specific cases and on wider issues such as the debate on “iconophobia.” It is also moderately well illustrated, given the indifferent quality of many surviving images. With caveats, it can be recommended to scholars and students interested in this subject. Although the author is adept at identifying occasions when highly educated and theologically sophisticated Protestant clergy gave limited and conditional approval for the use of selected images inside the church or outside, there remains a dearth of solid evidence to show how far these views were known to or shared by the authors or editors, or more usually the printers and publishers, who opted to insert a particular woodcut or engraving in a particular place in a particular work. Time and again, the gap between theory and practice is filled by a presumption that [End Page 148] the placement was deliberate and enlightened—an act of informed recontextualization, to strengthen the sense of Protestant identity—even if that same image had been borrowed from a Catholic source, or was subsequently recycled several times within the same volume or in other works in a variety of genres. Indeed, the more images were used in early-modern publications, the more they became generic or decorative rather than helping to support or explain a particular text, so that contemporary readers received mixed signals from the printer’s habit of recycling images. Furthermore, we know little of English readers’ reactions to the texts, let alone the accompanying images, of the works they encountered. Many of the works in which Davis’s images appeared were not at the cheap end of the spectrum, indicating an educated but limited market. However, when these images appeared in a best-selling title, they could be hard to interpret. Did those who bought—or were lent—one of the many copies of Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins’s metrical psalms that had on its title-page a copy of Hans Holbein’s image of Christ triumphing over evil and death use it as a point of reference for meditation or recognize it as a symbol of the divine? Or, if they noticed it at all, did they wonder what an image of Christ surrounded by four scripture texts with Latin incipits was doing on a work that did not mention him by name in the psalms they were singing? Ian Green University of Edinburgh Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Ulster-Scots Psalmody: A Consideration

The Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650 commands an iconic cultural significance within the Ulster-Scots tradition, and it has been treasured with intense religious affection for hundreds of years. This is particularly true for the rural Presbyterian heartlands of Antrim and Down that had been settled by Lowland Scots in the early 1600s (and which today remain the “core” Ulster-Scots speaking regions). Paradoxically, the 1650 Scottish Psalter used traditionally by this community is in English (as is the equally-treasured 1611 King James Version of the Bible). The provision of a translation of the metrical psalms into Ulster-Scots is considered in three contexts: the historical, religious and cultural significance of the Scottish Psalter to the Ulster-Scots speaking community; the modern Ulster-Scots language development programme which seeks to promote its everyday use in extended contexts; and the parallel (and parent) Ulster-Scots Bible translation project.

’n Lied moet klink om gehoor te word ... : Faktore wat die resepsie van kerkliedere kan beïnvloed

A hymn must be sung to be heard ... : Aspects that could influence the reception of hymns and psalms. The most recent official hymnal in Afrikaans, Liedboek van die Kerk, was taken into use in 2001. Some hymns and psalms were immediately sung with enthusiasm whereas others remained unused, which is true especially for many of the metrical psalms. The most prominent reason for not singing some hymns or psalms is that they are unknown – text as well as tune. It is, however, often assumed that the reason why hymns and psalms are unknown is primarily because their tunes would be too difficult to sing. The role of the text and other aspects are not taken into account sufficiently. In this article, these one-sided views regarding the tunes are challenged, and it is argued that there could be many other reasons why hymns and psalms are not used.

Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603. Beth Quitslund. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. x+322.

<i>Beth Quitslund</i>, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603<i>The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603</i>. Beth Quitslund. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. x+322.

The language of nineteenth-century women hymn-writers: intercultural Insights

The aim of this paper is to analyse the imagery and metaphorical language used by women hymn writers in nineteenth-century Britain and America in order to shed light on the important role of such writers on the one hand and the enduring popularity of their work on the other. Until quite recently very little attention had been given to the important social, moral and spiritual role of female hymn writers especially on this side of the Atlantic. Interest in hymns was almost exclusively limited to hymn singing and musical accompaniment rather than the actual social background of the hymns and their literary value. At the most, people were aware of the religious purpose of each individual hymn but very little was actually known about the authors and their social purpose. Interest in hymn writing began to surface in the 1990s with particular attention to female authors in Britain and America from the turn of the century (Moody 1999). As noted by Watson (2003), there is, in effect, a fundamental difference between the early acceptance of hymn singing in nineteenth-century America and the later start in Britain. While America “was marked by a strong hymnody almost from the beginning” (Watson 2003: 358), nineteenth-century Britain had a much slower start. Hymn-singing had become extremely popular in Methodist and other nonconformist meetings on a par with American camp-meeting spirituals in frontier areas, but it was still not allowed in Anglican services as late as the 1820s due to the general belief within the established church that “only metrical psalms had scriptural and legal authority” (Sadie 2001, vol. 12: 32). In the 1840s and 1850s, hymn-books began to appear for those who wished to include hymns in services but it was only in 1861 that Hymns Ancient and Modern was published and that hymn-writing really began to flourish (cf. Watson 2003: 288). Once hymns had been accepted as a form of worship in the Church of England, however, the second half of the nineteenth century saw such an increase in hymn-writing

