Recently he wrote an essay “Concert or Common Prayer?” Small as I am (my "Music Box" blog entries are read by an average of eight to ten persons), I am obliged to attempt a rebuttal.
Choral Evensong (and its sister Choral Matins, rarely seen these days) lies in lineal descent from the daily morning and evening offerings established in Exodus 29:38-46 -- “And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory.” (v. 43). The daily sacrifices, and by extension prayer at the times of the sacrifices, carried over into the early Christian community. These sacrifices and prayers sanctified the places of worship where they were offered, and sanctified the day, making all the hours of it holy to the Lord.
As time passed, some persons received vocations from God to devote themselves more fully to prayer, first as anchorites in desert places and later more often in communities, a movement organized in the West under the Rule of St. Benedict. Chapters 8 through 20 of the Rule outline the manner in which the prayers of the Daily Office are to be conducted, with Psalmody and the reading of Scripture at their center.
In the Anglican Reformation, the seven Offices of the day became two, more plainly set forth and in English, parish clergy were directed to read them in the parish church every morning and evening, and it was expected that those from the parish who were able would join. Cathedrals and collegiate Chapels had a special obligation to maintain the Daily Office, which was already a part of their liturgical life. This process of revision is described in the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (1549), found in the American BCP of 1979 (hereafter “BCP”) at page 866-7.
The principal Offices had always been sung whenever possible, and it was logical that this should continue. As it happened, this was a golden age for choral music, and England was blessed with several great composers who turned their talents to the task of setting to music the new English texts. Much of their attention was devoted to music for Matins and Evensong. Polyphonic settings of the fixed prayers of the Offices appeared – one of the finest is by William Smith of Durham [Here is a rendition of the Responses], but there were others. Many polyphonic settings of the Magnificat, the Gospel Canticle for Vespers, already existed (in Latin); the composers wrote new settings for it in English, alongside the Nunc Dimittis, moved to Evensong from its former place in Compline. Here is one of my favorites from that era, from the Short Service of Gibbons.
Psalmody remained central to the Offices. Cranmer laid aside the complex arrangement of the Psalms that Benedict had established, and returned to the older and simpler Jewish devotional practice of praying the Psalter straight through in course over the space of a month. At first, they were sung to the plainsong tones. Over time, the plainsong was harmonized, and eventually developed into what we now know as Anglican Chant.
Thus it remains that “The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord's Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in this Church.” (BCP p. 13, “Concerning the Service of the Church”). The choral singing of any of these services, whether Eucharist or Daily Prayer, exists in the larger context of all regular public worship in the Anglican tradition, spoken or sung, modest or elaborate.
In his essay, Fr. Peters' objections to Evensong are three: Intelligibility (“I could not pick out a single word that the choir was chanting...”), the lack of opportunity for active participation by those in the congregation, and the piety of the choristers and organists (or lack thereof). With all three of these, his points are well taken, but some response must be made.
Intelligibility.
This is a challenge for choirs. We know it, and good choirs work hard at it. I recently completed a week at an RSCM Course with some of our choristers under the direction of Dr. Dale Adelmann, of St. Phillip's Cathedral in Atlanta; he in turn follows in most respects the model of his teacher, Dr. George Guest, formerly of St. John's College, Cambridge, one of the places where the tradition of Choral Evensong is strongest. It would be fair to estimate that half or more of our rehearsal time at the Course was devoted to matters of diction, all with the intent of more faithfully presenting the text intelligibly.
The Psalms present an especially great challenge: there is a lot of text, the rhythm of the text is fluid in a manner unlike the metered choral music we more often sing, and pacing of the text and the shaping of the musical line in order to emphasize one or two important syllables in each half-verse is vital. It takes rehearsal, and intense focus from all choristers, to achieve the unity in these matters that is essential in order for the congregation to have any chance to understand the text. Still, it remains difficult and requires attention from the listener as well. And if all this fails, the texts are in the Prayerbook.
