Archbishop Parker’s Psalter

In 1567, Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker published a translation of the Psalms in verse. You can read more about it at http://www0.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/The_Whole_Psalter_Translated_(1567) . Thomas Tallis wrote a collection of 9 tunes using the meters found in Parker’s verse, so that any psalm in the collection may be sung to one or more of the melodies.

I reset Tune 8 with Psalm 67 to better fit a modern choir.

 

The third tune was used by Ralph Vaughn Williams in his “Fantasy of a theme by Thomas Tallis”. Tallis used Psalm 2 as his example for that melody, but Psalm 23 would work with it also.

 

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