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Scottish Psalter - Appreciating Psalmody

Discussion in 'Music Ministry' started by Bassoonery, Mar 6, 2021.

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  1. Bassoonery

    Bassoonery Active Member

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    I mentioned in my "new member" post that I was lurking on the Puritan Board before joining here. All the talk of the Regulative Principle and Exclusive Psalmody reminded me that I actually own a split-leaf Scottish Psalter (1929), that I had even packed in my bags when I moved from England to India, but had never thought to open up. It was given by my secular professor who had happened to receive it from someone else, and I was the only student of his working on Christian music.

    I am taking such great delight in discovering the beauty of the metrical psalms matched with any number of the tunes. This week my family were shattered by the suicide of a close family member. Living in a place that has banned funeral singing due to Covid, I have found profound solace in playing and singing these psalms alone.

    I don't have much of a question here, but do wonder if there are others here who have been blessed by psalmody despite not necessarily being from an RP or EP background?
     
    #1 Bassoonery, Mar 6, 2021
  2. kathleenmariekg

    kathleenmariekg Active Member

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    I love both the Scottish Psalter and the Geneva Psalter. Both were meant to make private worship possible for the layman and in homes.
     
    #2 kathleenmariekg, Mar 8, 2021
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  3. kathleenmariekg

    kathleenmariekg Active Member

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    #3 kathleenmariekg, Mar 8, 2021
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  4. kathleenmariekg

    kathleenmariekg Active Member

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    #4 kathleenmariekg, Mar 8, 2021
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  5. Bassoonery

    Bassoonery Active Member

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    Your responses are so interesting, thank you. I have certainly come to realise how well-suited the psalters are for private devotions, though I do long to be able to visit and participate in a congregation one day. My background is in ethnomusicology and I have been surprised at the diversity in musical sources that were being used by 1929 - almost as varied as an evangelical hymn book.

    I had no idea about using it for teaching reading! My work currently involves supervising early-years reading and this could be a great resource. I will look into it. Have you seen it in action?
     
    #5 Bassoonery, Mar 9, 2021
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  6. SGO

    SGO Well-Known Member

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    On a different tack, have you seen the video that Aaron put in a link on this forum?

    It is related to music in the Psalms:

     
    #6 SGO, Mar 9, 2021
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  7. Bassoonery

    Bassoonery Active Member

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    It's certainly an interesting project. I had come across something similar from an early church hymn but the scope of Haik Vantoura's work looks much bigger.

    My initial impressions are that while the attempts to understand and codify the notation are highly commendable and quite credible, any attempt to translate that into an actual scale or pitch set is always going to be arbitrary, even if the results are considered beautiful. That's not to negate their devotional value of course.

    Without an instrument of the era that can give a clue as to the kind of scale that was used, there isn't much to go on apart from the number of pitches. The same is true of trying to reproduce the pronunciation of ancient languages. Awareness of how much English pronunciation has changed is enough to caution against making any assertions where documentary evidence is scarce. Even if the scale were correct, there is no way to know the intended voice, register, key or tempo - and tempo makes a big difference.

    Finally, I think it's misleading to claim they are "as David and Solomon" sang, as I doubt the diacritical notation was necessarily written by those authors, but perhaps by later Jewish editors preparing the scrolls for singing. I'm no expert but that's what I suspect. Otherwise, there would have to be evidence of musical and notational stylistic change as the centuries rolled on through the Old Testament. For the whole OT to share a consistent and self-contained musical style complete with its own notation is rather unbelievable to me unless they were edited at a later date. We know from experience how fast music and its notation can change, and the Hebrew text itself exhibits change throughout the OT which helps the process of dating manuscripts.

    If I were to tackle the project, I think I would be interested in a comparative study to see whether there are any signs of continuity between these transcriptions and the ways in which the text is sung today.
     
    #7 Bassoonery, Mar 9, 2021
  8. SGO

    SGO Well-Known Member

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    Bah, sooner or later you may come to a more definitive conclusion.
    A note able response.
     
    #8 SGO, Mar 9, 2021
  9. Bassoonery

    Bassoonery Active Member

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    #9 Bassoonery, Mar 10, 2021
  10. SGO

    SGO Well-Known Member

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    If you can slog through 500 pages hopefully it will lead you soon or nunnery.
     
    #10 SGO, Mar 10, 2021
  11. Deacon

    Deacon Well-Known Member
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    I formatted the Bay Psalter into a format useable in Logos Bible Software a few years back. [here]

    The Bay Psalm Book of 1640 was the first book printed in America.

    "It's a book that was not created to be fancy or splendid or valuable in any way other than the significance of its content," says Derick Dreher, the director of Philadelphia's Rosenbach Library, one of the few institutions to hold a Bay Psalm Book. But because the congregation for which it was created literally used the book to death, very few of the copies have survived.

    One of the few remaining copies was sold last November [2013] for 14.2 million dollars.

