Replacing the Commentary with a Songsheet

What I’ve Learned Through the Musical Renditions of Psalm 104

Dear reader,

If I were to describe this summer in one word, it would be “challenging.” There have been a number of commitments on my time, more so than I’ve had in many years. Besides the usual summer house projects, work, and friendship engagements, I’m also waist-deep in my first seminary course and recently started serving in my church’s children’s Sunday school. I play in two table-top role-playing game campaigns now, have a writers group, a Hebrew reading group, and (though prior engagements have required I not attend the last two times) a Bible reading group. I don’t say all this to impress you (I have very little work to do for any of these groups). But I’m very grateful I have the energy for all of this and to know so many fun, kind people who invite me into these spaces. I could not do all of this in past seasons in my life when depression or deep social anxiety would have pushed me to say “no” before I even tried. And yet, I am a bit tired, socially and intellectually. My brain is craving something more freeform, and a bit more artistically driven. This month’s newsletter was birthed from this craving.

This month, I am discussing my favorite psalm, Psalm 104. However, contrary to my normal instincts, I’m taking the exploration of the work’s themes in a different direction. Rather than looking at the psalm through the lenses of Biblical or literary scholarship, I wanted to explore it through its various musical renderings. Afterall, the psalm is poetry, and poetry often lends itself to song in fun ways.

I hope you have a great August and find time to slow down and enjoy some aspect of creation that speaks to you as this psalm does to me.

Enjoy!

Hannah

p.s. Next month we’re celebrating 1 year of this newsletter (strike up the fanfare 🥳). I haven’t decided how we’ll celebrate but we’ll do something fun, for sure.

Photo by Miriana Dorobanțu on Unsplash

My favorite Psalm is 104. There’s a lot I could say about this piece. In terms of the quality of poetry, it is very good. The psalmist uses strong imagery pulled from Genesis 1 to convey God’s grandeur and majesty. Yet, this same God also cares for wild animals, trees, and plants in the present through his creative energies. His provision for humanity shows up in this psalm, though interestingly it is only a small piece of the poem’s content. But that provision is surprisingly lavish: God doesn’t just give humans food, but also wine “which makes a human heart cheerful,” and oil that “makes his face gleam” (verse 15). Leviathan, the great sea dragon of ancient myth, also shows up, but in this poem the fearsome monster is just another living creature who enjoys God’s creation. I often cry while reading this psalm. It’s a beautiful work of poetry with strong theological themes that speak to me.

I could go on and on about why I think Psalm 104 is great, and even go into its nerdy Biblical scholarship side. The first draft of this newsletter was a close reading of this psalm, complete with citations to Hebrew Bible scholars like John Goldingay and Susan Gillingham. But if I’m honest I would say I don’t find myself gravitating to this psalm from an intellectual space, like I do with Biblical narratives. There’s great value in academic study of the psalms, and this one is no exception. Yet, as I think my introduction makes clear, this psalm primarily speaks to me on an emotional level. That’s one of the strengths of poetry. Good poems have this habit of bypassing our consciousness and going straight for the heart. Ornithography by Billy Collins delights me and makes me laugh. To Autumn by John Keats is bittersweet. Psalm 104 makes me marvel at God’s power in creativity and care for all creatures, great and small. So, I decided to put the close reading of Psalm 104 aside at least for now.

However, I still wanted to nerd out a bit on this psalm with you all, so after some thought I figured out a way to do that. The psalms, and Psalm 104 is no exception, have not just been read and enjoyed in their own right, but also as songs. Many psalms were almost certainly composed for choirs in ancient Israel, and poetry often lends itself well to musical accompaniment. Further, if we remember that the Bible is scripture (at least for Jews and Christians), the psalms provide ample materials for liturgical worship, especially hymns. Finally, the psalms have been around for a LONG TIME and are widely read around the world. There are of course many versions set to song. When I found several renditions of Psalm 104, I knew what I wanted to share with you all this month. Why? Because these performances are actually very good, and the musicians deserve the attention. Also, each one of these is very different in its own way, and I think we can learn more about Psalm 104 as a piece of poetry by how these musicians perform it. So, here are three different interpretations of Psalm 104, as given through their performances by various musicians.

For our first performance, we’ll start with the Scottish Psalmist’s version, arranged and performed by Duncan and Shona Cullens.

The style of the piece will likely be familiar to my Christian readers: the single guitar and two-singer set up feel right at home in many small Protestant church contexts. Yet the arrangement is also very culturally rooted (as all renditions are). It would be hard to miss Cullen’s Scottish vowel shapes but even the changes to the lyrics feel distinctly Scottish. In the second verse they use “glen” instead of “valley” or “wadi” (probably the more accurate translation). The water goes down “green hills,” an image of a landscape far more similar to Scotland than Western Asia/the Near East. Other changes introduced to the psalm seem to be for the purpose of adjusting it to fit more modern Protestant Christian worship contexts. For instance, this version introduces a refrain into the song (“All your works are wonderful!”). Also, the final verse links the psalm’s theme of God’s provision to the work of Christ. Granted, the original psalm does not mention Christ or even use messianic prophetic language, yet I would say the death and resurrection imagery of verses 29 and 30 seem well suited to the deviation. This is a version steeped in and designed for building up faith. It’s also an example of the musician contextualizing the psalm for his current geography. You may not be a Christian, and so possibly can’t identify with the worship aspect of this piece. And you, like me, may not be Scottish, and so don’t have pictures of glens and green hills when you read this psalm. But I hope you can see the beauty in the Scottish Psalmist’s interpretation and performance and maybe consider how you might interpret the imagery to match your own context.

