Early Modern Scottish Metrical Psalmody: Origins and Practice

Non-literate societies are often dependent on music for transmitting news and ideas because of music’s ability to enhance memory. Sixteenth-century reformers were aware of this, but they had to compete with secular and Roman Catholic music that often contradicted Reformed doctrine. Highly influenced by the Strasbourg-based Martin Bucer and the writings of Saint Augustine, John Calvin insisted that Biblical Psalms, set in vernacular poetry, were most appropriate for both corporate worship and private devotion. The result was a series of metrical psalters that were intended to be performable by everyone. Some editions had explicitly liturgical designs, but most were intended for secular use as substitutes to secular ballads. The melodies that appeared in these psalters were usually simple and employed ranges that rarely exceeded an octave. It has generally been assumed that these narrow ranges would have allowed men, women, and children to sing the psalms together comfortably, singing in octaves with one another. However, a closer look reveals that the ranges of many metrical psalm tunes may have been difficult to sing. The following study explores the psalters produced by three centres of early modern Calvinist psalmody: Geneva, England, and Scotland. It argues that singers likely selected pitch ranges that were most comfortable rather than strictly adhering to those printed in metrical psalters. Despite this flexible performance practice, printers and editors faithfully reproduced the tunes in their original ranges. This sheds light on the shadowy origins of metrical psalm tunes, some of which were known before they became metrical psalms.


Early Modern Scottish Metrical Psalmody
Origins and Practice Timothy Duguid Thou litle church, to whom Christ hath restorde The cleare lost light of his evangel pure: Thy God doth with all diligence procure, That with his worde, thou maist be stil decorde.
Thogh ye have long his wolesome trueth abhorde Yet his great mercies did thy blindnes cure Submitting thee, unto the careful cure, Of suche pastours, as truely teache his worde.
Out of whose hands (with great thanks) now receive, All Davids Psalmes, set foorth in pleasant verse: A greater gift of them thou couldst not crave. Whose endles frute, my pen can not rehearse: For here thou hast, for everie accident, That may occurre a doctrine pertinent. 1 William Stewart (fl. 1564-1567) 2 captured the esteem with which many Scottish reformers held their new Kirk in the 1560s and their optimism for transforming or curing that Kirk of the "blindness" that had characterized it under Roman Catholicism. At the heart of this optimism was the conviction that Scots had reformed their church according to God's Word, and that same Word would now be critical in reforming the hearts and minds of the Scottish populace. Two manifestations of the Word were worthy of Stewart's mention: preaching and metrical psalm singing. Within the context of a Reformation that held preaching as the primary means of spiritual transformation, Stewart made a striking assertion, arguing that "a greater gift of them [that is, the metrical psalms] thou couldst not craue." It was thought that the Psalms provided doctrinally appropriate responses to all of life's circumstances. In a similar way, the volume in which Stewart's sonnet appeared, The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments &c. (1564) would come to be known as the "Psalm Buik," although it also contained a wide range of other materials, including the confession of faith and the order for worship. Regarding the psalm settings in the Psalm Buik, two aspects have been largely ignored that could have been detrimental to the overall success of the volume. The first is the tunes' ranges. It is widely acknowledged that metrical psalms were often rhythmically simple and used relatively narrow ranges that rarely exceeded an octave, but untrained singers today would struggle to sing many of the Buik's psalm settings due to their tessituras. Second, Scottish compilers may not have used tunes that were well known before 1564. It was common in Lutheran and Roman Catholic practice to reuse musical content. Such settings were more familiar and, in the case of Lutheran hymns, reused melodies made the texts more immediately singable for the average parishioner. These two issues are crucial when considering the success of the Scottish Psalm Buik with the Scottish populace. If people did not know and could not sing its melodies, its use would have been limited and its impact on reforming Scottish singing habits and religious belief would have been negligible.
This article explores the two issues by combining a computational analysis of all 105 melodies contained in the Scottish Psalm Buik with a bibliographical and historical analysis of those melodies. Computational methods can allow for both a close and a distant "reading" of the psalm tunes, allowing for the simultaneous analysis of trends and characteristics within each tune and across the entire corpus. For this study, the melodies have been transcribed and then analyzed by a software package entitled jSymbolic. Developed by Cory McKay, jSymbolic provides a wide array of statistical analyses of both individual musical pieces and large musical corpora. 3 A set of five features were selected in order to better understand the Psalm Buik's melodies, and the results were then contextualized by comparing the atypical Scottish psalm tunes with melodies in the English Whole booke of psalmes and John Calvin's Geneva Psalter. These combined methodologies reveal that the Psalms were ultimately singable using contemporaneous singing practices, and they reveal that some Scottish psalm tunes may have originated as religious music in other contexts.

