sevenzedek
Puritan Board Junior
I am interested in finding the original melodies that were composed for the 1650 Psalms of David in Metre. Could anyone point me to a place where I might buy a book or a website where I might find these scores?
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Where does a Reformed Baptist go in order to learn to sing these Psalms?
I am interested in finding the original melodies that were composed for the 1650 Psalms of David in Metre. Could anyone point me to a place where I might buy a book or a website where I might find these scores?
By the way, I'm glad we don't know. It would only make us fight more about how we should sing the Psalms.
I thought you were going to ask for the *original* melodies, as in King David's!
I thought it was common knowledge that all of David's psalms were sung to the tune of Dundee.
According to the musical scholars I've studied, they have lost tract of the original melodies. They believe a lot of the marks in the old texts may be musical notation of some kind, but no one really knows.
There are a few groups who've taken a stab at it, but even there work is not considered to be scholarly.
---------- Post added at 08:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:41 AM ----------
Yikes! This is what I get for reading in a hurry.... I didn't see the the 1650 when I was scanning the OP.
I'm sure Sharon's right. Nobody sat down to compose tunes for that psalter - they came from all over the place, and probably many if not most are the work of that well-known composer Mr AnonFirst of all, I don't think that many tunes were composed specifically for the 1650 Psalter. I think most of the tunes used circa 1650 were borrowed from earlier Scottish psalters, or borrowed/adapted from the Genevan psalter. I could be wrong on that though.
We do know many of the tunes used at that time, though. The split-leaf psalter published by the Free Church includes the date of each tune's composition. Many pre-date the Scottish Psalter, some from as early as 1562 (one of the earliest I see as I open my psalter at random).
You might try to get a hold of the split-leaf psalter from the Free Church (best price online is from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom), which includes many of the early tunes. Or if you want to find an earlier source, you might try looking online (try Google Books or archive.org) for:
Early editions of the Scottish Psalter--1615, 1635
Este's Psalter
English Psalter, 1562
Ravenscroft's Psalter, 1621
etc.
But to warn you--some of the earlier tune books are hard to read, because the notes were written differently back then.
By the way, I'm glad we don't know. It would only make us fight more about how we should sing the Psalms.
I thought it was common knowledge that all of David's psalms were sung to the tune of Dundee.
What, not Duke Street?