Andrew Law's Select Harmony (1779 Edition): The Context of a Late Eighteenth Century Tune Book

The 1779 edition of Select Harmony: containing in a plain and concise manner, the rules of singing: together with a collection of psalm tunes, hymns and anthems, by Andrew Law (1749-1821), is an archetypal example of a tune book of the late eighteenth century. (1) The purpose of this research is to consider the contents and production of an original manuscript of Select Harmony in the context of the author's life and the tune books of his contemporaries. This author examined an original manuscript of Select Harmony to illuminate and expand upon existing research regarding it. The present study attempts to contribute to the research by focusing on an extant copy of a single tune book. Select Harmony was introduced at a time when America's first music educators were seeking viable approaches to the teaching of sight-singing, (2) a problem that is still a central goal of music education. (3) The challenges of differing methods and philosophies encountered by early singing school masters are similar to those faced by contemporary music teachers. Review of Relevant Literature The first recorded attempts at improving music making in America involved church music carried from England to the colonies. (4) The early settlers in the colonies sang metrical psalms to familiar tunes, and the quality of these practices quickly degenerated. As a result, the desire for better musical experiences took hold in early America. (5) This movement introduced tools for musically educating the public such as the tune book, easily identified by its oblong shape. (6) A group of singing school masters who rose to prominence during the eighteenth century produced at least 319 different editions of these tune books by (1800). (7) Unfortunately, these music educators are only mentioned briefly in much of the existing literature on early music education. (8) Their works have been even more sparsely documented. (9) Recent scholarship attempted to remedy this shortage by providing bibliographic information and physical locations of editions of many sacred music tune books. (10) Andrew Law has been favorably highlighted in recent scholarship, revealing his talents as a tune book compiler and musical reformer. (11) Select Harmony, produced in late 1778, was Law's first attempt at releasing a tune book. Tunes were added to the 1778 preliminary edition, and the 1779 edition was released. This was followed by a second edition in 1782 and a third in 1812. The 1779 edition is similar to many tune books of its time and is not one of Law's more important books. However, the 1779 edition of Select Harmony can reveal information about the nature of changes made to later editions and variations. Select Harmony made a progressive departure from many tune books of the time; it contained tunes and lyrics together in the same book. Law's next work, A Collection of Hymn Tunes from the Most Modern and Approved Authors and A Collection of Hymns for Social Worship did not include tunes and texts together. The tune book, as the name suggests, was a book of tunes only. The Collection of Hymns contained only text. Law continued his compilations, adding longer and more detailed theoretical introductions to his works. The four editions of Rudiments of Music, The Musical Magazine, The Musical Primer, Christian Harmony volumes 1 and 2, and The Art of Singing established Law as a strong singing school master. The Art of Singing and The Musical Primer are Law's most often-mentioned works, apparently because they contain his most notable musical instructions. Andrew Law was influenced a great deal by works of other Yankee tunesmiths. Among the many tune books of the period, four appear to have had the greatest influence on Select Harmony and its later editions: Urania, The New England Psalm Singer, The Singing Master's Assistant, and The Easy Instructor. James Lyons' Urania, appearing in 1761, was found among the possessions of Andrew Law. …

Text and musical context in the English Reformations

For most of the Elizabethan period, the congregational singing of metrical psalms was as orthodox a feature of church culture as the Book of Common Prayer. The market for the English metrical psalter had generated 150 editions by the end of Elizabeth's reign (c.220,000 copies), and nearly 1,000 editions by the 19th century. Had sacred polyphony of the 15th and 16th centuries survived on even a small fraction of this scale, the history of Tudor music would look considerably different today. Yet despite such a huge number of publications, metrical psalmody has been viewed since the early 17th century through the lens of partisan historiography that relegated it to the sidelines as a Puritan aberration. Building on the seminal work of Nicholas Temperley, Robin Leaver and Rivkah Zim (along with others in adjacent fields), Beth Quitslund tackles this imbalance in The Reformation in rhyme, the first...

