IV.

Protestant Hymns

A hymn of the German Protestant church is usually called a chorale. The earliest Lutheran chorales were selected from sacred and secular sources (including Gregorian chants) or newly composed by Luther and his colleagues. These clergymen and musicians also selected or wrote the hymn texts, using German rather than Latin. Their goal was to provide worshipers with good, sturdy melodies that untrained singers could perform.

In France, the poet Clement Marot and the theologian and Protestant reformer Theodore Beza translated the Psalms into French metrical verse. The translations were introduced by the French religious reformer John Calvin into his system of worship and were adopted by the Reformed churches in France and Switzerland. The melodies used with these translations were selected or composed by the French musician Louis Bourgeois. Two other 17th-century French musicians, Claude Goudimel and Claude Le Jeune, composed four-voice settings of the Bourgeois melodies.

English translations of the Psalms were published in 1562 by the English writers Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins. In 1612 a similar Psalter was published in Holland by the English Separatist clergyman Henry Ainsworth. The Ainsworth Psalter was brought to America by the Pilgrims in 1620.