Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice

English 'Singing Psalms' and Scottish 'Psalm Buiks', c. 1547-1640

Timothy Duguid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317096962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

During the Reformation, the Book of Psalms became one of the most well-known books of the Bible. This was particularly true in Britain, where people of all ages, social classes and educational abilities memorized and sang poetic versifications of the psalms. Those written by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins became the most popular, and the simple tunes developed and used by English and Scottish churches to accompany these texts were carried by soldiers, sailors and colonists throughout the English-speaking world. Among these tunes were a number that are still used today, including 'Old Hundredth', 'Martyrs', and 'French'. This book is the first to consider both English and Scottish metrical psalmody, comparing the two traditions in print and practice. It combines theological literary and musical analysis to reveal new and ground-breaking connections between the psalm texts and their tunes, which it traces in the English and Scottish psalters printed through 1640. Using this new analysis in combination with a more thorough evaluation of extant church records, Duguid contends that Britain developed and maintained two distinct psalm cultures, one in England and the other in Scotland.

CHAPTER 1
Metrical Psalters in Exile

Protestants living in England in 1553 faced hard choices due to the restored Roman Catholic polity of their new queen, Mary I. They could remain in their country and either outwardly conform to Catholicism or openly rebel against it. The first option required them to compromise their consciences, but the second carried the near certainty that they would face real hardship, persecution, imprisonment, or even death. A third option was also possible to a few who had the financial means: they could leave their homes to become religious exiles in another country. For the few who chose this route and escaped to the European mainland, each one had to decide what possessions to take with them into religious exile. It is clear from subsequent developments that copies of the metrical psalms versified by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins were amongst the items that were taken abroad by these exiles. These poetic psalms were not merely a link with home; they became expressions of exilic identity, as they offered the exiles a form of self-expression in divinely sanctioned, emotionally charged songs. For instance, words directed at ungodly rulers in Psalm 2 took on a new meaning:

But he that in heauen dwelth,

their doings will deryde:

And make them al as mocking stockes

through out the world so wyde.¹

As these refugees gathered in different parts of the European mainland, some exile communities received permission from the local authorities to start their own worship services. Some adopted modified versions of the Edwardine liturgy, but their most significant musical innovation was the official liturgical use of metrical psalms. Although these had probably been unofficially sung in some English parishes during the reign of Edward VI, this was the first time in English-language liturgical practice that metrical psalms became the sole musical component in worship services.² Liturgical metrical psalmody further ingrained the psalms into the minds of exiles and led some to begin to modify and expand upon the Sternhold and Hopkins psalms. They also began to print tunes with the metrical texts, and there was nothing haphazard or random about the way they paired texts and melodies. The clear declamation of Scriptural texts was a priority for Protestants, so they chose and wrote melodies that would help to bring out and express the meaning of the texts. Since these exilic metrical psalms would provide the foundation for later complete metrical psalters produced in England and Scotland, both the historical circumstances underpinning them and the ways in which these editions married text and melody deserve closer scrutiny.

Psalm Singers in Exile

Those who fled England for the European mainland included merchants, students, theologians and former church officials. Some were French subjects who had been religious exiles in England under the reign of Edward VI, while others were English and Scottish nationals.³ They settled in cities all over Europe, but mainly concentrated in the Holy Roman Empire and Switzerland. Some communities such as those in Zürich and Strasbourg followed the liturgical traditions of their hosts.⁴ Others such as those in Emden and Frankfurt established their own confessions, arrangements for church discipline, and even liturgies.⁵ It was the exile church in Frankfurt, however, that would most influence the future of metrical psalmody in both England and Scotland.

One of its members, William Whittingham, was the first to begin editing and adding to the Sternhold and Hopkins metrical psalms. A linguist and translator who had graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, Whittingham became one of the more influential members of the Frankfurt exile community. Much has been written about this church and its liturgical ‘Troubles’, in which Whittingham played no small part.⁶ A brief introduction to the church and its debates will contextualize Whittingham’s work on the metrical psalms.

