Nearly 25 years ago I made a discovery that would change my life profoundly, especially as it relates to the worship of God. While visiting Prague in 1976 I had purchased a copy of a Czech hymnal published in 1900 that contains the 150 Psalms in metre and some 350 hymns. But it was not until the mid-1980s that I discovered the true significance of this little volume. At that time I discovered the tunes of the Genevan Psalter, the metrical psalter completed in 1562 and used in Calvin’s Geneva. From thence its use spread to the Netherlands, Hungary, South Africa and elsewhere, having a huge influence in the Reformed churches in those countries. Imagine my surprise to discover that I had long possessed evidence that these were sung by Czech Christians as well, and in the very church of pre-reformer Jan Hus!
Apart from a few tunes, however, the Genevan melodies did not catch on to the same extent in the English-speaking world. This is largely because of some of the distinctive characteristics of the English language, including the relative paucity of feminine endings, or unstressed final syllables. Hence English-language metrical psalters, such as the Scottish Psalter of 1650, tended to render all the psalms in a very few uniform metres, such as common metre (86 86 iambic), long metre (88 88 iambic) and short metre (66 86 iambic).
The Genevan tunes, by contrast, conformed to a variety of metrical patterns, some of which would strike us as rather eccentric. This made them more like the German chorales that were being composed in the Lutheran territories at the same time. The syncopated rhythms were such that Queen Elizabeth I is said to have referred to them derogatorily as “Genevan jigs.” Following centuries-old practice, they were written in the traditional ecclesiastical modes of the western church.
Following my discovery of this rich liturgical resource, I was hooked and began to write my own versifications of the Psalms to be sung to these tunes. Somewhat later I began to compose arrangements for the tunes. Ten years ago I posted a website devoted to the Genevan Psalter and to the recovery of psalm-singing in evangelical churches. Since then I have been adding to this website, including an introductory essay, a blog, a sample liturgy, numerous links to other psalm-related material and, of course, the texts themselves.
This is a labour of love that has been a part of my life for nearly a quarter century, and I expect that it will occupy my retirement years when the time comes. My prayer is that it may spark in Christians around the world a renewed love for singing the psalms. I will have more to say in future on the place of the psalms in the church’s liturgy.
“Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:6)