The First Scottish Metrical Psalter
The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments &c. [STC 4 16577] was Scotland's first vernacular psalter to include all 150 biblical Psalms. It was the product of at least two years of effort by the Edinburgh-based printer Robert Lekpreuik (fl. 1561-1581) and built on previous psalter editions from Geneva and England. In fact, its title page clearly states that it was "vsed in the English Church at Geneua." That community of exiles was composed of English and Scottish nationals, including the influential John Knox (ca. 1514-1572), and the circumstances surrounding the creation of the so-called Anglo-Genevan (or more precisely Anglo-Scottish 5 ) exile community had cemented strong beliefs about liturgical practice among its members. Most of the Anglo-Scottish exile community had originally settled in Frankfurt due to the renewed Roman Catholic Church and state under the English Mary Tudor. While in Frankfurt, one of these exiles, William Whittingham (d. 1579), began to edit the metrical psalms that had been versified by Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549) and John Hopkins (1520/21-1570) during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Whittingham also began to write his own versifications, which together with the revised Sternhold and Hopkins texts would be sung as part of the exiles' liturgy. Following a prolonged dispute about reforming the English Book of Common Prayer, Whittingham, along with many of the other exiles in Frankfurt, moved to Geneva. 6 The group carried their revised psalms to Geneva, where work on the psalms would continue. In 1556, the community printed a selection of metrical psalms as part of their official liturgy, but like their English progenitors, the psalms were also intended to be sung at home. As the 1556 edition of The forme of prayers (hereafter called the 1556 Anglo-Scottish psalter 7 ) argued: As if the holy ghoste wolde saye, that the songe did inflame the heart to call vpon god, and praise him with a more feruent and lyuely zeale, and as musike or singinge is naturall vnto us, therefore euery man deliteth therein: so our mercifull god setteth before our eyes [in the psalms], how we may reioyce and singe to the glorie of his name, recreation of our spirites, and profit of our selues. 8 Ultimately, the exiles wanted to produce metrical versions of all 150 biblical Psalms, so this edition was followed by at least two others, in 1558 and 1560-61. 9 Despite their efforts, the exiles' metrical psalter would not be completed in Geneva. Following the crowning of Elizabeth as queen of England in 1559, many of the exiles-including the Scottish nationalsmoved back to their homes. 10 They brought with them these metrical psalters, along with the ideas about worship and life that they had adopted in their exile. Largely due to the influential Knox, who had been one of the pastors of the exile church in Geneva, the Genevan brand of exilic Protestantism carried the day in Scotland once the Catholic regent, Mary of Guise (mother of Mary, Queen of Scots), died in 1560. 11 Even so, it would take another four years for Scots to lay the ecclesiastical and political groundwork, and to gather the printing resources, necessary to complete the exiles' psalter in December 1564.
The Psalm Buik featured versifications of all 150 biblical Psalms set to 105 unique tunes. Eighty-seven of its psalm settings came from the final Genevan edition of The forme of prayers, and twenty-one were newly written by the Scottish ministers John Craig (1512/13-1600) and Robert Pont (1524-1606). The remaining forty-two psalms came from the English Whole booke of psalmes that had been printed in London by John Day (1521/22-1584) in 1562. Each of the melodies in the Psalm Buik, regardless of its source, was stylistically similar to the Geneva psalm tunes, adhering to the Calvinist musical aesthetic. They were almost all syllabic (one note for each syllable); they employed relatively simple rhythmic patterns featuring minims (half notes) and semibreves (whole notes) almost exclusively; and they used ranges that rarely exceeded an octave. 12 Altogether, Scots assembled their own unique metrical psalter that was most indebted to Geneva, but was also influenced by English and Scottish sources and versifiers.
Like most of its predecessors, the Scottish Psalm Buik was intended to meet the liturgical needs of the newly reformed Scottish church. 13 The entire congregationincluding men, women, and children-was expected to sing these psalms as part of the liturgy, and congregants were expected to learn and sing them at home. 14 Kirk officials hoped that the metrical psalms would become the folk songs of Scotland, as people would pass their time both in church and at home by singing them. This proliferation of psalm singing, it was hoped, would be one of the vehicles for reforming the Scottish populace.
Such lofty goals demanded that the volume include a set of melodies that would facilitate (and not hinder) Scots' psalm singing, both congregationally as part of the liturgy and privately as part of family and personal devotion. There was no shortage of musical content from which to choose: popular music and the Roman Catholic liturgies would have provided several melodies that would have been immediately accessible to the general populace. However, many Scottish reformers agreed with the Geneva-based John Calvin (1509-1564), 15 who argued that ecclesiastical and secular music should be different. In his preface to the Geneva Psalter of 1542, Calvin wrote, Care must always be taken that the song be neither light nor frivolous: but that it have weight and majesty (as St. Augustine says), and so, there is great difference between the music which one makes to entertain men at table and in their houses, and the Psalms which are sung in the Church in the presence of God and His angels. 16 This delineation between liturgical and nonliturgical music meant that psalters would either use newly composed melodies or draw from other liturgical sources.