From Chamber to Church: The Remarkable Emergence of Thomas Sternhold as Psalmist for the Church of England

The paper explores the question of why Thomas Sternhold's small collections of metrical psalms, originally produced as godly entertainment for King Edward VI, became the kernel of the pre-eminent liturgical metrical psalter used in the Church of England in the sixteenth century. The author examines Sternhold's metrical psalms in comparison to two other metrical psalters, subjecting each to an analysis of their stated purpose, their relationship to biblical texts, their use of sources, their relationship to emerging evangelical biblical hermeneutics, and their style of paraphrase, rhyme and metre. The conclusions drawn from this examination suggest that the longevity, popularity and ultimate success of the Sternhold psalm media for public sung worship lies, ironically, in the initial lack of intent to use it as a liturgical text.

‘May those who know nothing be content to listen': Loys Bourgeois's Advertissement to the Psalms (1551)

In 1551 the Genevan cantor, Louis Bourgeois, published an updated collection of metrical psalms with melodies, as part of Jean Calvin's project to publish all 150 psalms in French verse. With this collection, Bourgeois wrote a short notice describing the changes he had made to some of the pre-existing psalm tunes, and offered advice to the congregation on how they might improve the quality of their psalm-singing. After the appearance of the publication, Bourgeois was imprisoned for making unauthorized changes to the psalms, and for encouraging people to remain silent rather than sing out of tune or out of time. Although the intervention of Calvin ensured the cantor's quick release, the Genevan town council ordered that all copies of the book be destroyed. For the first time, Bourgeois's Advertissement to the reader is presented here in the original and in English translation with commentary.

The Michael Wood Mystery: William Cecil and the Lincolnshire Printing of John Day

John Day is perhaps best known as the printer of John Foxe'sActes and Monuments, usually referred to as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Other lucrative Elizabethan patents held by John Day, such as those for the Metrical Psalms, the ABC, and the Catechism, ensured considerable financial return and a revered, if not envied, status among Elizabethan printers. Only the Queen's Printer, Christopher Barker, could compare with Day's volume of output; each man printed in excess of 350 works. Scholarship has primarily focused upon Day's Edwardian and Elizabethan activities. Day's whereabouts and activities have been debated and it has been assumed that any information about Day during Mary's reign has been lost. However, by examining new evidence, new light may be cast not only on Day's Marian activities, but also on clandestine printing in Tudor England and on William Cecil.

Penitential Bookends: John Fisher and Thomas Sternhold interpret Psalm 6

The sermons on the Penitential Psalms delivered by Bishop John Fisher to the household of Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond (published 1508), and the complete collection of Metrical Psalm paraphrases by royal courtier Thomas Sternhold (published 1549) serve as convenient penitential psalm ‘bookends’ to the reign of Henry VIII. This article examines the continuities and discontinuities in penitential psalms interpretation bracketed by these two works, and proposes that the harsh lines often drawn between mediaeval scholasticism and humanism, and between orthodox and evangelical interpretations of the Psalms are far less rigid and impermeable than has hitherto been suggested.

Recent Studies In Metrical Psalms

Previous article No AccessRecent Studies in the English RenaissanceRecent Studies In Metrical PsalmsJohn OttenhoffJohn Ottenhoffalma college Search for more articles by this author alma collegePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by English Literary Renaissance Volume 33, Number 2Spring 2003 Published in association with the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6757.00028_2 Views: 40Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

’n Perspektief op die nuwe Psalmomdigting – reaksie op ’n reaksie

A perspective on the new versification of the psalter – a response to a responseIn a previous article, I examined the process of versifying the psalter and questioned the principle of a “reproductive” versification, the lack of a sound hermeneutical approach and the necessity of versifying all 150 psalms – especially in one form and style as metrical psalms that are meant to be sung. A response by C.J.A. Vos followed. In the present article issues raised in this response are addressed and problems pertaining to the versifying and singing of the psalms are treated more extensively.