What kinds of song should be sung in public worship? The range of musical styles used in churches on any given Sunday morning reveals a multitude of answers. Wesleyan hymns blasted forth on triumphant organs; beautiful polyphonic choral pieces performed by Cathedral choirs; Free Presbyterians belting out metrical psalms acapella; rock bands playing comforting and energizing songs based around four chords; unscripted songs inspired by the Holy Spirit in charismatic services; Bach chorales and Handel’s Messiah; Christian rap by Lecrae; Christafari’s reggae covers of Christian songs; heavy metal tracks played by Demon Hunter: these are but a sample of the range of musical styles used to praise God in the modern world.

The diversity of the music played in public worship raises many important issues about the role of song in Christian communal religious practice. In this article, I want to engage with some of these matters by examining the musical culture of sixteenth and seventeenth century Scottish Reformed Protestantism. Following the Reformation in 1560, when Scotland officially became a Protestant country, ministers and lay people had to consciously wrestle with the place of music in public worship. They intentionally addressed the issues surrounding sacred songs in nuanced ways, developing their own unique soundscape. Their answers to these questions, revealed in their musical practices, have led many to consider the songs of the Scottish Reformers ‘a soulless psalmody’ that oppressed the imagination in Scottish culture for centuries to come.¹ Nevertheless, understanding the Protestant approach to singing early modern Scotland can be a useful springboard for identifying and reflecting upon some of the key issues surrounding the role of music in a contemporary context. At the same time, the findings presented here may challenge the widely held stereotype that Reformed religion in Scotland, and elsewhere, stifled musical creativity.

A central aim of the Scottish Reformers was to make the Word of God accessible to all people. They believed that the Word, especially when preached, was an instrument used by the Holy Spirit to convert sinners. Consequently, it was essential that lay people were exposed to God’s revelation in Scripture. Besides making the sermon the focal point of public worship, the Kirk published a psalter in 1564 in an effort to fulfil this ambition. Influenced by the Genevan Psalter of 1561, it contained paraphrases of all one hundred and fifty psalms, versified into a variety of metres, with one hundred and five given their own ‘proper’ tune (the most of any psalter to that point). These psalms became an established part of the official liturgy, usually sung before and after the sermon by the whole congregation led by a precentor. This was a new experience for ordinary Scots: in the late-medieval church in Scotland, only the clergy and choir sang hymns, usually in Latin. Lay Scots relished their new ownership of the Word of God. It was a chance to be a part of the loudest sound in the early modern world, a powerful expression of communal unity in the body of Christ and of Protestant identity. It could be an intensely emotional experience, moving parishioners to tears of contrition or ecstatic assurance in the love of God. Given its affective power, Scots were encouraged to sing the psalms in their homes, a recommendation enforced in 1579 when elite men were required by law to own a psalter for the provision of leading their households in the singing of psalms. The same year, James VI (1566-1625) passed an act of ‘Timeous Remeid’ which re-established ‘sang schules’, institutions dedicated to the education of boys in vocal and instrumental music. Frequently, the students would help lead psalm-singing during public worship, in some cases in four-part harmony. By the 1630s, the singing of Psalms had become so well established in the Kirk, that Presbyterian minister David Calderwood (1575-1650) could claim that:

Both pastors and people be long custome, are so acquanted with the psalmes and tunes therof; that as the pastors are able to direct a psalme to be sung agrieable to the doctrine to be delivered, so he that taketh up the psalme is able to sing anie tune, and the people for the most pairt follow him.

Both people and pastors have some psalmes, or parts of psalmes, be heart, as may best serve for ther different disposition and case of conscience, and for the chainges of externall condition.²

Song was a medium for ordinary people to understand and experience the Word. Consequently, the lyrics were the focal point of metrical psalm-singing. The words of the song had to be clear and intelligible, which had a significant impact upon the nature of the music sung. Thus, the music of the medieval church, polyphonic, melismatic, and in Latin, could not be used, for as Rollock argued ‘by their broken notes of Musicke they breake the words of the Scripture, and so they darken the sentence, that the words cannot be understood’.³ The metrical psalms were sung in the vernacular, each syllable set to a distinct note. They were set to simple rhythms, consisting of minims and semibreves, and pitched within an octave range. When harmonized the psalms were homophonic, the parts all moving together as in a block. No instrumental accompaniment was provided in public worship as it could distract attention from the words. Employing rhyming verses with a repeated structure, the psalm melodies amplified and accentuated their texts, directing the singer’s focus onto the words that they sang. These compositional techniques were not unique to Reformed Protestant psalmody: renaissance humanists, Lutherans, and Anglicans similarly constructed melodies which prioritized their texts, though they tended to use instruments in public worship. At the same time, the songs of Scottish Protestants could be easily sung and memorized by ordinary people due to their lyrical and melodic simplicity, removing potential obstacles from considering the psalm texts. Thus, the composition and performance of the psalms encouraged congregations to reflect upon divinely inspired words they sang. This was so that through meditation on the lyrics that were sung Scots would, as minister Alexander Hume (1558-1609) argued, their ‘fleshlie affectiones’ would be altered ‘in such sorte, that thou shal detest that which is sensuall and brutish, and delight in that which is holie and pleasant in the sight of the Lord’.⁴ Thus, the purpose of song in public worship, a sonic mediation of the Word that could be contemplated, shaped the kind of sacred music Scots sang.

