Memorizing Metrical Psalms

[83r17h]

Hello all,

I was curious what your practice on memorizing metrical Psalms are. For example, do you stick to one psalter, or do you switch between several? Do you memorize only one version of a Psalm, or multiple? Do you memorize with music, or just lyrics (and then set to various tunes)? Do you sing many of the Psalms regularly, or a specific subset more commonly? Do you only memorize a metrical version, or do you memorize an English translation of the Psalm as well?

 

[SavedSinner]

The easiest way to memorize is to sing them daily. If you want to read them for memorization, it will be much easier using the older psalters, because the new ones, such as the OP/URC Psalter-Hymnal, did not consider the poetic sound and flow of their updated words. They just did a wholesale update of "thine" to "yours" which might not sound all that bad in singing, but reading aloud it sounds terrible. They also pulled from the 1912 Psalter, which was often not even a rough paraphrase, so it could not really even be called a psalter. The old Scottish Psalter and the Genevan Psalter are much better, but as with the King James Bible, you have a the occasional archaic words and phrases.
Geneva: Good if you are multilingual; all psalms for all European languages in the same tune. I once worshipped in a mostly German speaking congregation in France near Strassburg --- they were singing in both but if you wanted you could sing in the same tune but in English (or Dutch or Hungarian, etc.) So this psalter is very international and does not have the crude updates that you find in the OP/URC psalter or the RPCNA.
Scottish: Other than just a few psalms labeled "another of the same", they are all common meter. Easy to memorize. And you can update your psalter with notes on which common meter tune you prefer to use.

 

[SavedSinner]

The flow of the text can really help you memorize. This is something that the people who put out these new psalters do not understand. About a hundred years ago an ecumenical Heidelberg Catechism was translated for languages around the world. The RCUS understood how good this translation was, so that when they updated the language, they kept the flow and were even careful to keep out non-Germanic words to ensure that children and adults would have a deep understanding of the text. The CRC and its legacy church, URC, did the opposite at the back of the OP/URC Psalter-Hymnal with the language updates and poetry broken into sterile bullet points that no one memorizes.

 

[Ed Walsh]

Do you sing many of the Psalms regularly, or a specific subset more commonly?

This seems like a question that can be answered separately from the memorization of the Psalms. I don't try to memorize as a separate discipline, so I will only answer the part quoted above. Every morning, after an in-depth time of studying the book I am concentrating on, I sing at least one and often two or three Psalms from the 1650. I do this serially from Psalm 1 through 150 and then start over again. Sometimes I use the canned tunes from the app, other times I make up my own tunes.† Occasionally I go out of sequence if I feel a special personal need or am preparing a Psalm for our small group to sing. Then back to the Bible at various places.

†I encourage you to experiment with original tunes when you are alone. You might be surprised by the beauty of such tunes at the leading of the Spirit. I often feel the pleasure of God when a tune works well. I also sing most of my prayers. The words and rhymes just seem to flow naturally. It amazes me, and I really think He likes it.

 

[Afterthought]

I stick with one psalter (the 1650). I daily sing it in a consecutive manner, but I have plenty of times when I sing others of them on my own (not usually a specific subset for me). I tend to memorize them slowly but surely as I sing them, but I sometimes concentrate and memorize some of them to sing with me when I do not have a psalter handy. The version question isn't really relevant to the 1650, but my goal is to remember all the C.M. versions plus a few of the other meters that look well-translated. My goal would be to have the prose memorized too, and I absorb the prose as I read the Scriptures on my own, though the 1650 often follows the prose of the A.V. reasonably closely. I do not memorize with specific tunes, unless I think a tune is really well suited, but even then, it is the text I end up having memorized, not the text plus tune (just the way my mind works; I hear others struggle switching tunes with the text).

 

[JM]

Anyone try a so-called 'memory palace?' I've heard the term, not too familiar with how it works, but it sounds interesting.

 

[CathH]

I can't really speak to memorising the Psalms in adulthood as I was steeped in them from childhood. At the moment, with the children, we sing a small subset more commonly (eg a few verses from each of Ps 8, 23, 34, 46, 72, 89, 100, 118, 148, etc) and we keep expanding the repertoire with the aim of eventually getting back to singing consecutively through the whole book of Psalms.