Singing in the Rafters? Pitch in Scottish Psalm-Singing
Despite the Psalm Buik's pedigree in the highly successful French-language Geneva Psalter, there has been some question about the popularity of the Scottish edition's settings. While records in larger burghs such as St. Andrews and Edinburgh indicate that many of the psalms were sung as printed, it is difficult to know how smaller rural parishes fared in singing from the Psalm Buik. 17 Gordon Munro summarizes this view: "Congregations which under the old regime had been unaccustomed to singing in church, and far less to learning new tunes in an unfamiliar style, would scarcely have been able to learn all 105 proper psalm tunes." 18 The most oftcited barriers to learning these tunes have been literacy and the provision of trained musicians. 19 However, literate societies frequently underestimate the power of aural transmission in nonliterate societies; it was common for people to learn a new text and tune after only a couple of hearings. 20 As for the availability of trained musicians, the assumption was that rural areas lacked a trained musician who could read music and teach parishioners how to sing the new psalms. This popularly held view relies on the oft-overstated problems of the pre-Reformation Scottish Kirk. 21 Based on the work of Stephen Holmes, however, it is likely that as many as 82 percent of pre-Reformation Scottish parishes had a church official who possessed some university training, which customarily would have included some instruction in music. 22 Many of these educated officials then became readers and precentors in the Reformed Kirk, so that most parishes had a reader or precentor who had some musical training by 1574. 23 If the Scottish Psalm Buik was to be sung by the musically untrained Scottish populace both in the local kirk as part of the Reformed liturgy and at home as a part of personal and family devotional exercise, the melodies needed to be singable. Among the important factors contributing to a melody's singability are the issues of absolute pitch and common vocal range, both of which can be difficult to determine for the early modern period. Pitch standards have frequently changed, which makes the task of determining appropriate pitches for historically informed modern performances of early modern music difficult. 24 Identifying the performing pitch for metrical psalm settings is no less complicated, particularly because it often involves a single melodic line that would have been sung a cappella. However, the present discussion is less interested in the precise pitches that were used than in whether the psalm tunes aligned with early modern singing capabilities.
In the early modern period, the tenor customarily carried the melody, reflecting the origins of the word tenore, which distinguished a voice part carrying words (and often the melody) from an instrumental part. Early modern psalm tunes were intended to be sung without accompaniment, so they were normally notated as tenors with the C-clef on the third or fourth line. Therefore, most of the tunes in the Scottish Psalm Buik were notated in an octave that would have been comfortable for many men but would have been too low for many women and children. These higher voices in the congregation therefore would have doubled the melody at an octave higher than notated. The challenge is to identify tunes that could not have been sung comfortably with this octave displacement.
Among the melodies in the Psalm Buik, the ranges of Psalms 21, 107, 114, 124, 137, and 141 may have proved difficult to sing. Each of these psalm tunes extends up to A4, which, if sung an octave higher at A5, would stretch most untrained female voices today. While we could assume that congregations simply avoided these awkwardly pitched tunes, this does not seem to have been the case. The melodies of Psalms 114 and 137 originally appeared in the 1556 Anglo-Scottish psalter, and they both survived the melodic culling of the 1558 Anglo-Scottish edition that saw the removal of some of the less popular melodies. 25 One of these settings, Psalm 107, is twice mentioned in the diaries of Archibald Johnston of Warriston (bap. 1611, d. 1633) as having been sung on particular occasions in Edinburgh churches. 26 Finally, and most decisively, Psalm 124 was one of the most popular of the settings from the Scottish Psalm Buik, as it is known to have been sung on a number of important, high-profile public occasions. The historian David Calderwood (ca. 1575-1650) recounts two of these: a crowd of 2,000 (25 percent of the population of Edinburgh) singing the psalm in four parts in 1582, and a public celebration of the failed assassination attempt on James VI in 1591. 27 It is therefore clear that congregations found a way to sing these awkwardly pitched psalm tunes. Indeed, it is possible that these settings were not too high for early modern voices after all. Simon Ravens argues based on anthropometric and laryngological evidence that early modern voices were naturally pitched higher than they are today. 28 Despite the data presented by Ravens, a lingering low-voice theory insists that vocal ranges have remained largely unchanged since the early modern period, while placing performed pitch close to today's standard of A4 = 440Hz. 29 With or without Ravens's theory, it is clear that the psalms were sung, even if singers had to employ inventive methodologies in doing so. In some instances, they could have used a tripartite rendering. That is, basses may have sung them within the range of F2 to A3, tenors and altos as written from F3 to A4, and sopranos an octave higher, F4 to A5. Another option is that some may have automatically shifted octaves as necessary. This practice is common in popular music and in a cappella congregational singing today, as singers instinctively switch between octaves to accommodate their voices whenever the melody is too high or too low. Finally, it is possible that experienced precentors simply pitched the tune within a range that best suited the congregation's abilities. Writing nearly 150 years later, the English musician Edward Miller (1735-1807) illustrates precentors' responsibility of pitching tunes appropriately: "Where there is no organ, the clerk or singing-master should . . . be careful not to pitch the key of the tune so high, as that any note in the course of it may strain the children's voices. No note should be lower than D, or higher than E; or at most, the following compass should never be exceeded from C[4] to F[5]." 30 It was therefore the precentor's responsibility to select an appropriate starting pitch for the psalm that would allow the entire congregation to sing it comfortably. Given that organs in Scotland were disused and often demolished during this period, precentors were left without a fixed standard for their starting pitches (unless they had what today is known as "perfect pitch"). It is therefore reasonable to assume that the pitches notated in the Psalm Buik were not strictly followed, but that there was some variation in the actual pitches of the sung tunes.
