Description
This beautiful new (second) edition of the New Coverdale Psalter differs from the standard New Coverdale Psalter in that the text has been pointed for plainsong chanting. It has been developed from out of the St. Bernard Breviary, with 11 of the easiest-to-learn plainsong tones. It is pointed exactly the same as the St. Bernard Breviary, and also includes the Christological sub-titles. Musical instruction for chanting can be found at https://www.bernardbreviary.com/chant-helps
As well as the psalter, the seasonal canticles and the regular canticles (Te Deum, Benedictus, Magnificat, & Nunc Dimittis) are also included in the back pointed for Anglican Chant.
Type-size: 11.5. Printed in two colors (Black and Red) on ivory 40gsm paper, bound in a soft and supple black split-calf, with a single gold ribbon. It has gilded page edges and rounded corners.
The cover-stamping utilizes one of the decorative motifs used on the Bay Psalter — the first book printed and published in the United States.
Background on the New Coverdale Psalter
The Miles Coverdale Bible of 1535 contained within it a translation of the Psalms of David that came to be widely used in worship. It became so deeply rooted in the spirituality of the Church of England that the translation of the psalms of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible went unincorporated in favor of Coverdale’s earlier translation. Printings of the Coverdale Psalter with subsequent Prayer Books saw occasional alterations in particular verses to improve clarity or where the original bore a mistranslation. Between 1958 and 1963 a Church of England committee, whose members included C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, worked on a more thorough revision, but with great attention to the cadences and turns-of phrase of the original Coverdale. This revision was adopted by the Church of England but never came into widespread use. In preparation for the Book of Common Prayer 2019 the Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America resolved to produce this New Coverdale Psalter. It is faithful to Coverdale’s translation, as amended in successive Anglican Prayer Books from the English Book of 1662 through the Canadian Book of Common Prayer of 1962. The New Coverdale Psalter is also shaped by the 1963 proposed revision of the Church of England, as well as with reference to the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer of 1979. It is most notably “new” in that it has been conformed to contemporary language, but always in a manner that seeks to preserve the poetry, phrasing and rhythm of the received text. The College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America adopted the New Coverdale Psalter, and the Book of Common Prayer with which it is bound, in January of 2019. At the beginning of the 21st century, the New Coverdale Psalter is offered to Anglicans and to the whole English-speaking Church throughout the world as a way to pray or sing the psalms in a form that is essentially the one used by worshippers for the last five hundred years, and in continuity with the meaning given the psalms for most of the last two millennia.
