Note 16 — A Practical Discourse on some Principles of Hymn-Singing By Robert Bridges

Comparing the English with the French Genevan Psalter, I do not think my judgement is too severe on our own. It had a few fine tunes original to it; best of all the cxxxvii (degraded in Hymns Ancient and Modern). This is of such exceptional beauty that I believe it must have been written by Bourgeois for Whittingham. Next perhaps is lxxvii (called 81st in H. A. M.), the original of which, in Day, 1566, is a fine tune, degraded already in Este, 1592, which version H. A. M. follows: it is said to have come from Geneva. Besides these, xxv and xliv, which are the only other tunes from this source in H. A. M., are very favourable examples, and I do not think that they will rescue the book. Nor can I believe that these old English D.C.M. tunes were ever much used. They are too much alike for many of them to have been committed to memory, while all the editions which I happen to have seen are full of misprints, and the four-line tunes which drove them out were early in the field, and increased rapidly.