Chanting the Psalms

[Guest]

The following question and answer appeared in a recent Church Times.

Members may be interested if not already aware of the custom.

Q: In chanting the Psalms, some church choirs make a distinct break in the middle of each verse and yet run on from verse to verse with scarcely a pause. What is the theory behind this curious way of disrupting the flow of the the poetry?

A: Several factors explain this custom of chanting the Psalms. It is a reminder that the Psalms are Hebrew poems, characterised by parallelism and rhythmic balance of thought in the separate phrases of each verse and highlights their literary structure. Far from disrupting the poetic flow, in Hebrew versification this was transparently clear and good translations endeavour to reflect that feature, whether the Psalms are sung or said.

Musicologists have also drawn attention to the acoustic conditions of spacious and resonant churches in which the Psalms were chanted when a silent pause - a so-called 'pausa conveniens' - was necessary between the phrases of each verse but not between consecutive verses, to allow the echo of the musical cadence of the first phrase to fade away before the choir resumed singing the second phrase: for example: "Praise Him sun and moon": [pause] "Praise Him all ye stars of light".

This method of chanting was welcomed as an aid to devotion, by providing a 'pause of recollection',to reflect on the deeper spiritual meaning of the Psalms.

The mid-joint break is more noticeable when the Psalms are sung to Gregorian tones but both single and double Anglican chants ensure a slight pause in each verse.

In The Prayer Book the Psalms are described as "pointed as they are to be sung or said in church and that is, punctuated with a colon for corporate singing or recitation. In Common Worship there is a reminder that "A diamond marks the mid - point in each psalm where, traditionally, a pause is observed".

VCC

[Vox Humana]

I have to wonder whether the reply above was written by a musician. I suspect not. Surely the long, mid-verse pause is a feature peculiar to plainsong. I have never yet heard it in an Anglican chant and I hope I never will. As for acoustics dictating that mid verses and ends of verses be treated differently, come off it!

The long mid-verse pause in plainsong psalms does have a long history though. The customs of the Use of Salisbury had this to say about psalm singing (though I think they were quoting something even older):

Psalmodiam non nimis protrahantur: punctum nullus teneat sed cito dimittat. Post metrum bonam pausam faciamus. Nullus ante alium incipere et nimis currere presumat aut post alios nimium trahere uel punctum tenere. Simul cantemus, simul pausemus, semper ascultando.

My Latin is on the dodgy side, but I think this translates approximately as follows:

"Let not the psalmody be too drawn out: Let none hold the point [full stop at the verse end] but quickly quit it. After the mid-verse mark [metrum] let us make a good pause. Let none presume to start and run too much before another, or to draw out or hold the point after another. Together we sing, together we pause, always listening."

I think it was normal for the verses of psalms to be sung antiphonally by the two sides of the choir (until the Gloria which was sung by all) - that was certainly the case at Salisbury. That might possibly have something to do with why verses followed each other with barely a break, but I am only guessing. I don't know enough to answer the question. The best place to ask would be the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society group on Facebook - lots of plainsong scholars there.

[Lento]

I have occasionally noticed a customary mid-verse break in the organ accompaniment of Anglican chant (at parish level), presumably to aid ensemble where there is no conductor.

[Vox Humana]

The sort of mod-verse gap that is being talked about can be heard here, in the psalm that begins at 8:10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwVZofxgg44

[Miles Coverdale]

A: Several factors explain this custom of chanting the Psalms. It is a reminder that the Psalms are Hebrew poems, characterised by parallelism and rhythmic balance of thought in the separate phrases of each verse and highlights their literary structure. Far from disrupting the poetic flow, in Hebrew versification this was transparently clear and good translations endeavour to reflect that feature, whether the Psalms are sung or said.

That's true up to a point. Parellelism is a feature of many, but by no means all, of the psalms. As to whether or not translations follow the versification of the Hebrew, they vary. Coverdale (BCP) does usually follow the verse-division of the Hebrew, though not quite always. The Vulgate is often poor in this respect, and there are a number of places where it is half a verse out with the Hebrew.

There are other features of the Hebrew which have been lost in translation. Perhaps the most obvious of those is the acrostic-like aspects of certain psalms - Psalm 119, for example. This is made up of 22 sections, each consisting of eight verses and headed by a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or alephbet, as some have called it. What is lost from every translation that I have seen is the fact that all the verses of a partcular section begin with the letter that heads it. Thus in the first section, which is headed Aleph, all the verses begin with Aleph, in the second section with Beth, and so on.

The colon that appears at the midway point of each verse in the BCP does not always aid the sense. Presumably that is why some psalters (eg the Oxford Psalter) mark certain verses to be sung without a pause, although they could have done so in rather more cases than they did in my opinion. One of the more egregious examples of the unnecessary colon appears in the BCP Nunc dimittis (yes, I know it's not a psalm), verse 2. For mine eyes have seen: thy salvation.

[Wolsey]

Adding to what Vox Humana has cited from the Use of Salisbury, more about the pause (metrum or media distinctio) may be found on page 59 of this book.

[Vox Humana]

One of the more egregious examples of the unnecessary colon appears in the BCP Nunc dimittis (yes, I know it's not a psalm), verse 2. For mine eyes have seen: thy salvation.

There was always a pause in the reciting note of each psalm tone after the mediation and this pause is what the colons in the medieval psalters indicated. Your namesake preserved these colons in his psalter (maybe in the expectation that they would continue to be sung in plainsong?) Thus the example you cite from the Nunc dimittis was simply adopted from the Latin: Quia viderunt oculi mei : salutare tuum.

[Miles Coverdale]

There was always a pause in the reciting note of each psalm tone after the mediation and this pause is what the colons in the medieval psalters indicated. Your namesake preserved these colons in his psalter (maybe in the expectation that they would continue to be sung in plainsong?) Thus the example you cite from the Nunc dimittis was simply adopted from the Latin: Quia viderunt oculi mei : salutare tuum.

That's not entirely true, actually. If you look at the original source of the BCP Psalter, namely the Great Bible (the second edition of 1540, to be exact), it seems clear to me that the text is intended to be read (privately or in public) as prose, and is punctuated as such, for there are many verses which have no colon at the half-way point. It's only when the Psalter was later printed separately that the colon was introduced at the half-verse. The first such offprint appeared in 1549, no doubt to accompany the first Prayerbook, which was also published that year. Although copies of the BCP printed today routinely include the Psalter, the 1549 BCP did not. In other words, from 1549 onwards Coverdale's Psalter was pointed so that it could be said or sung communally, but it was not originally conceived that way. My point is that the introduction of a colon or pause into every single verse does not always aid the sense of the language, be that English or Latin.

[Vox Humana]

Ah, I didn't know that. Thank you, Master Coverdale.