Valerie is a 42-year-old, single, Reformed Christian lady who lives in Baltimore. She doesn't remember a time
before she knew and loved Jesus, but she does remember accepting John Calvin into her heart in March of 2000.
Valerie is a member of Christ Reformed Evangelical Church in Annapolis.
Though her career aspiration is to be a housewife, Valerie has not yet found anyone suitable who wishes to hire
her for employment in that field (or, more properly, anyone suitable has not found her), so in the meantime she
earns her daily bread working in communications -- editing, writing, print design and website management.
The Imprecatory Waltz
I've written a new metrical verse for Psalm 108:
Here I am dancing with Edom, I'm waltzing... Watch me twirl now with Philistia. Oh, isn't it so swell How I can curse rebel nations like Moab? In three-quarter time I damn them, Waltz them straight into hell!
Seriously, "Haydn" is a lovely tune, and I'm sure the editors of The Book of Psalms for Singing were much holier than I will ever be, but what were they thinking pairing a waltz tune with an Psalm of judgment?
Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 5:39 PM
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5 comments
5 Comments:
On December 14, 2008 8:51 PMpentamomwrote... I have that problem with a lot of the BoPfS, and the older Trinity Hymnal suffers from a bit of that as well. (In TH's case, some of it has to do with not being able to get copyright permissions for superior tunes due to all the politics of the founding of the OPC.)
I'm not familiar enough with the newer TH to know how well some of this is corrected, but I must confess I get tempted to great impatience with exclusive psalmodists who major on the exclusivity but completely overlook the inappropriateness of some of the tunes (not to mention the -- yes I'll say it -- silliness of some of the versification.) In some ways I think the holiness they're trying to preserve with exclusivity is almost completely undermined by singing the holy words to waltzes, ditties, and cheerleading songs that don't fit the words at all.
On December 15, 2008 11:21 AMmagistramaterwrote... I remember teaching a piano student what I had puzzled out on my own about meters in hymns and swapping tunes. We covered S.M., C.M. and L.M.; C.M.D., ref. and al.
We finished with a demonstration that compatibility in meter doesn't equate good pairing of tune and verse. We found "What Child is This" is the same meter as "Showers of Blessing" but one can't easily sing the words of one to the tune of the other. I think we ended the lesson in heaps of laughter.
On December 15, 2008 1:30 PMThe BadgerMumwrote... I will never take Exclusive Psalmodists seriously until they give up their versified Psalms, which are really hymns based on the Psalms, and start chanting the Psalms straight out of the Bible. ;-)
On December 15, 2008 1:54 PMpentamomwrote... Okay, I need to back off a little. Having ripped the BoPfS, that's actually not what I meant to do at all. There are some really amazing, appropriate, beautiful tunes in there. For whatever reason, for the most part those are tunes not found elsewhere or at least not well-associated with other hymns. The one they use for Psalm 98, for example, is just fantastic. And Psalm 136 does the antiphonals really nicely.
And by way of contrast, the dirge that everyone else in the world uses for Psalm 100 (All People That on Earth Do Dwell) is a serious mismatch, though most of us probably don't notice due to familiarity. It suits the doxology better because the doxology is more solemn, but it doesn't fit a "joyful shout" at all.
So it's a mixed bag, and I didn't mean to trash it as a whole. I was just agreeing that some of the tune selections are pretty terrible.
On December 15, 2008 10:06 PMValerie (Kyriosity)wrote... So I'm going through my accumulated mail looking for the insurance bill I missed paying, and there's a catalogue for Crown & Covenant which includes an announcement re a forthcoming psalter:
The Book of Psalms for Worship A new psalter for the 21st century, available late 2009.
Perhaps it reflects corrections of this sort of silliness!