    "If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them confider that Gods Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected a plaine translation then to smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry, in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english meetre…" [Bay Psalm Preface, page 13]

    Rob
     
    #11 Deacon, Mar 10, 2021
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  12. Bassoonery

    Bassoonery Active Member

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    Wow, I can see you put a huge amount of work into that. I don't have Logos but was able to download the .doc file.

    I'll be curious to see how the text compares with my Scottish one. Was the original Bay Psalter ever published with musical notation?

    Sent from my SM-C900F using Tapatalk
     
    #12 Bassoonery, Mar 11, 2021
  13. kathleenmariekg

    kathleenmariekg Active Member

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    I think the pilgrims used the Bay Psalter. When I visited the living Museum in Plymouth, one of the huts had a Psalter.
     
    #13 kathleenmariekg, Mar 11, 2021
  14. kathleenmariekg

    kathleenmariekg Active Member

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    Yes, I have seen the Psalter and hymn books used in action.

    I think my younger sister learned to read primarily from following my finger in hymnbooks as the hymns were sung, and memorizing the scripture printed out on cards for her to memorize each week.

    I spent a few years tutoring homeless women and learned a lot about phonics. More than one woman would only read the KJV Bible in their most paranoid states, and I learned how to use that single book to teach a variety of subjects, especially remedial phonics. I could sometimes sneak in a metrical version of a Psalm to pull out a repeated sound or spelling.

    The following books will teach you to use poetry/hymns and the Bible to teach reading.

    Ruth Beechick's the 3 R's. Mott Media carries other of her books and phonics flashcards that you might find helpful. The methods used and taught in 3R's and the McGuffy readers can be applied to the Psalter and any book.
    https://www.amazon.com/Three-Rs-Ruth-Beechick/dp/0880620749

    Sam Blumenfeld's How to Tutor. He has a confusing assortment of other books, in different editions with some false advertising. I usually just stick with How to Tutor, but Phonics for Success is my choice to track down and purchase for any student that needs their own textbook and is likely to finish it. The advanced lessons are superior, and the book is more politically correct.
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KD60MEE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1495144216/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    Ella Frances Lynch teaches children to "read" a memorized portion of Hiawatha. This technique can be applied to memorized Psalms or any text. Start reading "Educating the Child at Home" on page 73.
    Educating the Child at Home

    Google "Copywork", and look for articles like this one.
    The Unlikely Homeschool: Beginner's Guide to Copywork

    Don Potter has lots of free handwriting resources. This one is an expanded version of the instructions on the above book, How to Tutor". http://donpotter.net/pdf/af_cursive.pdf

    To use copywork instead of handwriting worksheets, you must use a hand that is made up of repeating strokes, and teach/learn the letters as combinations of strokes, not as individual drawings. Master the hand yourself first, and then you will be free of needing worksheets.

    For learning disabled students, I first teach the Spalding hand in manuscript not cursive. Don Potter has a very similar free method. http://donpotter.net/pdf/shortcut-to-manuscript.pdf. For the more capable students, I teach them to join the lowercase manuscript into cursive. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ab/b8/15/abb81507ef8a818ed0eba1cba3757436.jpg but I retain the manuscript for the uppercase letters. I do not teach uppercase cursive. And I do not force remedial students to join their letters. Some disabilites require a student to finish one letter entirely before thinking about the next letter. Curive requires multitasking that is a burden on some students. Lefties, especially disabled lefties do better with vertical instead of slanted hands. The spalding joined letters are vertical. Traditional cursive is slanted to the right.
     
    #14 kathleenmariekg, Mar 11, 2021
  15. kathleenmariekg

    kathleenmariekg Active Member

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    The out-of-print 4th edition of Writing Road to Reading is the last edition written by the author before she died. I learned a lot by reading this book, but only use the handwriting. I use How to Tutor as my order of instruction and NOT Spalding. The later editions are making the foundation a lot of money, but are NOT superior. They will cost you time as well as money. If you are curious about Spalding beyond the handwriting, stick with the AUTHOR'S book only.

    https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Road-Reading-Spalding-Teaching/dp/0688100074

    Don Potter will answer people that e-mail him, that are serious about using the Psalter to teach people to read.
     
    #15 kathleenmariekg, Mar 11, 2021
  16. SGO

    SGO Well-Known Member

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    #16 SGO, Mar 11, 2021
  17. Bassoonery

    Bassoonery Active Member

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    Thanks a lot for all these suggestions. I have an awful lot of tabs open in my window now! In fact, if any of you know of an exemplary kindergarten-level practitioner interested in spending time in a Christian corner of India, drop me a line... We could benefit from some real expertise.
     
    #17 Bassoonery, Mar 12, 2021
  18. SGO

    SGO Well-Known Member

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    Teacher by Sylvia Ashton-Warner had a great influence on me.
    She was given the task of teaching Maori children how to read and write.
    Every standard method she tried failed.
    Then she started to incorporate the children's own experiences as texts and the children greatly improved in learning.
     
    #18 SGO, Mar 12, 2021
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