Another set of tunes is worthy of mention with regard to their notated ranges. Figure 1 shows the results of a jSymbolic analysis of the relative prevalence of each pitch used in the Psalm Buik. The overarching bell curve is skewed to the left, which is caused by a set of eight melodies (set to nine psalm texts) that are notated a full octave higher than the others. 31 Each of these melodies features a C-clef on the first or second line of the staff. Many of these melodies originated in Calvin's Geneva Psalter, and particularly the 1551 Pseavmes octante trois de Dauid, mis en rime Francoise (Table 1). That edition included nine higher tunes, 32 and four would make their way into the Anglo-Scottish psalter and the Scottish Psalm Buik. 33 Despite the common practice of octave displacement within congregations, it is interesting that the Psalm Buik's compilers and printers chose to retain the higher notation for these Genevan melodies, not only in 1564 but also in the editions that followed. However, there may have been little motivation to transpose them. Calvin's Geneva church regularly sang through the entire psalter, including its higher-pitched melodies. What is more, the Geneva Council is known to have treated psalter printing very seriously, often meting harsh punishments on those who dared to make any changes. For example, the council imprisoned tune composer and schoolmaster Loys Bourgeois (ca. 1510-1559) for changing the tunes, and on another occasion it disciplined a printer for correcting a misprinted note from a previous edition. 34 Given Reformed Scots' propensity to mimic Genevan standards, it is reasonable to assume that they maintained similar convictions regarding the printing of the metrical psalter.  There are a few reasons why the higher melodies persisted in the Scottish Psalm Buik. On the one hand, the Genevan influence demanded consistency in the documents that were intended for liturgical use. On the other, Scots followed their Genevan predecessors by forming connections between their melodies and texts. While psalm tunes do not display a consistent relationship between the text and the modal qualities of each melody, 37 there were other ways in which the melodies were tied to their texts. The Psalm Buik followed the exilic editions of Anglo-Scottish psalters by using the melodies to help with some of the poetic weaknesses of the texts and to enrich the psalm settings through a series of musical cross-references. When a text was printed with a melody, editors used a combination of rhythm and pitch to align the melodies with their texts. In fact, a significant majority (statistically beyond what could be attributed to randomness) of the poetic weaknesses identified in Richard Weir's exhaustive analysis of the Anglo-Scottish revisions of the Sternhold and Hopkins texts were mitigated by a combination of rhythm and pitch in the Anglo-Scottish psalters. 38 When no tune was printed, a tune suggestion was provided that aligned that psalm's text with that of the suggested tune. 39 These relationships were not preserved in English psalm books because English psalm-singing practice was much more flexible than Scottish. 40 Another way in which the psalm tune was tied to its text was the relative tessitura. Each of the higher-pitched tunes in the Genevan Pseaumes octante trois was paired with a text that referred to suffering, whether as something that the psalmist was presently enduring or from which he had been delivered. The lone exception to this was Psalm 127, which is a statement of trust in the Lord's provision. Similarly, the Scottish Psalm Buik matched its higher melodies with psalms that describe current suffering or the Lord's deliverance from suffering, again with the lone exception of the tune paired with both Psalms 117 and 127 (Fig. 2).41 The fact that the Psalm Buik set the same high-pitched tune for both Psalm 117's explosion of praise and Psalm 127's statement of trust in the Lord's provision begs the question of whether there is anything that sets it apart from the other high-pitched tunes. 42 Both its key and melodic structure are unique among the other high-pitched tunes. The melody for Psalms 117/127 is relatively bright, with a finalis on G, a natural key, and a plagal mode. Three other high-pitched melodies are set in plagal modes, but all of them have a flat in their key. 43 Indeed, the melody for Psalm 88 (see soprano part, Fig. 4) most closely resembles that of Psalms 117/127; but its finalis on F, flat key, and lower range extending from C4 to C5 make it sound darker than Psalms 117/127.
Another way that the tune for Psalms 117/127 distinguishes itself from the others is its melodic structure. Table 2 presents the results of a jSymbolic analysis of these eight melodies, presenting four different features: mean pitch, pitch variability, average length of melodic arcs, and the average interval spanned by each melodic arc. Mean pitch is simply the mean MIDI pitch, not necessarily the most common pitch, averaged across the entire melody. This is therefore a measure of the relative height of an entire melody. The pitch variability then measures the standard deviation of the other pitches against this mean pitch, giving a sense of the distribution of pitches across the full ambitus of the piece. A higher value indicates that common notes are located further from the mean, and a lower value indicates that pitches are clustered closer to the mean. The average length of melodic arcs counts the average number of pitches that appear within each melodic arc, and the average interval spanned by those melodic arcs is the average number of semitones spanned by each arc.
Though the tessitura of Psalms 117/127 resembles the other higher-pitched tunes, its pitches are spread out more than the others. Moreover, its melodic arcs are also distinguishable from the rest. They last almost one pitch longer and cover a much larger range than the others. Indeed, two  , and Psalm 127 conforms to the latter group as a song of "the free goodnes of god that giueth riches, preserueth townes and countries, and graunteth nourishment and children." 44 It is therefore possible that Scots followed Geneva by associating higherpitched melodies with supplications, but the large melodic arcs of Psalms 117/127 transformed it into a song of praise.

Higher Tunes in Scottish Pedagogical Practice
Beyond the fact that Scottish psalters continued to reproduce these melodies with their original ranges, the early modern partbooks of Thomas Wode (d. 1592) reveal that composers and musicians preserved the original ranges of the higher tunes despite the prevalence of octave displacement among Scottish congregations. Before launching into an analysis of Wode's settings, it is important to understand the circumstances surrounding Wode and his work. The reformer John Knox wrote to Mrs. Anne Locke (ca. 1530-1590) on June 23, 1559, "In the whilk, the Abbay of Lundores, a place of blacke monkes, distant frome Sanct Andrewes twelve miles, was reformed, their altars overthrown, their idols, vestments of idolatrie, and masse bookes, were burnt in their owne presence, and they commaunded to cast away their monkish [habits]." 45 Such a statement conjures Hollywoodesque images of monks desperately trying to hide the monastery's various religious physical resources, including music and mass books, from the reformers. Even so, the significance of the "cleansing" of Lindores Abbey that occurred between June 14 and 23, 1559 does not lie in any resources that were preserved, but rather in its effect on Wode, who was a monk at the abbey. Ironically, it was following the iconoclasm at Lindores that Wode began his work to preserve both pre-and post-Reformation Scottish music.
