Genevan Psalter
Before the Protestant Reformation a select group of performers generally sang the psalms during church services, not the entire congregation.
John Calvin believed that the entire congregation should participate in praising God in the worship service, and already in his Institutes of the Christian Religion of 1536 he speaks of the importance of singing psalms.
In the articles for the organization of the church and its worship in Geneva, dated January 16, 1537, Calvin writes: "it is a thing most expedient for the edification of the church to sing some psalms in the form of public prayers by which one prays to God or sings His praises so that the hearts of all may be roused and stimulated to make similar prayers and to render similar praises and thanks to God with a common love."
For this reason he wanted to create a songbook of hymns based on the psalms in the belief that in this form these biblical texts would become more easily accessible to people.
After being forced to leave Geneva in 1538, Calvin settled in Strasbourg, where he joined the Huguenot congregation and also led numerous worship services.
The collection was titled "Les Pseaumes mis en rime francoise par Clément Marot et Théodore de Béze".
Most of the other melodies from the Genevan Psalter are still used in Reformed churches in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Scotland, Canada, the United States, South Africa and Australia.
The quality of congregational hymn singing soon began to deteriorate, and the Renaissance melodies were sung with 'whole notes' only, removing the original rhythm from the music.
This practice gradually disappeared as pipe organs and choirs became more prevalent, with the exception of more orthodox churches still employing the whole-note tradition.
A rich musical culture has flourished around the Genevan Psalter in the Netherlands, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, with famous Dutch organists such as Jan Zwart, Feike Asma and Willem Hendrik Zwart publishing their own musical renditions of the melodies as well as frequently employing the melodies in organ improvisation.
Dutch settlers in South Africa also founded Reformed churches where many of the Genevan melodies are still used today, especially with the Afrikaans versifications of the 20th-century poet Totius.
Anthonie van Noordt, another Dutch composer, wrote organ works in a similar style based on these melodies.
More recent composers inspired by the Genevan Psalter are Zoltán Kodály, Frank Martin and Arthur Honegger, amongst others.
A Czech-language edition of the Genevan Psalms was prepared by Jiří Strejc (also known as Georg Vetter, 1536–1599),[10] 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).
Regular meter and bar-lines are absent; and there are very few melismas (only Psalm 2, 6, 10, 13, 91, 138) Anabaptist Anglican Lutheran Presbyterian Reformed
