Henoch, I want to give some "pushback" on this. You'll hear that a lot, mostly from people who have heard it from others and haven't actually heard the Genevan Psalter sung by a congregation that's used to singing it.
I think the Genevan Psalter has gotten a "bum rap" for supposedly being "unsingable." That just isn't true. It might have been true in the 1920s or 1930s when the Dutch were making the transition to English and most Americans could still sing in rhymed meter, but that isn't true and hasn't been true for at least three generations.
Today, most Americans simply can't sing and don't sing outside of church, and most modern American churches today aren't using traditional hymns.
What is correct is that the Genevan tunes predate the development of the "modern" (meaning 17th to 19th century) Western metrical singing tradition. It is true that the Genevan Psalter is part of a much older tradition of ancient and medieval singing, simplified and adopted to make it realistic for a congregation to sing the tunes rather than a trained monastic choir. Some would say that's a feature, not a flaw, but that's not my point.
My point is that in the true "modern" world we face today, we need to recognize that only a tiny minority of people are able to read music. The vast majority of non-believers, and large numbers of evangelical church members, primarily listen to music which is not metrical. We all know what secular music sounds like, but just how much Christian contemporary music on Christian radio stations uses rhymed lyrics, in a metrical arrangement, with stanzas? The amount isn't zero, but it's pretty close to zero. And as for secular music -- good grief, even Frank Sinatra and the other great singers of the 1940s and 1950s were not singing in meter. I've never yet heard any World War II patriotic music, the sort of thing that was all over the radio and widely promoted as pro-American patriotic choruses, that was in any way comparable to the metrical tunes of Civil War era patriotic music like "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord," the Battle Hymn of the Republic made popular in 1861. (Don't yell at me, Southerners -- I'm trying to use an example of patriotic music from a century and a half ago to show how different it was from patriotic music of eighty years ago.) Maybe someone can show me rhymed metrical patriotic music from 1939 to 1945, but I haven't yet seen it.
That means even the music being listened to and sung by people the age of most of our grandparents wasn't similar to metrical hymnody. The music is irregular and not rhymed. To say the Genevan Psalter is difficult to sing because it's not in rhymed meter that most people outside conservative "traditional worship" circles haven't been singing for two, sometimes three generations, simply isn't true.
Is this difficult to sing? It's Psalm 2 from the Genevan Psalter.
The only thing "difficult" about singing that is lots of modern evangelicals don't like the wrath of God -- and that's not a problem with the Genevan Psalter, but rather that plenty of people have a problem with God's Word.
An added benefit of using the Genevan Psalter for congregations with significant numbers of minority members (which chiefly today means Hispanics, but could also mean Asians from Korean, Chinese, or Japanese backgrounds) is that the Genevan Psalter is available in most languages that have a significant Reformed church.
Here's Psalm 2 in Korean, which we actually do use at Hazelgreen since some of those attending speak no English:
Here's Psalm 2 in Spanish, which I have sent to a number of Spanish-speaking people in our community:
With a bit of digging, I could be sending you the Genevan Psalter in the original French from Calvin himself, in Dutch (of course!), or in Hungarian, Italian, or Portuguese, as well as a modern translation into Indonesian. I believe but have not verified that the Genevan Psalter is available in Polish and at least some of it in German, and I know parts of it are even available in Turkish.
I'm not attacking the Scottish Psalter. There are arguments against it, but that's not my point. I wouldn't be surprised if the Scottish Psalter exists in Scottish Gaelic, and perhaps there are other languages into which it was translated by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries of the 1800s, but it's not widely translated into languages other than English. Unfortunately, when the modern missionary movement was getting underway, most American and British Presbyterians were in the process of abandoning psalm singing and didn't see a need to translate the psalms. The result is that when a Korean doctoral student was attending the Free Church College and wanted to produce a Korean psalter, he quickly realized the Scots Psalter was not widely available in other languages, the Genevan Psalter was, and for that reason decided to use the Genevan Psalter rather than the Scots Psalter as the basis of his translation work.
I don't have any great love for Fanny Crosby and traditional American hymnody of the 1800s. "Restoring traditional worship" may be the goal of my fundamental Baptist friends and neighbors here in the Ozarks, but I'd rather get back to the Psalms, and I think the Genevan Psalter is a lot better option due to its much more widespread availability in other non-English languages.
When I have several charismatic ministers in my community listening to the Genevan Psalter and saying, "This is wonderful to be able to sing God's Word," I think it shows two things:
1. God's Word is powerful. We in the Reformed faith underestimate the appeal of the Psalms to people who are not Reformed but believe the Bible.
2. Most people in the modern American evangelical church aren't using rhymed metrical hymnody anymore. Irregular rhythms aren't "strange," they're normal. That means the single biggest objection against the Genevan tunes no longer applies to most modern evangelicals who are used to "praise and worship" music.
Make of that what you will. I think it's an opportunity. Your mileage may vary.
gracechapeltn.com
