The Bay Psalm Book

The Bay Psalm Book September 6, 2016

I just learned that, through a bit of poor communication within my department, I’ll be teaching my new core curriculum course on the Bible and Music the same semester that my colleague teaches his course on the Psalms. Although we would have avoided this convergence if we had noticed it, the intersection should be beneficial and there is unlikely to be overlap. My course will barely scratch the surface of the Psalms, while my colleague Paul Valliere focuses relatively little attention on music.

Paul mentioned the way students react when they learn about the Bay Psalm Book, the first book to be printed in North America. You can find facsimiles of the book online, as well as discussions of it from musical and other perspectives. An actual Bay Psalm Book sold at auction for a record amount.

We have modern settings of that translation of the Psalms, as well as the earliest settings of the Bay Psalm Book words, from among which “Old One Hundreth” is a famous example in which the melody is even older, going back to the Geneva Psalter and Louis Bourgeois in the Renaissance.

Here is some of what YouTube has to offer from, or connected with, the Bay Psalm Book:


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