The Fredösphere

As I mentioned a while back, I have been creating a new Psalm for chanting every week (well, most every week) at the traditional service of my (Lutheran) church. Scores for these chants are available for anyone to use.

I heard about a new set of Psalm chants, called St. Martin's Psalter, arranged by Thomas Pavlechko. You can listen to a few chants at the link -- it sounds like Pavlechko has crafted them well. Like me, Pavlechko is bringing familiar hymn tunes into the chants to make them easier to sing. Nevertheless, the Psalms are not metrical, so there's still a lot single note repetition on strings of syllables -- the kind of thing I've tried to minimize in my chants.

In my arrangements, the congregation sings the hymn tune only, and the brief chant sections are sung by cantor alone. I've found that the free rhythm of the chant sections never work well in a group, even when that group is a choir that rehearses it a fair bit. Obviously, a lot of people like -- or put up with -- free chant in a group, and if you devote your life to perfecting it, I imagine it would be satisfying, but I find the experience has all the charm and grace of tug of war. I think I'll keep doing what I'm doing.