h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Anglican Psalm Singing - A2476064
Author: Vip - U188069

I've had some time on my hands, so I've managed to dust of my old entry on psalm singing in the hopes of adding it to the Guide.

There are a lot of links and footnotes, but it is still a reasonably technical article. Please let me know if there is anything I could clarify. I have had to link to Wikipedia twice which I hate doing, but it really is about the only place I could find definitive articles (that's the Book of Common Prayer and Wiki's article on psalms, as the colour diagram is really really good).

Thanks for your time.

Couple of possible additions -

Many cathedrals use the Oxford Psalter as opposed to the book of common prayer

In addition, it might be worth adding that the 150 psalms are broken up traditionally into 60 sets (If memory serves me - can't remember what we used to do on the 31st of the month) - 30 sets for morning services and 30 for evenings...

(Oh, and the 15th evening was a real pain - it went on for ever!)


Having said that, I'm working on memory here (between 1976 and 1986) and can only speak for Edinburgh, Newcastle and Carlisle cathedrals - for all I know the rest of the CofE might do things differently.

Gah! I remember you saying that originally. I need to look it up- it's not something I know anything about. I haven't used an actual psalter since... well, quite a ling time.

I know all the psalms are set for particualar days, but I don't know why they were set the way they are. Is it arbitary, or was there some reason? Why evening and why morning? Is it possible to only hear half of the psalms if you only attend in the mornings, not the evenings?

Sorry for all the questions.


I've added a mention of the Oxford Psalter in the opening section. Interesting, the whole Anglo-Norman thing. Didn't realise it was used either. Thanks.

As far as my memory goes - during evensong we sang a pre-defined set of 'evening' psalms - morning psalms were rarely used - unless a specific service required them.

There's a copy of the BoCP here if you want to look --> http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/download/index.html

(Don't worry about the fact that it's on-line - the contents of a book that dates back to 1662 is well and truely out of copyright now!)

The 31st of the month appears to be the same as the 30th.

Thanks for all this Whisky. I've added all the gubbins abour the BoCP in the introductory section.

I have also added a second subheader after the 'How Do You Sing A Psalm?' entitled 'Other Notes For Effective Psalm Singing' to help break that huge section up a little.

In other news, I've realised that I am going on holiday on Friday (15th) so I'm not going to be around to respond to comments for that week (fool!). Sorry about that.

Posted this on the other thread attched to the entry , and have copied it over

Hi Vip,
Hope you had a good holiday, I figured I write his now while I remembered, and then it’s there for when you get back.

Yay! … this is a nice entry, and a good companion piece to the Anglican Choral tradition one you’ve linked to. I’ve a couple of points, if I may (hopefully not too nitpicky!)

“The history of psalm singing goes back for several hundred years, starting with Thomas Tallis and his contempories and becoming standard in English churches by the 1800s”

Errr, I would’ve thought singing psalms is as old as the Book of Psalms itself, I once heard them described at the ‘hymnbook of the Bible’: my NIV Bible has several footnotes explaining the musical directions. Psalm singing in the Roman/Protestant churches does indeed go back for ‘several hundred years, starting with…’ but that is not the *total* history of psalms What about:

“The history of psalm singing is as old as the Book of Psalms, however the Anglican tradition goes back for several hundred years, starting with Thomas Tallis and his contemporaries and becoming standard in English churches by the 1800s”

It might also be worth pointing out that some churches (my current one included) use a responsorial psalm (in this case as a gradual between the old and new testament readings during the Eucharist service on Sunday mornings) :

- organ plays the chant (melody line)
- cantor sings the response (organ plays accomp.)
- all (cantor, choir and congregation) sing response
- cantor sings ‘verses’, using chant .
- all sing response
- repeat for as longs as that day’s psalm lasts, finishing with a final response.

And a couple of typos…

contempories -- > contemporaries
calander -- > calendar
inbetween -- > in between
sentances -- > sentences
prenounced -- > pronounced

Other than that . I had a google at lunchtime, but couldn’t find a better/clearer diagram of the chant than the wiki one

Rockhound (evensong-loving alto)

and lost all the Smileys

" Errr, I would’ve thought singing psalms is as old as the Book of Psalms itself"

You are entirely right. Sorry, worded that wrongly. I've corrected the offending paragraph to roughly what you suggested (just added an extra full stop to prevent the sentence running away with itself).

Typos- amended. My thanks. The downside of writing in Notepad is the lack of a simple F7 spellcheck for all the silly mistakes.

I've also added a section on the responsorial psalm at the end. I've heard of the idea before (my home church used a variant during Eucharist), so I've tried to make it broad and all-encompassing. Hopefully this should make it *too* broad.


Many thanks, Rockhound!



P.S. As for the whole table exercise, I'm working on it, be back once I've had a look.

Err, I mean that it *shouldn't* make the section about responsorials too broad.

Bah.

Gah! And the table thing I mentioned is related to my bellringing article, not this one.

*slaps wrist*

Nae problem! Looking good

Thanks! It seems to be shaping up nicely.

It's looking good! Any more for any more?

Actually, I've found one: I cite the Book of Common prayer twice, with two different links, but on the sidebar only first is mentioned.

What can I do to fix this? Is it because the links have identical links?

The links have identical text, is what I meant to say.

On the second mention of The Common Book of Prayer, we replaced the h2g2 tag with HREF and gave it a TITLE of 'Common Book of Prayer - Download' to differentiate it from the other CBOP link.

Nice entry

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