Most of the sung texts at Evensong are either the fixed prayers, the Canticles, or the Psalms. In the first case, the form of prayer we sing is not exactly that in our American BCP of 1979, but is close enough so that people can get the drift of the meaning – and it is identical at every Evensong (differing only in musical setting), so regular attenders can learn the texts by heart soon enough, as are the Canticles, which exactly follow the wording in the Rite One service of Evening Prayer (BCP p. 65, 66). We purposely sing the Psalms in the modern text of the 1979 BCP, which is what is in our pews. Many places sing the older translations of Coverdale from the 1662 BCP and its predecessors, but even so, a person could follow in the 1979 BCP and have a clear idea as to what is being sung. Anthem texts ought to be printed in a service bulletin, as we do, with translations when we sing in a language other than English.
Piety.
Peters notes that at a service in this tradition that he attended, only two of the adult choristers received communion. He writes: “The choir is part of the leadership of the service. Is there a critical mass of people of faith needed in a choir (in the leadership of any service) to move a service from the concert end of the spectrum to the common prayer end?”
My short answer is Yes. In the older RSCM training materials, one aphorism was this: Religion is caught, not taught. For this to happen within a choir, or for that matter a parish, there must indeed be some critical mass. It need not be large – it has never been large, never more than a remnant, at one time as few as eight persons (cf. I Peter 3:20 – Noah and the Ark).
But it is not as simple as that. Long ago, controversy arose over the issue of whether the sacraments were valid when administered by a priest who was an unbeliever or a notorious sinner. The answer discerned by the church was that the sacraments are the work of God, and depend upon him for their validity – not upon the human hands that administer them. I would submit that to some degree the same can be said about the Song, the task entrusted to choir, organists, and other musicians (e.g., guitarists, cantors, praise band singers, members of a singing congregation). The Song is the expression and prayer of Holy Mother Church, is redeemed only by the blood of Christ, and has life only through the operation of the Holy Spirit. None of us fully cooperate in this activity. But when we are weak, we are carried along by others, by the “critical mass of people of faith” mentioned by Fr. Peters, and by the grace of God – manifested in part through the Song itself:
Sometimes a light surprisesThere is, I suspect, another issue at play: many church musicians (including choristers) do not like the Episcopal Church, and our dislike is most intensely focused on the clergy. We have watched for fifty years as they have denigrated our work, disbanded choirs, silenced organists, and presented us with a parade of liturgical texts increasingly divorced from Scripture or tradition (the New Zealand Church's recent efforts in regard to the Collects of the Day, said efforts rightly opposed by Fr. Peters, are an example). They have taken away the great hymns of the church and replaced them with trite recycled pop.
the Christian while he sings;
it is the Lord who rises
with healing in his wings:
when comforts are declining,
he grants the soul again
a season of clear shining,
to cheer it after rain.
(William Cowper)
From the cheery “Good morning!!!” at the beginning of the Holy Eucharist to the end, the Sunday Eucharist is (at worst) all about the clergy, or (at best) about the gathered community there present (e.g., ten minutes of hugging and chitchat at the “peace,” followed by another ten minutes of parish announcements), and not to any great degree about the Lord. It is no wonder that many choristers and organists do not take communion, or do other things that the clergy would recognize as reflective of belief.
Instead, we sing. We play the organ, we direct the choir. Or if we can do none of these things, we attend Evensong. The Music is often all we have, the one thing that keeps us in the church, hanging on by our fingernails. I could name many people who would never come near a church were it not for choral music, and especially Choral Evensong. And, I submit, our faithful adherence to our bounden duty as choristers and organists is reflective of belief (cf. St. James 2:14-26), even if (when asked) we would say that we are “here for the music – full stop.”
For it is at Evensong that some degree of piety remains in the Church. There is no scope for the clergyperson's personality to shine, there is hopefully no Sermon, there is no hugging or chitchat, and certainly no recycled pop music. Instead, there is (for the choristers) Prayer at its most intense, immersion in Psalmody, and the constant companionship of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.