Their practices raise for us, as modern Christians, questions about the intelligibility of worship music. Does the music of public worship have to have words? If so, do they need to be comprehensible? Furthermore, the decision of the Kirk to adopt congregational singing urges us to reflect upon who should sing or perform in communal ritual. Can a choir/band etc. perform a piece which is heard by the congregation, or should everyone participate in the act? In what way does hearing a hymn, as opposed to singing it, alter the process of edification, and vice versa? Perhaps most importantly, is the function of singing as the body of Christ to, in the words of Principal Robert Rollock of the University of Edinburgh (c.1555-1599), ‘raise up the heart of man to God’?⁵

The relationship between text and melody was also of prime concern for Scottish Protestants. With the Word taking priority, one might expect the rhythms of the songs they sang to follow the natural speech patterns of the lyrics. In the Scottish Psalter, this was not the case. In part, this was because the English translations were set to French tunes, and as such the texts did not always fit naturally with their melodic rhythms. At a more fundamental level, this discrepancy between lyrics and tunes was a result of the composers attempting to present the emotional subject matter of the psalms through a musical medium: the melody. This was why the Scottish Psalter included one hundred and five tunes, each assigned to a particular psalm, as each tune’s musical character was meant to express the subjective experiences of David in a specific passage. More generally, the psalms had melodies distinctive from the traditional folk and sacred music of Scotland, supposed to have ‘such gratiousness, and gravitie, as might convey grace to the heart of the hearer’.⁶

There was disagreement over the place of secular melodies in sacred songs. Scotland was a musical society: in alehouses, miller’s sheds, marketplaces, noblemen’s banquets, and the royal court, ballads and dance songs were memorized and enjoyed. Many ministers and particularly zealous Scottish Protestants were concerned by the prevalence of ‘love ballads’ that were sung by the populace, especially among the youth. Influenced by Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelian theories of music, Scots believed that music had a magnetic power on the soul, moving it to experience whatever emotions were represented in what was performed or heard. Ministers like Hume remonstrated with the Scottish people that love ballads ‘incense the burning lustes of licentions persons by such evill examples and allurements’, sparking evil desires and immoral behaviors.⁷ Some, such as Rollock, believed that it was the ‘light and wanton tunes’ of ballads ‘that mistune the affection of the hearer’.⁸ Thus, he wanted metrical psalm-singing to replace the profane musical culture of Scotland.

However, while there was consensus that in public worship only the metrical psalms should be sung, many ministers and particularly devoted Scots embraced secular melodies in their composition of sacred songs. It was common in popular culture for tunes to be recycled. New songs were mainly settings of new texts to well-known tunes. This was important in an oral culture, as most people engaged with music by memory, being non-literate, and so the success of a song was determined by whether its melody was known and loved by its audience. Prior to the reformation in Scotland, some Scots disseminated the Protestant message by rewriting well-known love ballads with purified lyrics, a collection which was later known as ‘The Gude and Godlie Ballatis’. They remained popular and set a precedent for religious musical composition that was followed by ministers like Hume and lay people such as his friend Elizabeth Melville (c.1578-1640), the first woman to be published in Scotland with her religious poem Ane Godlie Dreame (1603). They wrote loose scriptural paraphrases, hymns, and songs that could be sung to secular tunes popular in their contemporary society. Through this process, they hoped to cleanse the material sung in domestic and commercial contexts, and thereby, as articulated by minister James Melville (1556-1614) (no relation of Elizabeth Melville) ‘have the groundes of Christian doctrine’ imprinted in the minds of the Scottish people with ‘delyte and pleasure’, so that they may be ‘moved and stirred up to grow in knawledge and feeling of true godlines’.⁹ Provided the words of the song were holy, the melody of the song was not a threat: indeed, it would open the singer up to sympathize with the Word of God.

The attitudes Scottish Protestants had to the melody of sacred songs are another point of reflection for us as modern Christians. Should the melody of a song present in its own manner the subject matter of its lyrics? Are there particular emotions evoked by certain genres? Moreover, does a melody from a secular song bring associations with it when adapted for sacred music? If so, are there tunes that are inappropriate for public worship, perhaps even dangerous? Moreover, should a distinctive religious musical culture replace profane melodies in the home and workplace, like Rollock argued, or can popular musical styles be adapted through writing new words for them, such was advocated by Melville?

In my view, the example of Scottish Protestant musical culture and the questions it has raised should inform modern Christian music in three ways. First, sacred music is distinguished by its purpose and effect. What makes a song and its mode of performance suitable for public or private worship is whether it is supposed to and actually edifies those who sing or hear it. It needs to provide theological instruction and prayerful response to God. If what is sung or heard is a vehicle by which the Holy Spirit sanctifies the mind and heart, it has a place in body of Christ. Second, hymns should be incorporated into individual and small group devotion. Easier to remember than readings and sermons, emotionally engaging, and filled with profound meaning, the music of the Church is a rich (and free!) resource that can be used by most people as an engaging object of study and means of conversation with God. Third, we ought to be attentive to what we sing in public or private worship. Both the lyrics and melodies have been selected for a specific reason, and reflection upon them can further stimulate our adoration, confession, and petition of God. Such contemplation has the potential to make us reconsider our use of music more generally, and as such be a spur to making ourselves more open to Christ’s influence in every aspect of our lives.

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