Victims of Compromise: The Elizabethan Psalm Tunes

The music of The Whole Book of Psalms (first printed in 1562) was not a product of English tradition, but a new congregational system brought home from Geneva. Psalm tunes in Edward VI’s time had been secular, iambic and based on dance rhythms; in so far as Thomas Sternhold’s metrical psalms were sung in church, they were chanted by choirs to Sarum tones. The tunes created for congregational use by the Marian exiles had to satisfy Calvin’s principle that they must be distinct from secular songs. They avoided strong rhythms and imitated the Huguenot psalter, which catered for a very different French prosody. Elizabethan congregations were enthusiastic about singing, but did not take to many of these tunes. Evidence shows a growing tendency for the printed tunes to be ignored in practice, and to be replaced by orally transmitted ‘common tunes’ restoring the secular Edwardian idiom. These, rather than the Elizabethan tunes, became the lasting model for the English hymn tune.