Robert Crowley The first complete English metrical psalter and the first to include musical notation was
The Psalter of Dauid newely translated into Englysh metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and wyth more delyte of the mynde, be reade and songe of al men. Printed in 1549, it was the work of
Robert Crowley and was printed by him,
Richard Grafton and/or
Stephen Mierdman. Crowley's psalter is a rare example of two-color printing (red and black on the first four leaves) in this era, which makes it visually resemble medieval manuscript psalters. (
Christopher Tye and
Francis Seager later included musical notation in their psalters, and the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter eventually incorporated a basic tune with the Anglo-Genevan edition of 1556.
John Day's
The Whole Book of Psalmes (1562) contained sixty-five psalm tunes.) Crowley also included a calendar for calculating feast days as in the
Book of Common Prayer, to which Crowley's psalter appears to be intended as a supplement. The music provided in Crowley's psalter is similar to the Gregorian tones of the Latin
Sarum Rite psalter, and it can be found in ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. A single note is given for each syllable in each verse, in keeping with Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer's mandate for the reformed Edwardian
liturgy. The goal was to emphasize simplicity and to encourage attentiveness to what was being sung by omitting complex vocal ornamentation. In addition to the Psalms, Crowley's psalter includes English versions of the
canticles
Benedictus,
Magnificat,
Nunc Dimittis, and
Benedicite, as well as the
Te Deum and the
Quicumque Vult. These are the
Cantica Prophetarium retained in the Book of Common Prayer from the Sarum psalter—key parts of the
Divine Office. Crowley's lyrics are mainly based on
Leo Jud's
Biblia Sacrosancta, which was in turn a fresh translation from the
Hebrew that maintained fidelity to its lyrical arrangement. Crowley rendered all the psalms in simple
iambic fourteeners which conform to the single, short, four-part tune that is printed at the beginning of the psalter. From Crowley's rendition of Psalm 24: :The earth and al that it holdeth, do to the lorde belonge: :The world and al that dwel therein as wel the olde as yonge. :For it is he that aboue al the seas hath it founded: :And that aboue the freshe waters hathe the same prepared. For the sake of comparison, here is how the same text is rendered in contemporary English Bibles: :The earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is: the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein. :For he hath founded it upon the seas and prepared it upon the floods. (
Coverdale, 1535) : :The earth is Gods and all that therin is: the worlde, and they that dwell therein. :For he hath laide the foundation of it vpon the seas: and he hath set it sure vpon the fluddes. (
Bishop's Bible, 1568) :The earth is the Lordes, and all that therein is: the worlde and they that dwell therein. :For he hath founded it vpon the seas: and established it vpon the floods. (
Geneva Bible, 1587) :The earth
is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. :For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. (
Authorised, 1611)
Sternhold and Hopkins ('Old Version') Thomas Sternhold published his first, short collection of nineteen
Certayn Psalmes between mid-1547 and early 1549. In December 1549, his posthumous : was printed, containing thirty-seven psalms by Sternhold and, in a separate section at the end, seven psalms by
John Hopkins. This collection was taken to the Continent with Protestant exiles during the reign of Mary Tudor, and editors in Geneva both revised the original texts and gradually added more over several editions. In 1562, the publisher John Day brought together most of the psalm versions from the Genevan editions and many new psalms by John Hopkins,
Thomas Norton, and
John Markant to make up
The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Collected into English Meter. In addition to metrical versions of all 150 psalms, the volume included versified versions of the
Apostles' Creed, the
Magnificat, and other biblical passages or Christian texts, as well as several non-scriptural versified prayers and a long section of prose prayers largely drawn from the
English Forme of Prayers used in Geneva. Sternhold and Hopkins wrote almost all of their Psalms in the "common" or
ballad metre. Their versions were quite widely circulated at the time; copies of the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter were bound with many editions of the
Geneva Bible, and their versions of the Psalms were used in many churches. The Sternhold and Hopkins psalter was also published with music, much of it borrowed from the French Geneva Psalter. One setting from their collection that has survived is the metrical form of the Psalm 100 attributed to
William Kethe, with the tune known as the
Old 100th, often used as a
doxology: :All people that on earth do dwell, :sing to the Lord with cheerful voice: :Him serve with fear, his praise forth tell, :come ye before him and rejoice. In 1621,
Thomas Ravenscroft published an expanded edition of the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter; Ravenscroft's edition added many more psalm tunes, some of which had been composed, since the original publication, by leading late Tudor and early Stuart English composers such as
Thomas Morley,
Thomas Tallis,
John Dowland, and
Thomas Tomkins. Another musical contributor to this volume was
John Milton, the father of
the poet of that name. By any objective measure of circulation Sternhold and Hopkins's psalter was a success. As a separate volume, it was re-printed more than 200 times between 1550 and 1640; in addition, the psalms in this form were included in most editions of the
Geneva Bible, and also in most versions of the
Book of Common Prayer. They continued to be in regular use in some congregations until the late eighteenth century. Literary opinion after the sixteenth century, on the other hand, was decidedly negative. In his 1781
History of English Poetry, British
poet laureate Thomas Warton called the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter "obsolete and contemptible", "an absolute travesty", and "entirely destitute of elegance, spirit, and propriety." In 1819,
Thomas Campbell condemned their "worst taste" and "flat and homely phrasing." In 1757,
John Wesley described the verse of Sternhold and Hopkins as "scandalous doggerel". Sternhold and Hopkins render the beginning of the 24th Psalm in this way: :The earth is all the Lord's, with all ::her store and furniture; ::Yea, his is all the work, and all ::that therein doth endure: :: ::For he hath fastly founded it ::above the seas to stand, ::And placed below the liquid floods, ::to flow beneath the land.
