Psalm paraphrases in verse form with suggested familiar tunes for singing in Short Meter, Common Meter and Long Meter for the appointed psalms for the Book of Common Prayer lectionary. Includes Canticles and Invitatories for the Daily Office for both Rite I and Rite II. Please note: This is the version based on the Book of Common Prayer Lectionary and originally published in 1986. A new version for the Revised Common Lectionary is now available.
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.
