Anecdotes of Great Musicians/Anecdote 89
89.—OLD WORDS TO NEW TUNES.
Plutarch tells us that Solon, by singing an elegy of a hundred verses in length, composed by himself, excited the Athenians to war with the Megarians. This may readily be believed. To be compelled to listen to a song of a hundred verses would excite almost any one to war, even at the present day. But the old Puritan psalm singers outdid the Greeks in this respect. The writer has a copy of the Covenanter's Psalm Book, dated 1595. In it, among other lugubrious tunes, is the one used to the 119th psalm, and to this tune are set the 176 verses in long array, stringing out their dreary length page after page. We may well believe that a people who could stand such doses as this, could burn their neighbors at the stake for witchcraft. Some of the versions of the Psalms as used by the modern psalm-singers are somewhat improved as to versification, but are yet lamentable failures as to rhyme and rhythm. But there is this to say in their favor, that the quantity to be used at any one sitting has been reduced somewhat from 176 verses.
If the Psalms must be sung in their original phrase or anywhere near it, let the original Hebrew tunes (if such they can be called) be used. But if these lines are to be set to modern tunes of the Gospel hymn order, a re-arrangement of idiom and rhythm must take place, or the result upon the musical listener will not be productive of a worshipful frame of mind.