Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

For their worship the English Puritans chose the Psalms of David, sung in unison, unaccompanied. The metre into which the Psalms were translated was ballad metre, and the music was syllabic - that is, using one melody note per syllable. In 1643 the Westminster Assembly of Divines enacted "that for the present where many of the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister or some other fit person appointed by him, and the other ruling officers do read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof." Lowland Scots took well to ballad metre, which was familiar to them in folksong, and 'reading the line' became so much part of the church’s praise that it came to be regarded as a venerable Scottish custom. Later church music reformers campaigned to abolish it, and it gradually became extinct, except in Gaelic speaking areas. . . .

The person who read the line became known as the precentor. Nowadays it is the precentor’s duty not only to let the congregation hear clearly the text it is to sing next, but also to give a hint of the melody line by pinpointing its more important notes. . . .

On hearing Gaelic Psalm Singing for the first time, some who are entirely outside the culture find it an intensely moving experience. For the privileged few who have been nurtured in it, each good performance has the attraction of familiar, secure, unchanging things, as well as that of the powerful beauty of the sound.