I have written mostly of those who participate as choristers in Evensong, and the spiritual benefit is for them the greatest. I have never prayed so intensely as when singing a good setting of the Preces and Responses (such as Smith, linked above); it requires all of one's spirit and mind and body (in terms of breath, posture, etc.), and absolute connection with the moment. I see this every time I teach the Smith, or Ayleward, or other good setting to the youth choir. They are drawn immediately to this music, and once they "get it," they are almost bursting with excitement at the beginning, like race horses at the starting gate: "O Lord, open thou our lips: And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise." [The Smith Preces are here, at the 4:10 mark in the YouTube clip, following a plainsong introit, and with an example of Anglican Chant psalmody following, all from the choir of Westminster Abbey]
In the “big league” choirs where Evensong is sung daily (such as Westminster Abbey), a chorister soon knows all 150 Psalms with an intimacy gained in no other way than by intense rehearsal – at St. John's, for example, Dr. Adelmann tells us that they sing the Morning Psalms for one term, and the Evening Psalms for the other term. Even in our parish, where we sing Evensong only once, the First Sunday of each month, the choristers have come to know that small selection of psalms – those appointed for the first seven evenings – extremely well. They know them well enough to have a good sense of what the entire Book of Psalms is about, why it is important to us, and how one might approach the other Psalms that we do not regularly sing. Like the Religious for whom the Offices and their Psalmody are central, this is a factor in Conversion of Life – at least for those who do not stop their ears to them.
For that is a challenge too: choristers and organists can become so angry at the church that they stop paying attention to what they are singing. That is why we begin our rehearsals with the Choristers' Prayer; we seek God's help in this matter.
Bless, O Lord, us thy servants who minister in thy temple: Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may shew forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.Lack of active participation:
There is benefit also for those who are not choristers, and for some of the same reasons. Attending Choral Evensong is precisely akin to the experience of visiting a monastic house, and listening in for a time on the conversation of their liturgy [“and there will I meet with the children of Israel...” it is, in some manner, through these Daily Prayers that God meets with the brothers or sisters – meets with them, forms them, and makes them into what he envisions them to be] – a conversation which began long before we arrived at their gate, and will continue long after we depart. As visitors, we are not fully part of it, but we are reminded of the great calm stream of liturgy and prayer, and invited to dip our toes into it – or wade in, or immerse ourselves in it and be carried away. Unlike the Eucharist, no one is going to pressure us at Evensong to “belong” and hug everyone, or chitchat, or preach at us, or give money (especially that; we are always asking for money in the church); the stream, the river of living water, is there (cf. St. John 7:38, Revelation 22:1-3), and we can approach it as we are able.
Most of all, we are not under the pressure of saying the right words at the right time, of what often passes for “active participation.” As when visiting the monastic house, we need not understand every word at Evensong, for much of what is going on is nonverbal. We certainly need not say anything or do anything; the activity is on a different level than that. We need not participate at all, if we are not ready. But when we are, we can join our heart and mind and spirit to the Psalms of David, the Magnificat, the prayers of Holy Mother Church. We can enter through the choral Office into the courts of heaven.
---
The office of Chorister is humble in comparison with that of Deacon, or Priest, or Bishop, but it is nonetheless a Vocation, and if it is the one to which God has called us, we must fulfill it. In the RSCM office of Admission to the Choir, the new Chorister answers these questions:
Minister: N., do you wish to join the choir?For many of the nine-and-ten year olds who join our choir, this will prove to be a Life Profession. Many of them will still be singing in choirs when they are grandmothers and grandfathers.
New Chorister: I do.
Minister: As a member of the choir, will you do your best to help the people worship God?
New Chorister: I will.
With this office of Chorister (and more so with the office of Organist or Choirmaster), there comes a responsibility to represent the Lord Jesus Christ in a special way, akin to the responsibility that one who wears the collar must bear. When we act in an impious manner during the church services, it reflects badly on our Lord, just as a priest who mumbles his way through the liturgy, preaches without preparation or study, or uses the liturgy as a platform to “prance around in his finery” (as one of our parishioners says) brings discredit to the the Church and its Lord.
We must do better, as Fr. Peters rightly suggests. All of us, clergy and musicians alike, young and old, are works in progress. We endure the “patient hammerblows of grace” (Olivier Messiaen) and the Conversion of Life that they bring, in order to fit us for our place in the kingdom: “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:5)
Fr. Peters is absolutely right that much of the problem lies in the lack of “liturgical training, study, and formation” which results in the forms of liturgy being passed on by “non-reflecting example,” and over time losing their content. It is incumbent upon choirmasters (of which I am one) to remedy this. We must ensure that our choristers understand what they are about when they sing Choral Evensong (or participate musically in the Eucharist). This can rarely happen, however, through explicit instruction. It must, after all, be primarily by example, or more precisely instruction backed by example. We must ourselves be “people of devout conduct, teaching the ways of earnestness to the Choirs committed to [our] charge” (“Declaration of Religious Principles” of the American Guild of Organists).