Little is known about Wode before 1559, but several details about him arise thereafter. Along with many of the other monks from the abbey, he became a Protestant in the wake of the 1559 raid. He eventually made his way to St. Andrews, where he served as vicar and reader at Holy Trinity Church. Surviving records and Wode's own comments indicate that he passionately fulfilled his various responsibilities for the church. Acting as the clerk, he summoned people for meetings with the elders and maintained the registers of baptisms and marriages. As the reader, Wode read the scriptural passages before the sermon and led the prayer both before and after the sermon.
His work as a copyist, however, is most relevant for the present discussion. Shortly after arriving in St. Andrews, Wode became aware that Lord James Stewart-later to become the Earl of Moray and regent for James VI-had commissioned the city's resident composer, David Peebles (fl. 1530-1576), to set the psalm tunes in fourpart harmony. Eager to preserve Scottish art music, Wode took it upon himself to ensure that Peebles completed the task. The resulting settings were finished in 1566, after which time Wode began to collect sacred settings by other composers such as Andrew Blackhall (1535/36-1609), John Angus (fl. 1543-1595), and Andrew Kemp (fl. 1560-1570). He also continued to add music from a variety of composers from Britain and Europe until his death in 1592. His collection has become known as the Wode Part-books or St. Andrews Psalter, and it illustrates the variety of music that was sung and performed in early modern Scotland.
The Wode Part-books are more than a musical collection, however. Following the scribal traditions of the day, Wode spent a significant amount of time illustrating his books. For instance, he drew several scenes to depict the text from Psalm 137, including one with several people standing on the banks of a river, and another with a man hanging his harp in a tree. He also provided some illuminating comments about many prominent individuals, including James V and reformers Knox and Christopher Goodman (1521/22-1603). Wode's partbooks had a significant impact on devotional and liturgical music and pedagogical practice throughout Scots-speaking Scotland. 46 Based on Wode's comments, the part-books traveled around Scotland with various musicians. For example, the Haddingtonbased musician and song schoolmaster John Buchan (fl. 1583-ca. 1608) borrowed the books and added some of his own psalm settings without Wode's permission. 47 Similarly, Andrew Kemp began his professional career as the master of the song school in St. Andrews at the time that Wode and Peebles were working on the psalms, and in 1570-after Wode and Peebles had completed the metrical psalm settings-he likely took the Wode settings to Aberdeen, where he became the master of one of the city's song schools.
As was the case before the Reformation, song schools taught children the basics of music and trained them to assist with the Kirk's musical liturgy. In post-Reformation Scotland, this meant that children learned to sing the psalms. And although choral singing gave way to congregational singing, the students would join the schoolmaster in leading the congregational singing at the local church. 48 In fact, many churches built special pews specifically for this purpose. 49 There is also evidence that these students sang in parts while the rest of the congregation carried the melody. 50 Four-part psalm singing became common in larger towns and burghs, 51 and while Wode's settings were known, they were not the only ones used. In the 1635 "Great" Scottish Metrical Psalter, the editor and compiler Edward Millar (fl. 1624-ca. 1643) complained that attempts at fourpart singing often resulted in a cacophony of noise due to the fact that "sundrie Tribles, Basses and Counters set by diverse Authors, being set upon one, and the same Tenor, do discordingly rub each upon another." 52 His 1635 edition was an attempt to unify psalm-singing practice across Scotland, and Millar took several settings from the Wode Part-books, explaining that they (along with his other collected psalm settings) "belong to the primest Musicians that ever this kingdome had." 53 It is likely, therefore, that the Wode Part-books had a significant impact on Scottish music pedagogy and singing from Ayr across to Edinburgh and up to Aberdeen.
Given the influence of the musical settings from Wode's part-books, it is noteworthy that the melody for each of the  (Fig. 3), arranged by David Peebles, not only places the melody in the "Tribbil" part, but the harmonic realization relies on performers singing this melody in the higher octave. If sung an octave lower, the melody would overlap the bass quite often (i.e., on "be-hold," "pre-par-," and "song, and"), something that simply was not done in early modern music.
Most of the other settings are not so clear-cut, as Peebles's settings do allow for some voice overlap or crossing. Even so, he seems to have intended the melody for each setting to be sung as written and not an octave lower. For instance, his setting of Psalm 88 (Fig. 4) includes two instances of voice overlap ("fill: my" and "thrown, With") and one instance of voice crossing ("of thee"). Singing the melody an octave lower, on the other hand, results in a number of instances of both voice overlap and crossing. Most significantly, however, the melody would create a second-inversion chord by appearing below the bass at the hemistich of the second phrase, and it would spend the majority of the fourth couplet above the tenor voice.

