Planning Psalms for Singing in Worship

Building on centuries of tradition, churches in almost every worshiping tradition are rediscovering the value of singing the Psalms in worship. The following article describes several possibilities for the inclusion of the Psalms in worship. The article is especially concerned with planning worship in the Reformed tradition, which has always placed a high value on singing the Psalms, but the ideas it presents can be easily applied to worship in any tradition.

The Psalms have been used in numerous ways in Christian liturgy, at least three of which are familiar to congregations in the Reformed tradition. First, and perhaps most familiar to most of us, is the use of psalms as expressions of the congregation’s successive acts of praise, penitence, dedication, and thankfulness. For example, a congregation might begin a service by reciting the votum (“our help is in the name of the Lord”) from Psalm 124:8. The minister continues with the greeting and blessing, and the congregation responds by singing a psalm of praise, perhaps Psalm 95 or 150. The service of penitence includes a general confession of sin and/or a penitential psalm, possibly Psalm 51 or 130. Following the declaration of pardon comes the reading of the Law, which may be followed by a sung selection from Psalm 119. And so on throughout the service.

A second way of using the Psalms—linking psalms to Scripture text and sermon—is also familiar to Reformed Christians. Though not every text and sermon can be matched precisely with an appropriate psalm, often a minister can find a few verses that will echo something in the text. For example, a congregation might sing Psalm 82 in conjunction with a reading from Amos, where the common emphasis is on doing justice to the poor and weak. A third way is to choose both psalm and text to reflect a particular season or feast of the church year (e.g., Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost). This third way of using the Psalms is closely related to the second and is frequently practiced in our churches. Both of these can be grouped under the broad heading of a “psalm-of-the-day” approach.

A variation of this third way comes with the use of a lectionary oriented to the church year. In recent years many denominations have begun to use the three-year Common Lectionary or some variation thereof. This practice has had the effect not only of increasing the amount of Scripture heard and preached in such churches but also of reviving the liturgical use of psalmody.

Those churches who follow the lectionary read three biblical passages each Sunday, one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament epistles (including the Acts or the Revelation), and one from the Gospels. Between the reading of the Old and New Testament lessons, a Psalm is appointed to be said or sung, one that generally relates in some way to one or more of the lectionary texts. For example, on Christmas Day the appointed Psalm will be either 96, 97, or 98 depending on whether it falls in year A, B, or C in the three-year cycle. On Ash Wednesday Psalm 51 is read every year, as is Psalm 22 on Good Friday. On the first Sunday in Lent Psalms 130, 6, and 91 are read during years A, B, and C respectively.

In adopting the new lectionary, many churches that have historically been weak in the singing of psalms have now made the Psalter an integral part of their liturgies. The lectionary has transformed Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, and other churches into psalm-singing churches. It is becoming increasingly less probable that one can attend to the liturgy of these churches without hearing at least one psalm. The lectionary is not, of course, the only way to revive the liturgical use of psalmody, but it is a significant means to this end. Moreover, unlike the first way of using the Psalms, the “psalm-of-the-day” approach ensures a place for at least one psalm in the liturgy. Those congregations that are weak in psalm-singing would do well to consider the use of some variety of the three-year lectionary.

Which of these ways of using the Psalms is the best? The “psalm-of-the-day” approach? Or the approach whereby several psalms are used in the course of the liturgy? I would suggest that neither of these is any more Reformed than the other and that, furthermore, both are mutually compatible and ought to be put to use. One can easily envision an Easter Communion liturgy in which Psalm 118 is sung as the appointed psalm in accordance with the lectionary and Psalm 103 is sung after the reception of Communion. Both of these ways of using the Psalms work well together and have a long tradition within the Christian church as a whole.

Ways of Singing the Psalms in Worship

The Psalms have been traditionally sung two ways in worship, to metrical paraphrases of the Psalms paired with hymn tunes and to the literal prosaic translations of the Psalms paired with plainchant melodies or psalm-tones. The following article explains these two approaches in more detail.

Psalm-singing Christians basically fall into two categories: those who chant the Psalms directly from the Bible and those who sing metrical paraphrases of the Psalms, in which the biblical text is reworked in poetic meter and (often) rhyme.