Opportunity arises when a young chorister raises her hand and asks what a phrase means in the Psalm that we are rehearsing, or the anthem text. Or a word, or phrase, from anywhere in the liturgy. As choirmaster, I must have created an atmosphere where choristers can inquire about such things, and then I must answer as best I can, or (better) help the group as a whole to come up with an answer. And it must be done without spending a lot of time on it – we have Work to do; we have to get the diction and pacing right for the Psalm, or get the Anthem learned. Those tasks in themselves are the more important part of formation; they require us to pay close attention to every word, every syllable of every word, and through the music devote our whole body, mind, spirit, and voice to the work at hand.
Last year, our combined choirs sang the Vaughan Williams anthem “Lord, thou hast been our refuge.” Psalm 90 is not part of our normal Evensong rotation, and this provided opportunity for us to learn the text in detail – about three months of work for our youth choir and perhaps two months for our adults – this was a stretch for us, about as great of a challenge as our all-volunteer parish choir can manage. I believe that what they carried away from the experience were these things, among others: they saw that I (and behind me Holy Mother Church) care enough about this text to spend three months working on it with them and then to sing it in church, and to do so in the finest manner possible (and in a setting composed by precisely the sort of agnostic described earlier, whose faith is most evident in his works). [Here is my essay about that day, last October]
They saw that the liturgy must include music of this sort, texts of this sort, and that such things do not happen without a lot of work – and that it is very much worth all that work. When the day arrived, they noted that Psalm 90 was appointed for the liturgy at that Eucharist, saw its relation to the liturgy as a response to the Old Testament lesson (I pointed out the nature of the connection explicitly that morning in the warmup), and they saw (not for the first time) that the choice of psalmody or anthem or hymnody is not based on personal whim or taste, whether mine or the Rector's, but on the considered and prayerful deployment of Scripture in the Lectionary, telling the Story over the course of the year – and this anthem, this day, had its place in that Story.
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9 comments:
Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to respond to my post. Much appreciated. Especially as it helps me to expand and clarify my ideas.
I do not think that Choral Evensong as I described it needs defending – it needs renewing.
The point of my post was not an attack on the chanted office. The point came towards the end of the post. In NZ, with little to no liturgical formation, when people hear the word “liturgy” the paradigm that springs to their mind is of the concert end of the spectrum. The bathwater is thrown out without even checking for a baby, and we have increasingly services with no connection to our historical liturgical tradition whatsoever.
Rather than the tradition continuing to enrich and be translated into a new context, there is a growing divide. Clergy are not even attending the choral “recitals” (read Choral Evensong) put on by people primarily because of the music – within their church building.
The particular service I began my post with could have been made more participatory quite simply. Instead of (or as well as) the introduction explaining how this was our Reformation heritage, we could have begun with a liturgical greeting and response. We could have, then, sung a hymn together. The readings could have concluded with the usual congregational response. Etc.
I have visited and stayed in monasteries of different denominations all around the world – the only example that springs to mind of not joining in the community’s prayer aloud that you describe as a model, is my time on Mount Athos.
You are right to highlight the danger of some liturgy being all about the priest. But please be fair: in many many examples of Choral Evensong it has certainly been all about the conductor!
I lead a community where we all join in Choral Evensong together. We rehearse as a community. Our choir will sing an introit and an anthem – for the rest we participate fully by chanting, singing, responding, listening together.
There are some details in your post that I think are in error, eg. the way you understand that Jews use the psalms. But I am not going to confuse the wood with the trees.
Thank you again for the chance to clarify important points.
Blessings
Bosco+
www.liturgy.co.nz
I think at King's, evensong comes closest to being a concert. There are usually several hundred in the congregation, of whom the great majority are tourists, and of those it seems probable that the great majority have come for the fame of the choir and/or the architechture (since a fee of £7.50 (or about 12 of your dollars) is levied for admission to the chapel, but services are of course free). At the same time, the professionalism of the choir means that they are rarely practising Anglicans. A friend of mine (a high churchman) was once Dean of King's, and there was a certain amount of tension between him and the director of music as to the relative weight to be given to the performance of the music and the performance of the liturgy, which I gathered was not unusual.
