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The last three
paragraphs of these jottings describe how we’ll be ‘psinging the psalms’
congregationally (starting on Sunday, 6/24/07), so read on or scroll down. The
same simple yet tuneful melody will be used each week. As with all sacred
music, “psalmnody” nourishes a God-centered state of mind, transporting us from
the worldly
to the Divine. It adds another musical element to our worship and
enjoys a noble history in our church-at-large.
“Psalmody” is a part of “Chant” as in, “Do you all chant the psalm at your church?” The unaccompanied singing of psalms is a practice our church borrowed from Roman Catholicism, which borrowed it from Judaism. While this practice has fallen away in much of Catholicism (but not at all in Judaism), our church has shown a bulldog determination to chant and elaborate on the chants in ways that popes of past centuries blanched at and even forbade.
When King Henry VIII established the Church of England in 1536, he so loved the beauty of the Catholic service that he left most of it available, including psalmody. From a musician’s viewpoint, the “C of E” vastly improved things by allowing for both the use of English (indeed, any language) and the chance to use harmony where Catholicism only allowed for melodic singing. England’s terrific choral tradition immediately found a place in the church. This encouragement gave a significant boost to choral composition and singing, arguably England’s most significant contribution to art music. Occasionally, I hope to include a psalm in 4-part harmony and partake of a practice that is thoroughly high-church and delightfully moving.
For now, we do a nice job with melody. Earlier this year, St. Mary Magdalene
acquired the standard psalm collections: Gradual Psalms, 5 volumes of
verse-verse/refrain settings laid out by church year, for holy days, for various
occasions and for lesser feasts (melodies only); The Plainsong Psalter,
simpler versions of all the psalms with refrains (melodies only); and The
Anglican Chant Psalter, all the psalms in 4-part harmonies. The psalm
settings we’ve used since February have been drawn from the first two
collections. We chant the refrain together, a soloist chants the verses, and
the refrain is inserted after every other verse.
Now let’s chant the
whole psalm congregationally. I’ve devised a melody 12 notes long
based on the “Rosary” setting borrowed from Christ Church in Bradenton, grace of Deacon Marcia. The melody will be in the order of service, but it’s so easy to learn that we can follow the psalm text printed on the insert. Basically, strings of words are chanted on a single note as if you were reading in a monotone, with a little variation at the end of each half-verse. You might have noticed that in the insert, each verse is divided in half with an asterisk at the midpoint.
The first half of verse one goes with the first note (an open-headed note) up to the last 2 syllables before the asterisk. The last 2 syllables go with the next 2 notes (solid-headed notes), then you take a breath, marked by an apostrophe. The second half of the verse goes with the next note (open head) up to the last 2 syllables of the verse, which go with the next 2 notes (solid heads), then you take another breath. We’re at the end of the first verse and halfway through the melody.
Verse two works the same way using the second half of the melody. When we’re at the end of the second verse of the psalm, we’re also at the end of the 12-note melody. The rest of the psalm is chanted by starting the melody over again, so it repeats every two verses. If there’s an even number of verses, we get to the end of the melody. If there’s odd number of verses, we end in the middle of the melody, which is designed for that possibility. A few choir members and I will demonstrate before the service on the 24th. Make a joyful noise by ‘psinging the psalms.’