The Beauty of Psalmody
Dear St. Timothy’s,
As we launch into this fall, I am excited to share with you a variety of different
approaches to how we experience the Psalms in worship. There are many ways to sing and
chant the Psalms each week - our congregationally chanted Psalm tone that we are
accustomed to is only one of many. While I believe it is important to honor the musical heritage
and history of Psalmody, limiting ourselves to one style and one chant is not always the best
way to express the meaning of each particular Psalm.
In the coming weeks, we will begin introducing new (or old, depending on your
viewpoint!) ways of Psalm chanting. Sometimes the choir will sing the Psalm on behalf of the
congregation using a variety of Anglican Chant melodies. Sometimes the congregation will sing
along to the familiar tone, as we have done. Sometimes the choir will lead and the congregation
will respond. Sometimes we will use a carefully and thoughtfully written “metrical paraphrase” of
the Psalm, which can be sung to a familiar hymn-tune. Sometimes we will sing responsively by
half-verse. Sometimes the choir will sing and the congregation will respond with a familiar
refrain. There are many wonderful possibilities!
The benefit of these many different styles is that each Psalm text can be sung in a more
meaningful way that gives life and meaning and expression to the text.
Below is an excerpt from an article by May Schwarz, Professor of Church Music at
Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, who speaks to the wondrous uniqueness of
Psalms far more eloquently than I could.
God speaks to us in most of the books of the Bible through a litany of faithful servants,
guiding and instructing us, and painting a picture of his unending power and love. However, in
the Psalms, it is we who speak. There we find expression of the breadth and depth of human
existence, the triumphs and tragedies of our earthly experience, the struggles and sorrows of a
people seeking to live fully in God. The psalms help us to express the most fundamental
emotions common to every age. We come to God in prayer through the psalms when we are
thankful, needy, happy, sad, scared, uncertain, insecure, tired, angry, hurting, or feeling used or
betrayed. Set to music, the psalms provide an entrance point to something far deeper than
words alone can express.
The practice of singing psalms as a means of worship is thousands of years old, dating
from the days of the ancient Israelites before the time of Jesus, who read and prayed the very
psalms we use today. The centrality of the psalms to a variety of religions and traditions
throughout time proves that the psalms are a vital means of communication with God that
should be kept open.
Reading, singing, or reciting the Psalms uniquely lets us feel at one with the ancient
community of faith through which the Psalter came into being. The psalms tie us to our past,
ground us in the present, and point toward the future. We see the God of our pre-Christian
ancestors as one and the same God to whom we pray daily, and the concerns of the ancient
Israelites as the very same we experience today. The psalter was the prayer book and “hymnal”
of Israel, and of Jesus himself, the Messiah of Israel and the world. This is one of the most
important resources available to us to link us with the whole people of God. Chasms of time and
space dissolve as we recognize our commonalities as God’s people on earth, and we are joined
together as we contemplate the lives God would have us lead and how our praise and
thanksgiving may be most fully rendered.
The Psalms stand alone in yet another way: they are poetry. Like other forms of artistic
expression, they are attempts to engage the divine that then make it possible for others to
participate in that same engagement. In the case of the psalms, these are not simply words
offered up to God in prayer, but prayers expressed as poetry which are then realized in music.
Their poetic texts capture our deepest emotions. The words of the psalms are some of the most
well-known and best-loved verses of scripture. Over a period of time, these texts become part of
the collective memory of many individuals. Frequently repeated psalm texts become so familiar
that they come to our lips in times of trouble, hurt, lament, joy, anger, sorrow, prayer, and praise.
It is the psalms that often spill from the lips of those on their deathbed when nothing else is
possible.
The psalms communicate the entire human condition, from the darkest depths to the
most dazzling heights: “out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” (Psalm 130), “make a joyful noise
to the Lord” (Psalm 100). Although psalms are ancient, they occupy a central place in our
contemporary worship lives that should be preserved. One can see the importance of promoting
psalm singing by considering the many different spiritual needs addressed by the psalms:
“No one who takes the words of the psalms on his lips and their meaning in his heart,
who allows the rhythm of their images to take hold of him and their accents to echo through his
being, can possibly remain indifferent to them. They may overwhelm or shock, bring peace or
exaltation, but inevitably they draw us beyond ourselves; they force us to that meeting with the
God without whom we cannot live and who transforms our whole life. The psalms compel us to
belief and hope.” - Joseph Gelineau
Set to music, the psalms communicate the faith in an even more powerful way. Singing
the psalms can provide a unique reflective vehicle for our worship and prayer lives. Through a
variety of musical styles and methods of psalmody, we learn to express psalm texts in new ways
and find new meaning in old texts.
-from “Psalms are for singing: Recovering our Scriptural Heritage in Song” by May Schwarz, from The Journal of the
Association of Anglican Musicians, Volume 15, No. 7, September 2006
I look forward to going with all of you on a journey of musical re-discovery of the beauty
and power of Psalmody.
-Peter Woodruff