Nevertheless, even at King's, I do not think the 'concert' accusation can be made to stick. Suppose that the choir are all tranfixed by the vanity of their ability and that the congregation are all mentally crossing the chapel off their list of places to visit in England, and thinking of tea at Fitzbillies. Even so, the actual act of worship is being offered to God. There is virtue in performing the actions, even when the mind is elsewhere. But in fact such absent-mindedness does not occur. Even if the congregation have come for non-religious reasons, the very beauty of the service will direct at least some of their attentions Godward. Indeed, the service might be valued precisely because it attracts congregations who ordinarily would have no inclination to go to church.
As you say, the text of the service is constant, so even if the choir's diction is imperfect, or (as in St Paul's) the acoustic blurs all words into a wash of sound, the regular congregation will follow. (And if strangers do not follow, might they not perceive something of the mystery of God?) The psalms indeed may pose a problem, but I have never been to a service of evensong where the words to the psalms were not available, either on a printed order of service or in a psalter or prayer-book. And if many of the congregation do not actually follow the text, does that matter? Are we protestants? The congregation may make what use of the psalm as they see fit - I have often been advised by ghostly counsellers that rather than try to absorb the whole of the psalm, I should try to pick up on a word or phrase which seems significant to me. After all, to meditate on an entire psalm is a work of many hours. If the congregation allow the psalm to wash over them, might not God cause them to hear the words which seem best to him? Or if the effect is more impressionistic, may not God reveal himself in that way too?
I must say, however, that I do not agree with you that attending evensong is like attending the offices in a monastery. Evensong (at least in this country) is the most familiar of all services - even the unchurched hear it with a sense of coming home - whereas monastic prayer is, sadly, generally alien to our culture - many people believe that monks ceased to exist centuries ago.
The 'lack of active participation' is often raised as an objection to evensong, although I have only ever heard it voiced by people (often clergy) purporting to think that strangers will be put off. I've never actually encountered anyone who found it off-putting. In any case, the objection seems of a piece with our cultural focus on perpetual activity and on ourselves. The congregation participate by their presence, by their standing and kneeling and other liturgical actions. I have sung in very many choral evensongs, and I have sat in the congregation of very many choral evensongs. I cannot say that either position is superior. To sing the service is to inhabit the music, but it requires focus on musicianship and particularly on one's own part, whereas to sit in the congregation allows the service to become more purely meditative.
Previous comment was me, Robert Jones, by the way. I thought Google would identify me.
I see Fr Peters has responded, and I hope it will not be taken amiss if I reply to some of his remarks.
I have probably not attended such a variety of monasteries as he, but I have stayed at both Anglican and Roman monasteries in this country, and in all of them the monks have chanted the service. (In the course of a longish stay, IME, if one expresses some interest in plainsong, they will usually provide prayerbooks and invite one to join in, but I have always understood this as a privilege and not something to be expected.)
Of course many congregations prefer congregational evensong (especially on Sundays) to choral evensong, but I'm puzzled by the idea that the everybody can join in choral evensong - surely it ceases to be choral? Although of course, as I said previously everybody does join in choral evensong (as that expression is usually understood) by their performance of the ritual actions (and often also in reciting the Our Father and the Creed).
Thanks, Robert, for expanding the reflection.
Your first comment seems to assume that people cannot experience and grow closer to God in a concert. If you read my post that this is responding to - that is the very point I start with. To say that people can grow closer to God through the experience of evensong at King's is not an argument that this evensong is more at the common prayer than the concert end of the spectrum.
I'm confused by your suggestion that all joining in Choral Evensong means it ceases to be choral. Choral, as I understand it, means there is leadership in the liturgy's singing by a choir. The Choral Eucharists I participate in are, similarly, participated in by all - led by the choir. Am I missing something?
Blessings
Bosco+
Perhaps I've misunderstood. A choral Eucharist is, as I understand the expression, one where the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Angus Dei are sung by the choir, and sometimes also the Creed. Of course, there are quite a lot of other parts of the mass where there are congregational responses. Similarly, a choral evensong is one where the choir sing the canticles and usually also the responses. If those elements are sung by the congregation, I would call it a sung Eucharist or sung evensong (which would often also include a choral anthem).