In 1554, Whittingham settled in Frankfurt am Main along with a group of other British exiles intending to set up an English exile church.⁷ Earlier that year, their friend Valérand Poullain, formerly the minister of the French Stranger Church in Glastonbury, had settled in the city.⁸ Whittingham and his companions successfully petitioned the Frankfurt Magistrates for permission to remain in the city and worship in the same building as Poullain’s congregation, but the Magistrates ruled, ‘that the Englishe shulde not discent from the French men in doctrine, or ceremonyes, least they shulde thereby minister occasion off offence … ’.⁹ The exiles adopted Poullain’s confession of faith, but they found a round-about way of fulfilling the Magistrates’ liturgical stipulations. In the sole account of the proceedings in Frankfurt, the 1575 A Brieff discours of the troubles begonne at Franckford in Germany Anno Domini 1554 [STC 25443], the anonymous author notes that they chose to use a revised version of the English liturgy as printed in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer instead of Poullain’s liturgy.¹⁰ However, the distinction between their revised liturgy and Poullain’s was one in name only. Although the English group reportedly used the Edwardine Prayer Book as their starting point, they modified it so significantly that it resembled Poullain’s Liturgia sacra more than the Prayer Book.¹¹ With regard to music, however, they officially stipulated, for the first time, that in worship ‘people singe a psalme in metre in a plaine tune … ’.¹²

The Frankfurt community’s decision to modify the English Prayer Book resulted from the belief that it retained Roman Catholic practices that were not specifically instituted by Scripture, but this decision encountered strong opposition from those who upheld the use of the Prayer Book largely unchanged. They argued that the persecution of those who had used it in England confirmed the Prayer Book’s Biblical orthodoxy.¹³ From the autumn of 1554 to the autumn of 1555, the English-speaking community in Frankfurt would be embroiled in a series of long and emotional disputes that would involve many of the English exile communities throughout the Continent. The first series of disputes over the autumn and winter of 1554–55 seemed to have ended in March 1555, when the Frankfurt congregation agreed to use a compromise liturgy for a period of three months.¹⁴ Just over a month later, however, Dr Richard Cox – the former Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford – arrived with several others from Strasbourg and insisted that the church return to the official 1552 Prayer Book. After several failed meetings and attempts at reconciliation, Cox and the Prayer Book supporters convinced the city’s Magistrates to banish John Knox, the community’s pastor and most vocal supporter of the compromise liturgy.¹⁵ The exile church then embraced the 1552 Prayer Book with only a few modifications.¹⁶

Although the Frankfurt exiles’ addition of metrical psalm singing to their official liturgy was an innovation, psalmody was not a major issue in the debates or findings of the various committees, which instead concentrated on other aspects of liturgical practice and ecclesiastical polity. Some individuals did question the use of metrical psalms instead of prose texts, but such cavils were very subdued compared with the bitter fierceness that characterized the other debates at Frankfurt. The tone of these discussions of the metrical psalms can be illustrated by a letter from Erkynwald Rawlyns to Richard Chambers:

Thus for this presentes I com(m)end you to God. & for Godes sake waye those wordes that you & I talked of concerning the Psalmes songe in miter, which as it seamed to me you cold not alowe to be used in the churche so well as the texte it selffe. Indeade it must be graunted, that the texte above all thinges is to be esteamed, but when a man of God shall other in miter or prose wright or preache upon any parte of the scripture not dissentinge frome the true sence and meaning therof, it owght both to be receaved & allowed. Againe, all Christian churches so fare as I have harde & seene, do use to singe their Psalmes in the same order.¹⁷

Rawlins’s statement suggests that churches regularly sang the psalms in metre to plain tunes. However, Chambers’s personal liturgical preference was for the reading or chanting of the psalms in prose, as laid down by the Prayer Book. After Rawlins briefly reiterated a defence of metrical psalm singing, he moved on to his more significant concerns about the liturgy and the ‘forme’ of the Frankfurt church.¹⁸

After Cox and his supporters adopted (or from their opponents’ point of view, imposed) the Prayer Book with some minor changes, Whittingham began a three-month search for a new home for those who preferred the revised liturgy. He first stopped at Basle, and then continued to Zürich and Geneva.¹⁹ This last he and 27 others (including their dependents) chose to make their new home, as John Knox had already done. Once settled in the city, this Anglo-Scots community was free to establish the church they had originally intended to set-up in Frankfurt. The liturgy they adopted reflected the influence of Poullain’s Liturgia sacra, John à Lasco’s Forma ac ratio, and Calvin’s La forme des prières et chants ecclésiastiques.²⁰ In addition to a ‘purer’ liturgy, the Genevan Anglo-Scots community sought both a better English-language Bible and an improved metrical psalter. The first emerged in 1560 as the Geneva Bible, but the community was unable to complete versifications of all 150 psalms. However, during their four years in Geneva, they managed to publish a catechism, liturgy, form of discipline, some major polemical works,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Conventions and Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Metrical Psalters in Exile
• 2 Completing Sternhold’s Work
• 3 Completing the Exilic Psalters
• 4 Evolution of the English ‘Singing Psalms’
• 5 Between Uniformity and Instability in Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’
• 6 Anglo-Scottish Interactions in Print
• 7 English Metrical Psalmody in Practice
• 8 Scottish Metrical Psalmody in Practice
• Summary and Extension
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Select Bibliography
• Index to Biblical References
• General Index