Genevan Psalter - Historical Significance

Historical Significance

The Genevan Psalms are predominantly used within the Calvinist churches. In these churches the role of church music is often far less significant than in e.g. Lutheran churches. One result of this different approach is that most of the singing in Calvinist churches is done in unison. Harmonies and instrumental renditions were exclusively used within the home or for concert performances. Hence the number of musical arrangements based on the Genevan Psalm melodies is far smaller than those based on the church music from other church traditions. The most well known harmonies, based on the Genevan psalter are the 4-part choral renditions composed by Claude Goudimel. Less known are the compositions of Claude Le Jeune from the same era and the arrangements of Clément Janequin and Paschal de l'Estocart. The Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck wrote motets for four to eight voices on all the psalms, some of them through-composed including all verses, as well as a number of psalm variations for organ. Anthonie van Noordt, another Dutch composer wrote organ works in a similar style, based on these melodies. Orlando di Lasso together with his son Rodolpho composed three-part renditions of the psalms by Caspar Ulenberg, whose melodies were mostly based on the Genevan Melodies. In North-Germany, Sweelinck's pupil Paul Siefert composed two volumes of psalm motets.

The Polish composer Wojciech Bobowski, who later converted to Islam and took the name Ali Ufki, modified the first fourteen psalms to the Turkish tuning system, writing Turkish texts to fit the Genevan tunes. In Italy the Jewish composer Salamone Rossi wrote motets based on the Genevan Melodies. A small number of Genevan psalms found their way into the Lutheran church tradition. Hence we find a number of these melodies in the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach and others. More recent composers inspired by the Genevan psalter are: Zoltán Kodály, Frank Martin en Arthur Honegger amongst others.

Not quite a dozen years after the publication of the Genevan Psalter, in 1573, the Lobwasser Psalter was published by legal scholar Ambrosius Lobwasser and found its way into the public worship of the Reformed Churches in, e.g., Zürich. The Lobwasser Psalter would in turn serve as the model for Czech and Hungarian versifications of the Genevan Psalms.

A Czech-language edition of the Genevan Psalms was prepared by Jiří Strejc (also known as Georg Vetter, 1536-1599), who was born in the Moravian village of Zábřeh and became a minister in the Unity of the Brethren, the ecclesiastical heirs of the ill-fated pre-reformer Jan Hus (c. 1369-1415). It was still being used as recently as the turn of the last century.

In Hungary Albert Szenczi Molnár versified the psalms in the Hungarian language, and they are still sung today in the Reformed Church congregations in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, including Hungary and parts of Romania and Ukraine.