Metrical Psalmody

Churches with Reformed and Presbyterian roots traditionally are part of the second group, the tradition known as “metrical psalmody.” They have sung the Psalms almost exclusively in metered, paraphrased stanzas, and they have done so for obvious reasons. Congregations find metrical psalms easy to learn. And when a psalm is well translated into verse and set to an appropriate tune of regular rhythmic structure, it can be a joy to sing.

Yet there are some perils involved in the use of metrical psalms. First of all, a paraphrase is a paraphrase. The demands of meter and rhyme often necessitate changing a given text and even stretching its meaning somewhat. Worse yet, a rigid metrical pattern may require that such psalms be rendered in an extremely awkward form. In the Scottish Psalter of 1650, for example, the metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 includes lines such as the following: “He leadeth me the quiet waters by.”

Fortunately, contemporary versifiers of metrical psalmody have felt free to depart from even such conventional patterns as rhyme and generally have been more successful in communicating a psalm’s original meaning in comprehensible form. A well-known collection of these “freer” metrical psalms is Psalm Praise (London: Church Pastoral Aid Society, 1973), a book that was published to popularize psalm-singing among Anglicans in the United Kingdom.

Second, singing the Psalms to conventional hymn tunes can cause confusion, especially if the hymn tunes are well known. Hearing the same tune sung to both a hymn text and a psalm text tends to reinforce the notion that psalms and hymns are largely interchangeable—a notion that may be responsible (at least in part) for the historical tendency of hymnody to replace psalmody in most Protestant communions. Recovery of the Genevan tunes, most of which have not been attached to other texts, may be one way to combat this confusion.

Third, rendering the Psalms in conventional Western meters usually means losing the Hebrew poetic forms. For example, the Psalms were written in accordance with what has come to be called “parallelism,” whereby a certain thought is repeated twice but in different words: Save me, O God, by thy name, and vindicate me by thy might. Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. (RSV)

In these first two verses of Psalm 54 the second line echoes the first, and the fourth restates the third. This parallelism is easily retained in a standard translation such as the rsv or niv but is often difficult to manage in a metrical paraphrase.

Chanting the Psalms

Pointed Psalms. In contrast, chanting the Psalms permits the use of a standard translation that not only is more faithful to the Hebrew but also retains the Hebrew poetic patterns. The Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978) offers one of the simplest patterns for chanting the Psalms (using the translation in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer); the pattern involves a limited number of chant tones that a congregation will find easy to master. Lutheran Worship (St. Louis: Concordia, 1982), the hymnal of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, offers a similar method of chanting the Psalms (as translated in the NIV), using chant tones that are more modal in flavor.

The prose psalm texts are “pointed” for congregational chanting. Each psalm verse is divided by an asterisk (*). The first note in each part of the verse is a reciting tone to which one or more syllables are sung. At the “point” (asterisk), singers move from the reciting tone to the black notes. A vertical mark (|) indicates one syllable per black note; a horizontal mark (–) indicates one syllable per two black notes.

Gelineau Chant. One of the more interesting ways of singing the Psalms was developed by Joseph Gelineau of France. Of all the methods of singing the Psalms, Gelineau’s chant best preserves the Hebrew poetic style, retaining both the parallelism and the metrical structure of the original. Ancient Hebrew meter is somewhat like early English meter (e.g., nursery rhymes) in that it focuses on the number of stresses within a line rather than on the number of syllables. Gelineau psalmody is often sung to the Grail translation, which was produced specifically for this purpose. Gelineau psalmody also takes into account the different number of lines within each stanza—something that is not possible with other methods of psalm-chanting.

Gelineau psalms are usually sung responsively. The soloist or choir begins by singing the refrain; then the congregation repeats it. The psalm then proceeds responsively with a soloist or choir chanting the verses and the congregation responding with the refrain. Many Roman Catholics, who have recently begun congregational singing, have found this “responsorial” style of psalm-singing very helpful. A refrain (or antiphon, an older term) is much easier to learn than the whole psalm. Among Protestants who are used to exclusive metrical psalmody, the responsorial style has the advantage of making a clear distinction between psalms and hymns. Rather than simply reading the psalm directly from the Bible or singing a paraphrased version of it metrically, the congregation can sing the actual words from Scripture.

Other Methods of Singing the Psalms. Other ways of singing the Psalms include the Anglican chant, which involves a choir (though not necessarily) singing in harmony to speech rhythms, and the Gregorian chant, which is the more ancient method of psalm-chanting, simple enough to be used by either cantor or congregation. Examples of these can be found in the service music section of many denominational hymnals.