Whereas Martin Luther would admit any suitable text to be sung in worship unless it was unbiblical, John Calvin would allow only those texts which came from Scripture. Calvin commissioned poets to write metrical settings of the Psalms for the congregations in Strassburg and Geneva. Calvinist churches throughout Europe developed large repertories of psalmody, especially churches in England and Scotland.
By about 1532 the French court poet Clement Marot (c. 1497–1544) had already translated some of the Psalms into French verse. These translations were shared at court and sung by an ever increasing circle of admirers. John Calvin selected twelve of Marot’s metrical translations along with five of his own to be printed in his first Psalter, the Aulcunes Pseaulmes et Cantiques Mys En Chant. This was published in Strassburg in 1539. After Marot’s death, the work of translation was continued with the expert aid of Theodore Beza (1519–1605), who moved to Geneva in 1547. A complete Psalter of 150 translations was published in Paris in 1562. It had 125 tunes, 70 of which were composed by Louis Bourgeois (c. 1510–1561), a capable musician and music editor. Today, his best-known tune is old hundredth, which is now sung to the text “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” and commonly known in many churches as the “Doxology.” This 1562 Genevan Psalter was widely accepted and often imitated in the 225 similar publications that appeared within the following one hundred years.
In England, the first Protestant hymnal was Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalms and Spiritual Songes Drawn Out of the Holy Scripture (c. 1539). However, this book, with its translations of German chorales, was prohibited by Henry VIII. Thus, the adoption of chorale singing in England was thwarted, while the practice of psalm-singing found acceptance. At first, the metrical psalms of Henry VIII’s wardrobe attendant, Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549), gained the king’s favor. After Sternhold’s death, his disciple, John Hopkins (d. 1570), carried on the work. In 1547, the first edition of nineteen psalms was printed. This was followed by an edition with music in 1556. Intended to be sung to familiar ballad tunes of the day, most of the texts were written in a common meter of two or four lines of fourteen syllables each (8686 or 8686 doubled).
Eventually, the complete Psalter, published in 1562 as The Whole Book of Psalms, came to be known as the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter. At least one edition or revision appeared each year for the next one hundred years, the first harmonized version being the one by John Day (1563), with sixty-five harmonized tunes.
The Sternhold and Hopkins series was replaced by A New Version of the Psalms of David by the poets Nahum Tate and Nicolas Brady. The former was the Poet Laureate to William III, and the latter was a Royal Chaplain. The New Version was published in 1696 and became, in spite of some fierce opposition, a tremendously influential work over a period of more than one hundred years.
Other English and Scottish Psalters
A number of publications retained the metrical psalms of the older Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter with different music. The 1579 edition by William Damon contained a large number of common meter (8686) tunes as well as the short meter (6686) tune, Southwell, often used for the text, “Lord Jesus Think on Me.” Among the composers represented in Thomas Este’s musical edition were the leading composers John Dowland, John Farmer, and Giles Fornaby. This volume also included George Kirbye’s harmonization of the familiar tune, Winchester old, sung today with the Nahum Tate text, “While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night.” An even more extensive collection of tunes, sung throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and the Continent, was Thomas Ravenscroft’s 1621 The Whole Book of Psalms. From this book, modern hymnbook editors have selected the popular tune, Dundee, and placed it with William Cowper’s profound text, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”
After John Knox returned from Geneva in 1559, he gave oversight to the publication of the Scottish Psalter in 1564. This particular Psalter had the distinction of including more French psalm tunes than any of the English Psalters. By the time the 1615 Scottish Psalter came into print, the practice of including psalm tunes without a designation to any specific psalm was accepted. This was in contrast to the German custom of assigning one “proper” tune to each text. Thus, the English and Scottish Psalters allowed any given “common” tune to be used with many different texts in the same meter. In the 1635 Scottish Psalter more tunes were provided by Scottish musicians. Finally, the authorized 1650 Scottish Psalter appeared without any music. It introduced the most beloved of all English metrical psalms, the twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord’s My Shepherd, I’ll Not Want.”