In biblical worship, the psalms were chanted or declaimed. We do not know exactly how this music sounded, though recent research has confirmed the similarity between Hebraic music and ancient forms of Christian chant. The psalms formed part of the developing liturgy of the Eastern and Western churches, along with Greek and Latin hymnody. In the Western church, the psalms found more regular usage within the "offices" or daily periodic worship of the monastic communities. The Catholic heritage of chant, often called Gregorian chant because of the influence of Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), includes the use of the psalms sung to standard "tones" or melodies according to conventional rules. This music was performed by choirs of clergy or members of monastic orders, who had developed the necessary skills. Originally the psalms were sung monophonically, i.e. with one unharmonized melody, or "plain chant." In the later Middle Ages additional voices were introduced, with such devices as counterpoint (a different simultaneous melody) or organum (a sustained tone over which others sang the melody). The departure from the simpler form of chanting was opposed by those who believed that more elaborate musical detail called attention to the performance and thus degraded the worship of God.

Psalmody as a form of congregational singing came to its greatest development in the English language. The Church of England came under heavy Reformed influence, leading eventually to what we know as the Puritan movement with its emphasis on church government and worship according to New Testament patterns. In the early stages of the English Reformation, the Catholic heritage of Latin hymnody -- which had largely fallen out of use in any case -- was laid aside, and in its place metrical psalmody was introduced. In 1562 John Day printed the Book of Psalms with psalm texts translated by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins and a number of others. This psalter used tunes from the Genevan Psalter and from English sources, including popular ballads. Day's psalter remained in use for more than 250 years and went through more than 600 editions. It was also known as Sternhold and Hopkins after its main translators, and was later called the Old Version after Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady brought out their New Version of the Psalms in 1696. The Old Version established the standard patterns which came to dominate English psalmody: Common Meter (8.6.8.6), Short Meter (6.6.8.6) and Long Meter (8.8.8.8). Musicologist Henry Wilder Foote remarked, "Next to the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer the metrical psalms were the most influential literary contribution made by the Reformation to the religious life of the English people."2 A Scottish Psalter first appeared in 1564, with several subsequent editions.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a time of great religious turmoil in Great Britain, as various ideologies struggled for control of the Church. The reign of the Catholic queen Mary Tudor (d. 1558) meant persecution and exile for many Protestants. She was succeeded by Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603) who failed to reform the church to the degree many Protestants desired. As a result, separatist groups formed who worshiped outside the established church -- the beginnings of the congregational or "gathered church" movement -- and some of these groups moved into exile in Holland. In 1612 in Amsterdam, Henry Ainsworth published his Book of Psalms for the use of these congregations, including 39 tunes of English, Dutch and French origin. The Ainsworth psalter was brought to Plymouth Colony in 1620 by the group we know as the Pilgrims and was used there for a generation.

Another form of psalmody which developed during this period was that of Anglican chant, which was non-metrical and this resolved the problem of the need to alter the biblical text. In Anglican chant, the first portion of a line is sung on a sustained pitch with harmonic support, with the final syllables resolving in a short series of chords. Anglican chant had the advantage of preserving the Hebrew parallelism of the psalms, but since it was suited more for choirs than for congregational singing, it was not taken up by the "nonconformist" churches which emerged from the English Reformation. In America, the Episcopal Church continued to use the metrical psalms, either Sternhold and Hopkins or the New Version, until the rise of church hymnody in the nineteenth century.

Early English psalmody, like the psalmody of plain chant, was almost exclusively vocal. Organs were found in only a few of the cathedrals and larger churches. Although many Reformed leaders were skilled in music, they believed that instruments were appropriate only for secular music or for personal devotion and not for public worship. In the church service, a leader (in England the church clerk, in New England a deacon or "precentor") would "set the tone" which the congregation would follow. Later, some instruments began to be used, beginning with the pitch pipe and bass viol ("church bass"), then treble instruments such as the flute. Except for some Episcopal churches, organs were not introduced in New England until the mid-nineteenth century. The earlier psalm books which included music printed only the melody.

Psalm Singing in America

The first American psalter, The Whole Book of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, was produced by the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony beginning in 1640. It is known as the Bay Psalm Book, the first book to be printed in English-speaking North America. It did not include music, but recommended the use of the tunes in Thomas Ravenscroft's psalter of 1621 which comprised 97 tunes representing the finest English psalmody available at the time. (The 1651 edition of the Bay Psalm Book was called The Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testaments.) Musicologists, however, note a deterioration in the quality of psalmody from the days of the Genevan Psalter and Ainsworth. While these earlier psalters had used a variety of metrical patterns for psalm settings, the Bay Psalm Book represents a general reversion to the three standard forms, which were easier for congregations to learn in the frontier setting where musical training was not readily available.

Congregational singing in New England, especially in isolated communities, continued to deteriorate through the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. The first wave of emigrants from England to the Plymouth and Bay colonies and to Connecticut had included people of education and musical background, but the harsh conditions of frontier life meant that, as new generations succeeded the "first comers," people no longer possessed the skills necessary for high quality singing. Many could not read, much less read music, and psalm books -- seldom available in sufficient quantity -- often lacked musical notation. The stream of new emigrants for religious reasons, who might have brought with them the necessary skills, dried up once the Puritan and Independent influence came to power in England with the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell (mid-1600s).

In many parishes, then, singing reached a low point. The number of psalm tunes known to the typical congregation was greatly reduced, and confined to the simplest meters. The psalm tunes, originally vigorous, were slowed by giving all their notes equal length, supposedly in the interests of solemnity. Because people could no longer read music, the practice developed of "lining out" or "deaconing" the psalm. The leader would read a line of text, then sing it and the people would repeat, a procedure described by one critic of the time as "praising God by piece-meal." It was time for a change.

The seeds for a revival of singing in the New England church were already being sown in England. In 1696, Tate and Brady had issued their New Version, introducing some fine tunes such as "Hanover" and "St. Anne" (attributed to William Croft). The work of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) marks a watershed in the history of English hymnody, for in his Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719) he broke with the tradition of "close fitting" translations and produced hymns that were poetic paraphrases of the biblical psalms. (The best-known today are probably "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past," Psalm 90; and "Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come," Psalm 98.) Watts' approach to the psalms was "evangelical," in that he was not hesitant to incorporate elements of the Christian gospel into his psalm paraphrases. Watts' hymns were not introduced into the Anglican community until much later -- in Anglican chant, the psalms were brought into the orbit of Christian faith by adding the Gloria Patri at the end -- but his work was taken up by the Independent or congregational churches.