2025.10.12
Although we routinely chant and read Psalms in more or less literal translations of the Hebrew – which, emphasizing content over form, do not attempt either to reproduce the prosodic effects of the original, or to conform the text to English verse-forms – English and other languages have very long traditions of poetic translations of the Psalms as well, adapting the sense of the original to familiar verse-forms.* The sixteenth-century Reformers seized upon so-called ‘metrical psalmody’ as a convenient genre for congregational singing, and in the Reformed ( Calvinist ) tradition ( which long influenced Anglican parochial practice to a degree difficult for us to realize today ) these metrical Psalms were the only church music for a very long time. Although in services the Psalms were sung unaccompanied and without harmony, then later with organ support, some composers did write polyphonic vocal settings of the Genevan Psalms for use outside of worship services. One of the most important of these was Claude Goudimel, who was himself involved in writing and editing the music for the Calvinist, or Genevan, Psalter.

Ten or so tunes from the Genevan Psalter appear in the Hymnal 1982, including one that appears three times – with ‘Bread of the world, in mercy broken’ [ 301 ], ‘Father, we thank thee who hast planted’ [ 302 ], and ‘New songs of celebration render’ [ 413 ]. It’s used three times in the Genevan Psalter as well: for Psalms 98 ( whose French incipit, ‘Rendez à Dieu’, is used to name the tune in our Hymnal ), 118, and this Sunday’s appointed Psalm, 66, which my choir sings in two of Goudimel’s settings. In both of these the tune appears in the highest voice-part; in one the voices all move together in the same rhythms, in the style familiar from modern hymnals, and in the other, the voices work in contrapuntal dialogue with the tune. The first stanza of the translation, covering vv. 1–3 of the Psalm, is adapted from a 1632 publication of All the French psalms with English words; that is, English translations of the Psalms written in the same meters as the French of the Genevan Psalter for use with its tunes. The second stanza is my telescoped paraphrase of vv. 4–11:

Triumph and shout with joy abounding

in God, all people on the earth.

God’s glorious Name with psalms resounding,

God’s worthy praise sing out with mirth:

‘For your great deeds do we adore you;

your enemies are put to shame.

All the whole earth bows down before you,

sings unto you, sings out your Name.’

Come now and see God’s works of wonder,

the mighty deeds of his right hand:

He split the sea, rent it asunder:

so we walked through upon dry land.

God guides our way in tribulation,

brings peace when we have passed through strife.

Give thanks to God, each tribe and nation,

who ever holds our souls in life.

Another Genevan tune found, in shortened form, in our Hymnal is that known to us as ‘Old 113th’ after one of the Psalms for which it was used in British metrical psalters. We use it today for Psalm 146 in a paraphrase by Isaac Watts, who started out writing metrical psalms like many others before him, but, departing further and further from the literal sense, essentially established ‘humanly composed’ ( though scripturally based ) hymnody as a genre in modern English. John Wesley was particularly fond of this text, which he shortened and revised for his Collection of Psalms and Hymns, published in ‘Charles-Town’, in the Carolina colony, in 1736 when the brothers Wesley ( both priests of the Church of England ) were briefly serving in the neighboring colony of Georgia. ( This Collection was the very first hymnal published anywhere since the Reformation for Church of England use. ) 

‘Old 113th’ predates the Genevan Psalter by thirty years or more and in fact inspired Calvin’s project of a complete metrical psalter when he heard it sung in Straßburg. This tune helped establish the style eventually adopted for all the Genevan tunes: broad lines, restricted range, mostly small melodic intervals, and only two note-values. This tune also entered the Lutheran repertory ( paired especially with the Passiontide text ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß’ ), joining a quickly growing body of vernacular religious song in that tradition. Many of these Reformation-era tunes, closely related to church chant and to the vital repertories of many traditional human societies, have a simplicity, sturdiness, and nobility that renders them singable, flexible, and durable, and eminently suited for use in the liturgy.

*  One hundred of them ( and perhaps all 150, one third being lost ) were rendered into Old English alliterative stress-meter verse ( of the sort familiar from Beowulf, and common to all Old Germanic verse ), and there are several rhyming syllabic-meter verse versions of the Psalms in Middle English.