Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Two Streams

Millar Patrick, "Why The Reformed Church Did Not Use Hymns," in The Story of the Church's Song (1927, 2008), p. 86:

In the Churches of the Reformation there have been two main streams of church-song. On the one hand, there has been hymnody, with Luther as its fountainhead; on the other, metrical psalmody, after the example set by Calvin. Luther carried on the tradition established by the Latin hymn; his exemplars were in the Breviary. Calvin gave his adhesion to a still older tradition, which the Roman Church had maintained by the use of prose psalms in its Daily Office; he went back to the primitive days when the Church had no other means than the psalms for the singing of its praise. These two streams ran parallel for many generations; then they converged and blended, and in most Churches of the Reformed order they run together to-day.

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