Wednesday, August 05, 2020

Singing the Psalms


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This summer we have been engaging the Book of Psalms through scripture readings, study, and preaching. Chapel musicians have also been singing or chanting Psalms during our Sunday morning worship services. Below you will find recordings from recent services of musical settings for various Psalms, along with a brief commentary about the music. Play the videos to listen to the Psalms.

Psalm 124

Music by Peter R. Hallock (1924–2014)

Peter R. Hallock was a church musician, composer, and countertenor best known for his work at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. He was a graduate of the University of Washington and also studied at the College of Saint Nicolas of the Royal School of Church Music in England, where he was the first American Choral Scholar at Canterbury Cathedral. From 1951 until 1991, Hallock was organist and choirmaster at St. Mark’s Seattle, where he founded the now famous St. Mark’s Compline Choir. Compline at St. Mark’s began in 1956 and continues today, attracting hundreds of citizens and tourists—particularly young people—each Sunday night. Hallock’s most famous compositions were his psalm settings. His Ionian Psalter set all the psalms in the three-year lectionary, and remains an extremely popular resource for churches across the world. Here is his setting for Psalm 124:

Psalm 103

Music from Henry F. Lyte (1793–1847) and the Psalter 1912

Both hymns from the July 26 Chapel worship service are paraphrases of Psalm 103. Henry F. Lyte’s “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” was written in England in the 1830s. Each of its five stanzas was based on a sequential group of psalm verses. By 1861 the original fourth stanza (which paraphrased verses 15-18 and began, “Frail as summer’s flower we flourish”) was already being omitted from hymnals. “O, Come My Soul, Sing Praise to God” first appeared in the Psalter 1912, a hymnal of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. Note its five stanzas, including a fourth stanza that likewise summarizes verses 15-18. Though it is also paired with a well-known tune, this later paraphrase has not had the staying power of “Praise, My Soul.” Lyte’s hymn may have “lost” a stanza, but the rest has become beloved, appearing in more than 450 hymnals since its publication.

Psalm 96

Music by Giovanni Croce (c.1557–1609)

A composition by the Italian composer, singer, and priest Giovanni Croce sets to music two verses from Psalm 96. Cantate Domino is a four-part motet, quite upbeat and lively, with sections in duple and triple time. This highly popular setting reflects both the Council of Trent’s calls for textual clarity in sacred music as well as Croce’s skill as a composer of lighter-style canzonets and madrigals. The performers are four of the Chapel’s staff singers, who are currently section leaders in the Vespers Ensemble and Evensong Singers. Each singer recorded their own voice part at home, and were then edited together.

Psalm 90

Joseph Gelineau (1920-2008)

This setting of Psalm 90 is presented in a “Gelineau psalm” setting. Joseph Gelineau was a French Jesuit priest with a deep interest in both music and text (he helped translate La Bible de Jérusalem, the French predecessor to The Jerusalem Bible). His psalm settings are his most famous compositions, and are now considered a “genre” of sung psalmody in their own right. In a Gelineau setting, a constant pulse permeates the psalm and connects the refrain and the verses. Stressed syllables in the verse text are timed to occur on the pulse, and all remaining syllables happen between pulses. The result is a style of chant with a strongly rhythmic affect (unlike the arguably more ethereal Gregorian chant).

Psalms 61 and 63

Antonín Dvorák (1870–1937)

This offertory solo comes from Biblical Songs, a song cycle on Psalm texts by Antonín Dvorák. Dvorák wrote the songs while living in New York City in the early 1890s. In 1895, the same year Dvorák moved back to Europe, the cycle was published there, with texts in Czech, English, and German. Sung here is "Hear my Prayer, O Lord" (Biblical Songs, Op. 99, No. 6), which takes as its text Psalm 61: 2, 4, 5 and Psalm 63: 2, 5, 6.