Spend several hours researching the psalm’s structure and meaning before applying music. See page on Hebrew Poetry. This way the music will match the theme of the psalm and not have a tune that conflicts with the words :- don’t play a happy tune to angry/sad words. Don’t do a Handle – by grabbing popular music and applying a few verses with massive repetition. Focus on the Psalm and not the music.
Give preference to entire psalm as literal as possible without changing the words or forcing music. Enjoy the psalm exactly as it was intended by the author. It may be helpful to recognize modern trends that are counter productive when trying to sing a Psalm as a song:
- Do not use only one or two verses thus deleting the majority of the psalm.
- Do not use massive doses of repetition of only a few verses.
- Do not re-phrase the psalm to fit modern definitions of poetry (syllable counting and rhyme).
- Do not prioritize instruments and voices over the words of the psalm.
- Do not ignore Hebrew Parallelism.
- Do not fret over writing out musical notation and complex harmonies.
- Pope Gregory wanted everyone to chant the same thing at the same time. The notation developed for Gregorian Chants developed into modern music notation. Remember Psalms have no music notation. Written notation wasn’t important – it’s the lyrics that’s important.
When I was younger I remember feeling very disappointed when I realized there was not single song book with for singing the Psalms. Instead every church/ecclesia has hundreds of 16th to 21st century ditties that don’t contain a single Psalm in it’s original form. I did find some half hearted attempts where 1 or 2 verses are set to music but it was a far cry from an entire Psalm. It became apparent that the people demand a specific genre of music whether it be 16th or 21st century music – they have an emotional attachment and inner addiction to the genre that supersedes the desire to hear Psalms.