High Tunes in Other Traditions
Peebles clearly chose to retain the voicings from The Forme of Prayers. Despite the influence of Genevan practice in Scotland, however, Peebles's strict adherence to the original voicings did not originate with it. Under Calvin, liturgical psalm singing in Geneva was both a cappella and monophonic, and liturgical psalm books were closely scrutinized and regulated by the Geneva Council. Extra-liturgical psalmody, on the other hand, was freer; instrumental accompaniment was allowed, and composers could freely modify the psalm tunes and set them in multipart homophony or polyphony without fear of retribution.
For instance, the tune for Psalm 86, which was not appropriated in the Scottish psalters, originally appeared in the 1545 Strasbourg psalter, La forme des prières et chants ecclésiastiques. It continued to appear with the same voicing, ranging from E3 to E4, in the subsequent Strasbourg psalters of 1548 and 1553. However, it was transposed up an octave in Antoine de Mornable's Livre 1er contenant 31 pseaulmes, printed in Paris in 1546. Loys Bourgeois then transposed it down a step in the 1547 Pseaulmes cinquante de David printed in Lyon, so that its range extended from D4 to D5. It is unknown whether Bourgeois used the Paris or Strasbourg editions as the basis for his own setting, but it was this version of the tune that then appeared in the Geneva psalters starting with the 1551 Pseaumes octante trois. 54 Working at about the same time as Peebles in the Huguenot city of Metz, the composer Claude Goudimel (ca. 1514-1572) set the Genevan psalms in a similar note-versus-note style as Peebles. However, Goudimel did not feel wholly constrained to retain the original voicing of the melodies he set. As mentioned earlier, there were nine tunes in the 1551 edition and a total of twelve in the 1562 Geneva Psalter that were set in the higher register, and Goudimel chose to transpose the melodies for ten of those tunes an octave lower. 55 While Goudimel transposed the higher melodies, the compilers of the English Whole booke of psalmes largely avoided them altogether. Only two high-pitched settings appear in the 1562 edition, and both are set to more somber hymn texts: The Complaint of a Sinner and Lamentation (Fig. 5). The former appears first in the 1561 edition of the Anglo-Scottish psalter. Even though the STC suggests it was printed abroad, perhaps by Geneva printer Zacharie Durand,  1545-1563). In addition to its higher tessitura, this melody begins on D4 and has a finalis on F#4. Given the tune's natural system and repeated strong emphases on A, this finalis suggests that that it was crafted as part of a harmonized setting. Whether that means the 1563 harmonized setting was the first appearance of the full version as it was originally composed, or whether it originated as a setting for some other text, remains a matter of speculation.
The origins of the second high-pitched tune in the Whole booke, the Lamentation, are much clearer. It was probably composed by Thomas Tallis 57 Colin Holman argues that the tunes in Certaine Notes were notated at pitches that were well within the ranges of the respective voices, but choir directors may not have followed the notated pitch exactly. Instead, they may have varied the pitches to match the abilities of their particular choir along with the other music of that day's litany. 58 Even with some minor pitch variations, Tallis still wished the melodyappearing in the top voice-to be sung in the octave in which it was notated. The part is headed "This Meane part is for children." 59 While the other part-books note "Bassus for children," "This tenor is for children," and "This contra tenor is for children," it is assumed that the bass voice was not intended to be sung by children since it is notated using the F-clef and therefore lies too low for children's voices. 60 It is therefore likely that the setting was composed for choirs that included both children and men. Tallis Scottish psalters also adopted Tallis's tune for the Lamentation, pairing it with Psalm 59. 62 As in the English editions, the sixteenth-century Scottish Psalm Buik reproduced it in the higher octave. In fact, it remained unchanged until Edward Millar's 1635 psalter printed the tune transposed down an octave. Among the other high-pitched tunes in the Scottish Psalm Buik, Psalm 59 was unique in that the melody's original high range remained unchanged for so long. The other seven were transposed down an octave long before 1635, with most being transposed in the 1614 edition printed by Andro Hart (d. 1621). These changes in the 1614 edition were characteristic of the consolidation and standardization that occurred in this edition. In the preceding decades, the Scottish Psalm Buik had become highly variable, at least in comparison to the constancy that had characterized the editions before 1596. New text-tune pairings became more common around the turn of the century, and often psalms were printed without a tune or tune suggestion. Hart reestablished that constancy with his 1614 edition, reinstating many of the tunes that had appeared sporadically around the turn of the century and standardizing the tunes so that almost all of them-with the exception of Psalm 59-were printed in the same range. 63 In fact, these changes would remain in subsequent editions, including Millar's harmonized 1635 edition. Despite these seventeenth-century revisions, the fact that 1560s musicians reproduced them without change does imply that the higher voicing was intentional.