Tate and Brady ('New Version') First published in 1696, the
New Version of the Psalms of David was the work of
Nahum Tate (who was later named
poet laureate) and
Nicholas Brady. A second edition was published in 1698, and supplements were issued in 1700, 1702, 1704 (twice) and 1708. Their Augustan version shows somewhat more polish than the 17th century versions. The hymn
Through all the changing scenes of life is the setting of Psalm 34 from the New Version, and
As pants the hart for cooling streams is a setting of Psalm 42.
Isaac Watts ('Imitated') Isaac Watts produced a metrical psalter, in which he breaks out of the ballad metre in his 1719 ''The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, and Apply'd to the Christian State and Worship'', which, as the title indicates, was intended as an interpretation rather than a strict translation of the psalms. As an example of what is meant by "Language of the New Testament", Psalm 35 ("A psalm of David") verses 13-14 ("But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I afflicted my soul with fasting.... I behaved myself as though it had been my friend or my brother") becomes: "Behold the love, the gen’rous love, That holy David shows... The spirit of the gospel reigns, And melts his pious heart." His translation of Psalm 24 into long metre begins: :This spacious earth is all the Lord's, :And men, and worms, and beasts, and birds: :He raised the building on the seas, :And gave it for their dwelling-place.
Other versified psalms in English During the period of the English Reformation, many other poets besides Sternhold and Hopkins wrote metrical versions of some of the psalms. The first was Sir
Thomas Wyatt, who in around 1540 made verse versions of the six penitential Psalms. His version of Psalm 130, the famous
De profundis clamavi, begins: :From depth of sin and from a deep despair, :From depth of death, from depth of heart's sorrow :From this deep cave, of darkness deep repair, :To thee have I called, O Lord, to be my borrow. :Thou in my voice, O Lord, perceive and hear :My heart, my hope, my plaint, my overthrow. Sir
Philip Sidney made verse versions of the first 43 psalms. After he died in 1586, his sister,
Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, completed the translation of the final two-thirds of the psalter. Together they used a dazzling array of stanza forms and rhyme schemes—as many as 145 different forms for the 150 psalms. The Sidney Psalter was not published in its complete form until the twentieth century, but it was widely read in manuscript, and influenced such later poets as
John Donne and
George Herbert. However, poetry remains a matter of private devotion unless given a musical setting for trained choirs or for congregational singing. Rather than iambic pentameter, in England and Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries, the overwhelming preference in rural congregations was for iambic tetrameters (8s) and iambic trimeters (6s), ridiculed in Shakespeare's ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream'', in which Nick Bottom and the other "rude mechanicals" obsess over the need for a prologue "written in eight and sixe". The three meters then in use: Common Meter (8,6,8,6), Long Meter (8,8,8,8), and Short Meter (6,6,8,6) remain in widespread use in hymnals today.
Other English metrical psalters Later writers attempted to repair the literary inadequacies of the Sternhold and Hopkins version. The
Bay Psalm Book (1640), the first book published in the British colonies in America, was a new metrical psalter: :The earth Jehovah's is, :and the fullness of it: :the habitable world, and they :that there upon do sit :Because upon the seas, :he hath it firmly laid: :and it upon the water-floods :most solidly hath stayed In the 1640s, the English
Parliamentarians
Francis Rous and
William Barton both authored their own metrical paraphrases. Their translations were scrutinised by the
Westminster Assembly and heavily edited. Rous's original version of Psalm 24 read: : : : : : : : : After much alteration, a much-altered translation based on Rous's work was approved by the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and published in 1650 as the
Scottish Metrical Psalter, to be used throughout the
Church of Scotland. This showed some improvements, but ballad metre remained ubiquitous: :The earth belongs unto the Lord, :and all that it contains; :The world that is inhabited, :and all that there remains. :For the foundations thereof :he on the seas did lay, :And he hath it established :upon the floods to stay. One of the most widely known hymns in Christian worship, "
The Lord's my Shepherd", is a translation of
Psalm 23 appearing in the 1650 Scottish Psalter. But by the time better metrical psalms were made in English, the belief that every hymn sung in church had to be a Biblical translation had been repudiated by the
Church of England. A flowering of English hymnody had occurred under writers such as Isaac Watts and
Charles Wesley, but their hymns were freed from the stricture that each verse had to be a translation of a scriptural text. Attitudes towards the Biblical text itself had also changed, with closer emphasis being paid on its exact phrasing. This new regard for the letter of the Biblical text diminished the appeal of the psalters' previous versions; those who sang them no longer felt they were singing Scripture. The success of these newer hymns has largely displaced the belief that each hymn must be a direct translation of Scripture. Now, many hymnals contain Biblical references to the passages that inspired the authors, but few are direct translations of Scripture like the metrical psalters were. ==Metrical psalter in Gaelic==