As promised, this next musical version of Psalm 104 is far different in tone than the prior. This one is arranged and recorded by Yamma Ensemble, an Israeli folk music group. If you’re going to listen to one musical version of Psalm 104, I might recommend this one, if for no other reason than it’s sung in beautiful Hebrew and I think far too few people get to hear the language.

The instrumentation and style of this performance are one of the things that drew me to it. The performance features a traditional oud (the lute-like instrument), along with a stand up bass, a hand drum, a clarinet, and a flute. The cadence is fast and lively, almost groovy at times like a piece of jazz. The musicians certainly are having fun with it, and I bet this would be a fun song to dance to. While the recording studio setting and relaxed garb of the musicians makes me think their song is not meant for liturgical settings, that’s just a guess. Not knowing much about the musicians, I am uncertain whether they intend this song to be taken as a piece of sacred/worship music or as folk music. It could be both! Like the Scottish Psalmist version, the Yamma Ensemble version also makes a change to the words by stopping at verse 5. It’s a very interesting choice because it essentially cuts out a great deal of the psalm’s content and thematic exploration. The Yamma version is all about God’s power in creation, and it seems to be celebrating that. In many ways, this rendition reminds me of a key theme of the psalm, the enjoyment of creation. One could think of substituting “musical cords” or “catchy drum beats” instead of wine to “make the heart cheerful.”

This final version of Psalm 104 is also very different from the other two, not just in musical style but in setting and context of performance. For his funeral, Prince Phillip (consort to Queen Elizabeth II) had explicitly requested an arrangement of Psalm 104 by William Lovelady, James Vivian, and Sam Dyer. It was performed at his funeral by members of the St. George’s Chapel choir.

The setting of this performance is St. George’s Chapel, the church at Windsor Castle. As you can probably guess by the sweeping architecture, it’s an old gothic church with a long history. Many kings and queens of England are buried at St. George’s, and it is the house of worship for the monarch when they reside at Windsor. Obviously, the occasion of this performance is a funeral, so the tone is understandably somber, (although if you listen to the piece outside the funeral it’s still very somber). What a contrast between the simple but lively vocals and instrumentation of the Scottish Psalmist or Yamma Ensemble compared to the choir, organ, and accompanying strings. Yet I appreciate the solemnity of this piece. The style thoroughly emphasizes the majesty, grandeur, and mystery of God that is so important in this psalm. Another interesting difference between this piece and the other two I shared is that it more directly emphasizes the psalm’s liturgical roots. The choir’s rendition reminds us that this is a piece of sacred poetry. This piece does not replicate the psalm’s words verbatim (nor did the previous versions), but its arrangement still seems to pay homage to the psalm’s key themes and movements (you can read the lyrics on pages 6 and 7 of the funeral program, here). I already discussed the emphasis on God’s grandeur, but we should also not forget the main refrain of this rendition: “Give Praise!” It repeats every three verses and then six times in the final verse, emphasizing the importance of these two words. Even in the midst of the funeral, in the midst of the death of verses or the mention of the wicked in verses 29 and 35, the frolicking of the sea monster, or the generous provision of wine, this psalm and this rendition of the psalm asks the listener to respond to God in praise.

Psalm 104 is so many things. It’s worth spending time on, maybe with a glass of wine or ice tea while reclining in an adirondack chair on a warm summer night. It’s meditative and intellectual in its own right, but evocative and approachable in many contexts. I hope you enjoyed the three performances I shared. I certainly have enjoyed them and already go back to them from time to time to listen and reflect. Do you have a favorite psalm or favorite musical rendition of a psalm? I’d love to hear it if so!

What I'm Enjoying

• Two weekends ago I hiked Mount Wachusett, a ~2,000 ft peak (not a real mountain) in central Massachusetts. It was my first proper hike in a long time and I did it solo. Getting outside— listening to birds, letting light rest on my face as it filtered through tree leaves—was much needed medicine for me. If you haven’t done a nature walk recently, I’d highly suggest it.

• We recently repainted our stairway and hung a painting from our friend Julia Thaxton, who we met while living in Oxford. It’s just at the top of the first flight of stairs, and every time I see it I feel like I’m climbing into a lovely tree home. It brings me a lot of joy. Normally I’m not a white walls person, but I think this was the right choice for the space.

  

• We watched Billy Wilder’s The Apartment a few weeks ag,o and if you haven’t seen it I’d recommend it. Jack Lemmon gives a stellar performance as the corporate climber C.C. Baxter who rents out his apartment to his bosses for use for their extramarital affairs. However, the runaway best performance of the film was Shirley MacLaine. She should have won an Oscar for it. She was absolutely believable as Fran Kubelik. I won’t spoil the plot. Just make a plan for a movie night sometime soon and watch it. I would not recommend this movie for kids, though. It’s not graphic but the content is mature.