Melodic Origins
The Scottish Psalm Buik is known to have borrowed melodies from English, French, German, and Italian sources. The melody for Psalm 59 is added to this list, but it raises the question of whether the other high-pitched melodies similarly could have originated as other songs. As with most of the tunes in other early modern metrical psalters, the composers are unnamed. Even so, commenting on the Geneva Psalter, Pierre Pidoux observed that its melodies often fit the motion of the text, indicating that they may have been composed with that particular text in mind. He identifies Psalms 55, 61, and 75 as potential candidates: "Il apparaît donc qu'un certain nombre de nos mélodies sont de réelles compositions, dans le sens moderne du terme." 64 While the Psalm Buik did not use these three melodies, other melodies appearing in the Anglo-Scottish and Scottish editions similarly may have been composed or adapted with particular texts in mind. 65 Of the newly composed Genevan psalm tunes, author Emmanuel Oretin Douen argued that some may have originated as secular chansons, 66 but Pidoux countered that it was difficult to know whether the similarities Douen highlighted were due to direct influences or to melodic formulae that were common at that time. Instead, Pidoux asserted that some Genevan psalm tunes were influenced by other contemporaneous sacred hymns and Gregorian chant. 67 The tunes that would be printed in the English Whole booke and Scottish Psalm Buik similarly do not seem to have come from secular sources, despite the possibility that their Edwardian predecessors were likely sung to melodies associated with secular texts, including Chevy Chase." 68 Though Anglo-Scottish, English, and Scottish psalm tunes (that is, those that did not originate in the Genevan psalters) are stylistically similar to the Genevan tunes, few similar ties to contemporaneous sacred music have been identified. 69 Nevertheless, there are some clear examples of psalm melodies originating as parts of other sacred song settings. Nicholas Temperley has noted that some of the Common Tunes -that is, those popular psalm melodies that were set in common meter and were thus frequently used for the majority of texts in the English Whole booke -originated as harmonies for proper psalm tunes. For instance, as English congregations improvised descants for the common tune Oxford (Scottish Psalm 108), one of the more popular of these descants became known as Glassenbury and was eventually printed as a tune in its own right. This tune similarly gave birth to another popular melody known as Kentish or Rochester. It is therefore possible that these Common Tunes belonged to a practice that had been part of English-language metrical psalmody since the beginning. 70 The existence of the higher tunes also suggests that all of the higherpitched melodies were originally part of a harmonized setting. As explained above, the tenor voice customarily carried the melody, so most melodies were often notated with the C-clef on the third or fourth line. Placing the C-clef on the first or second line was typically reserved for the cantus or altus voice in multipart or accompanied settings, 71 so it is reasonable to assume that many (if not all) of the higher-pitched melodies in the Scottish Psalm Buik originated as harmonized settings elsewhere. In addition to Psalm 59, as discussed above, the tune for Psalm 142 can be traced to a preexistent harmonized composition. Pidoux observed that the melody was part of a setting from 1546 or earlier, as it was printed noteversus-note with a superius in a collection of compositions by Antoine de Mornable (b. ca.1515; fl. 1530-1553) in that year. 72 Another melody that may have been known before it appeared in the Psalm Buik is the one for Psalm 108. Despite the lingering influence of melodies such as Old Hundredth and Old 124th, Psalm 108 was probably even more popular in the early modern era. It first appeared in the 1564 Psalm Buik, and the English adopted it for their own psalters about twenty-five years later. 73 However, by the seventeenth century both countries had abandoned the practice of associating a melody with a specific psalm text. Instead, they relied heavily on the Common Tunes, which they were able to sing with most of the texts in their psalm books. As an indicator of its popularity throughout early modern Britain, the tune for Psalm 108 (Fig. 6) would eventually become the only so-called proper tune that would be included among the Common Tunes. In England it became known as Oxford, and in Scotland it was called Old Common. 74 The tune is rhythmically and melodically plain and bears some resemblance to the F-G-A intonations leading to the reciting tones for mode 6, which were used in the Sarum rite on Christmas Day for the antiphon "Ipsi invocavit" that proceeded Psalm 108. 75 While these similarities may have contributed to the melody's popularity, it is difficult to determine whether average churchgoers would have made the connection. Nevertheless, the fact that the chant was also tied to Psalm 108 (Psalm 107 in the Vulgate) indicates that the composer, whether it was Scottish composer David Peebles or someone else, had the chant in mind when writing the psalm tune.
Psalm 108 may be the only melody from the Scottish psalters to have originated in plainchant, but Peebles's setting is equally unique within the Wode Part-books. It is a strict fauxbourdon, as the tenor moves a sixth below the cantus, with octaves appearing at the cadences. The bassus moves in alternating thirds and fifths below the tenor; and the altus moves in alternating thirds and fourths above the tenor. Such a harmonic realization aligns with the fauxbourdon practices discussed by Scottish Anonymous in the manuscript treatise "The Art of Mvsic collectit ovt of all ancient doctovris of mvsic" (British Library Add. MS 4911). 76 Although it is unclear when the treatise was written, it was evidently used in a Scottish song school at some point after the Reformation in the 1560s or 1570s. 77 Stephen Allenson has therefore concluded that its purpose "was to provide comprehensive and systematic training in all those musical skills necessary for teachers in song schools, taking into account some which were no longer generally practiced." 78 Though fauxbourdon was usually reserved for improvisation, it should not be surprising that Peebles chose it as the basis for his notated setting. After all, continental composers such as Fabrice Marin Caietain (fl. 1570-1578) and Vicente Lusitano (d. after 1561) did the same. Caietain wrote out a fauxbourdon realization of his Air pour chanter tous sonets in the 1576 Airs mis en musique … sur les poësies de de Ronsard. Caietain's connections with the Guise family are well documented, as he dedicated a couple of collections to Henri I, Duke of Guise, whose cousin was Mary, Queen of Scots (half-sister of Lord James Stewart, commissioner of the psalm settings). 79 Moreover, Spanish composer Lusitano did the same before he became a Protestant and moved to Geneva. 80 And given Peebles's apparent reluctance to complete his commissioned task, it is reasonable to postulate that he chose, at least in this instance, to forgo any substantial compositional efforts and to rely instead on a formulaic realization of the harmonized psalm tune.
