Why this publication, and why now?

One of the recent concerns within the Church is that the ancient art of psalm-singing – as opposed to psalm-saying – is rapidly falling into disuse. Often the psalm has been dropped altogether from regular worship. Hence we, as members of LAC, have been asked to produce a book of psalm settings along simple lines, to encourage congregations to join in singing the psalms.

Doesn’t just saying the psalms involve the congregation?

 Yes, but the psalms are songs, as their title tells us. The difficulty is that they are written in a prose style, not a regular metre. Therefore, some way of fitting irregular prose to a regular musical metre needs to be found. They were always intended for singing and there are benefits to singing them. St Augustine said, ‘to sing is to pray twice’. To add music to any spoken text allows it to soar from the page, through the lips, and into the mind and heart. Texts sung become more firmly embedded in the mind and are more easily recalled in prayer and praise.

Isn’t anglican chant sufficient?

Anglican chant is a beautiful vehicle for the musical rendering of the psalms.
Churches where it is the norm continue to adopt this dearly-loved practice, but congregations can feel excluded from what can become a choral domain. In practice, with the gradual demise of choirs in parish churches, psalm singing has declined.

The beauty of ‘Singing Psalms’ is that it is simple to follow: a monotone really, with a chord change at the end of each (half) line of the psalm, so there are fewer notes to negotiate. For example, in a pair of verses (reflecting the parallelism of the psalms), there will be 8 chords (or notes) altogether: just 2 chords per 4 lines. These are easy to master – the repeated response can be sung even by the most unmusical members of a congregation. The chants for the verses are also simple enough to be sung by congregations.

Explain the responsorial element.

To set the psalm in context a refrain – a verse, or part of a verse – is sung at the beginning and end by everyone, and again between pairs of verses. The verses can be sung by cantor (one person), choir (SATB or unison) or ideally congregation.

‘Singing Psalms’ (A4 spiral-bound, 99pp) will be available from the Resource Centre, Rathmines, Dublin 6 and The Good Bookshop, Belfast, priced  €12.99 / £9.99. For further information, contact Alison Cadden on tel. 048 (028 from N.I) 3833 2538 or The Revd Peter Thompson on tel. 048 (028 from N.I.) 8776 1214.