Complete contents of several historical Metrical psalters, partial contents of others, information about their history, and other documents about church music Sternhold and hopkins, brady and tate, isaac watts, bay psalm book, psalm singing sing the psalms, praise and worship christian church music cotton mather

The Library

Information about Psalm singing, its history, Christian hymns, hymnals and church music in general, metre and how to use it, etc.

Metrical Psalters (and their histories)

We have the following metrical Psalters on this site. At present we have the complete contents of three of them. It is our intent to provide the complete contents of all of these Psalters, plus others as we have time.

  Date Popular Name Author
COMPLETE  1562 The "Old Version" Sternhold and Hopkins (and others)
  1564/1635 The Scottish Psalter of 1564/1635 Words of the 1564 Scottish Psalter, music of 1635
  1640 The Bay Psalm Book New England Puritans
COMPLETE  1650 The Scottish Psalter of 1650 Scottish Reformed Church
COMPLETE  1696 The "New Version" Brady and Tate
  1718 Psalterium Americanum
(limited selection)
Cotton Mather
  1719 Psalms "Imitated in the Language of the New Testament" Isaac Watts
  1887 Psalter of the United Presbyterian Church Various
NEW 1999 The Psalter for Christian Worship Michael Morgan

What is Metre?

This three-part paper explains the basic idea behind a way for Psalm singers to match metrical psalms to the appropriate tunes.
Part 1, What is Metre
Part 2, Why Should I Care?
Part 3, And If I Should Decide to Care, How Do I Use It?
Coming -- "Beyond Metre -- further insight into choosing tunes to match words." (We reserve the right to change the title) Accent, mood, etc.
Obsolete Words and Pronunciations First, some notes about the language used in the various metrical Psalters.
 

(to be continued later) Metrical Psalm Singing Development, Illustrated With Psalm 19. This is an exploration of versions of Psalm 19 in metre dating from 1562 up to the present, with tunes contemporary to each version of the Psalm.

Special Selections

From time to time we will create a selection of songs from resources on this site (and other sites). These selections will be intended to be used for personal worship, or perhaps even as song services for a more formal gathering.

For Passover:
Passion Week in Song, a selection of songs about Jesus last week.
The Great Hallelujah 
- possibly the Hymn sung at the Last Supper was  from one or more of these Psalms
For Pentecost:
Selection of Songs for Pentecost
For Trumpets:
Selection of Songs for the Feast of Trumpets
For Atonement:
Selection of Songs for Attonement
 Special Music:
Two selections from Roger Bryant's album
Two songs performed by Mark Graham
 
Selection of songs based on Psalm 32
Song Services for Sabbath, August 15, 1998
Songs for Sabbath, July 25, 1998 - Feast Fever!
Songs for Sabbath, July 11, 1998

A Special Page for the Fourth of July
One selection on the Fourth of July page is a version of
           Psalm 107:21-31 by John Quincy Adams (the U.S. President)

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