The melodies in the Psalm Buik had a wide variety of origins, but it is important to note that none seem to have come from balladry or secular singing traditions. Many were borrowed from existing Protestant devotional and liturgical corpuses including the Anglo-Scottish, English, Genevan, and Lutheran traditions. A handful were newly composed with particular texts in mind. Despite Protestants' vehement opposition to Roman Catholicism, some psalm melodies probably originated as Roman Catholic plainchant. The fact that both the Genevan and Scottish metrical psalters seem to have borrowed from the Roman Catholic tradition would indicate that Calvin and his followers (in both Geneva and Scotland) did not see anything wrong with the melodies that were employed in Roman Catholic practice. 81 They were acceptable so long as they followed Calvin's stipulation that there was a difference between the music that people sang around their tables and that which they sang in church. 82 In a liturgical setting, then, it did not matter from which sacred tradition a melody originated, so long as the music did not cloud the understanding of the text both as it was sung and observed.

Songs for the People
More generally, early modern metrical psalm tunes were characteristic of their time. Arguably a musical genre in their own right, they straddle the divide between the modal melodies and formulae of Western medieval religious music and the tonal melodies and harmonies that came to dominate Western music in the seventeenth century and afterwards. 83 Metrical psalm tunes are further distinguished from other contemporaneous music due to their adherence to the Calvinist aesthetics of music and worship. Melody was viewed as a tool to be used to better understand and express the texts. This aesthetic was first translated to anglophone practice by Whittingham and other members of the Frankfurt/Geneva exile communities during the reign of Mary Tudor. While English practice quickly destroyed these relationships in the 1560s, research into the texts and tunes of the Anglo-Scottish and Scottish metrical psalters increasingly reveals a continuing relationship, albeit an imperfect one, between text and melody.
The transitional nature of early modern psalm tunes may be one of the reasons that so few continue to be sung today. Tunes such as Old Hundredth and Old 124th were popular arguably because of their strong sense of tonality (insofar as they emphasize the first and fifth scale degrees), and their continued ubiquity in sacred music repertories is partially due to this characteristic (aided, of course, by centuries of tradition). On the contrary, the very plain and decidedly modal melody of Psalm 108 was even more popular in the early modern period, as evidenced by its incorporation into the collections of Common Tunes in both Scotland and England in the seventeenth century. This popularity may be attributable to the tune's potential origins in Roman Catholic plainchant.
Compilers of the Scottish Psalm Buik curated a set of tunes that included generally singable and familiar-sounding melodies. Though the melodies could be notated in ranges that might cause many untrained voices today to struggle, early modern practice offers a variety of performance options, including flexible pitches, that would have allowed for all the psalms to be sung. This practice, combined with a handful of familiar melodies that were pitched for most voices, indicates that most Scots could sing most of the metrical psalms in the Psalm Buik, and historical evidence suggests that they did in fact sing most of those psalms. James Melville's recollection of a blind man who memorized all the metrical psalms and their tunes, therefore, moves from a curious anecdote to an illustration of a wider practice among early modern Scots. 84 Indeed, Scots' familiarity with the psalms is largely due to the fact that they were immersed in metrical psalm singing after 1560. At church, most Scots sang the psalms under the direction of a reader or precentor during what was called the Reader's Service, which consisted of scripture reading, set prayers, and metrical psalm singing. When a preacher was present, this Reader's Service would occur right before the sermon. Otherwise, it would proceed as normal without a sermon. Given that most parishes did not have a minister or shared a minister, the Reader's Service was the most common liturgical experience of Scots after the Reformation. 85 However, the church was not the only place where psalm singing was to be heard. Indeed, the sung metrical psalms formed a crucial component of the "programme of indoctrination" undertaken by the Kirk that extended beyond the parish church walls. Active Kirk sessions frequently visited and examined their parishioners to ensure they engaged in regular family and private devotions that included Bible reading, catechizing, prayer, and psalm singing. Under the threats of fines and barring from communion, Scots had to know doctrine and metrical psalms, regardless of their literacy level. As Margo Todd notes, the fact that most were not disciplined in these ways would suggest that the Kirk's efforts were largely successful. 86 The psalms were so engrained in Scottish culture by 1601 that when James VI asked the General Assembly to revise the Psalm Buik, the ministers could respond: "the people ar acquainted with the old metaphrase more than any book in scripture, yea, some can sing all, or the most pairt, without buik, and some that can not read, can sing some psalmes. 7 This 1556 volume of The forme of prayers and those that followed it have been commonly called the Anglo-Genevan psalters, but the term "Anglo-Scottish" has been suggested as an alternative due to the significant representation of Scottish nationals in that exile community.
8 "To our bretherne," 17-18. 12 Beth Quitslund and Nicholas Temperley observe that these melodies followed the rhythmic formulae of the Geneva Psalter, which mirrored French prosody by employing semibreves at the beginning of each line. Regardless of the francophone origins of this rhythmic formula, in a cappella anglophone practice it came to function as a "gathering tone" that allowed the congregation to find and match the precentor's pitch. Beth Quitslund