I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea that the choir are 'leading' the liturgy. The choir (at least in a parish church) are part of the congregation who happen to be fulfiling a particular role, i.e. singing. Liturgical leadership is provided by the clergy, and perhaps also the MC. In particular, it seems to rather do down the congregation to suggest that the choir are needed to chivvy them along in the congregational singing.
RJ
Angus, agnus, you know what I mean!
(Incidentally, I'm starting to suspect that I might actually be a robot, as I'm struggling with some of these text recognition thingies.)
Bosco and Robert, thank you for your comments!
Robert, here in the States, and especially out here in “flyover country,” as those in the big coastal cities call the Midwest, sung Evensong is unusual, whether involving a choir or not. So far as I know, we and the cathedral in Des Moines are the only places in our state-wide Diocese of Iowa where it happens even once a month. It is interesting to read your description of a situation where it is familiar even to the unchurched, while monastic prayer is more alien. Here it might be the reverse – the population here in Iowa (those who attend church, that is) is largely either Lutheran or Roman Catholic, and the latter are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of the monastic Offices, even if they have never experienced them directly.
We have what we call “congregational Evensong” on some First Sundays when the choir is not in season – indeed, it is coming up on September 2, which in the States is a three-day holiday weekend when many of our adult choristers are having one last summer trip out of town. In these services, we distribute to everyone the Plainsong Psalter (Church Publishing, edited by James Litton; it is an expensive book, but we have a dozen copies of it, sufficient for the congregation we get at such services) and all have a go at it; cantor (normally me) doing odd-numbered verses, everyone responding with even-numbered verses. For the balance of the service, we use plainsong settings found in the Hymnal 1982 (for example, S-185 and S-196 for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis), sung by all present, and we sing a hymn in place of an anthem, plus a second hymn at the end of the service.
I would love to visit your Choral Evensong, with the mixture of choir and congregational singing that you (Bosco) describe. This sounds like a splendid balance.
(continued)
And I agree with you about the “divide.” Our current Rector came to this parish with a disposition against the choral services (perhaps with good reason) and basically no exposure to Choral Evensong, even though he took a degree at Oxford years ago. He almost pulled the plug on the services early in his tenure, and it was only upon the horrified response to that idea by the Vestry and Wardens that the services continued. It took about a decade, but he has warmed up to our Choral Evensong, and regularly attends nowadays even when the assistant priest or the deacon is the one serving as Officiant.
I can see that my essay reflects this divide all too well, in the manner in which I was so harsh on the sort of Sunday Eucharist that could be considered the opposite pole from Choral Evensong. My viewpoint was one side of the divide, and was more the extreme viewpoint of some of my colleagues than my own; I play piano and lead the singing at our “contemporary” Eucharist, and have, like our Rector, come toward what I hope is a more moderate view, and certainly a recognition that the contemporary service is “right” for a large number of our parishioners.
Those on the other side have very good reasons to be that way and very good reasons to distrust the “musicians,” who all too often can be snobby, vain, and not at all interested in the overall welfare of the parish, so long as the music can continue. May God help us all.
Musicians who love the choral tradition must recognize that it can continue only insofar as it remains a part of the larger picture. I fear for what I called the “big-time choirs” in the highly visible English settings such as King's, St. John's, and the major cathedrals. It seems to me that their excellence stands upon an increasingly fragile foundation. They cannot long continue without a wider culture of choral singing in parish churches across the land and in schools, and from what I read, that is disappearing. I Indeed, I suspect that the tradition is doomed unless the divisions are healed.
Again, THANK YOU both for your good-natured and charitable comments, and thank you, Bosco, for the original essay that got the conversation started. May God's blessings be with you both.
(and a postscript: Bosco, thank you for the admonition about the Jewish use of the Psalter. It is my understanding that many Jews read it straight through for private devotion; my Hebrew Psalter is divided up very much like the BCP, with “First Day, Second Day,” etc., with an additional division in larger chunks for those who are able to begin on Sunday and finish the Psalter in one week on the Sabbath. And I am aware that many Psalms have specific and crucial places in the liturgical calendar, besides the monthly layout.
But I see that I must study this further. Thank you again for pointing me in that direction. And while I am on such things, thank you for the Torah readings that you have been posting on your site! I hope that you continue this.)
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