This is one of the great body of hymns and hymn tunes written by Erik Routley (1917-1982), a minister in the United Reformed Church of England and Wales and a noted 20th-century hymnologist. Educated at two Anglican schools in West Sussex, the Fonthill Preparatory School and Lancing College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford (B.A. 1940), he studied theology at Masefield College, Oxford (B.D. 1946; D.Phil. 1951), where he later became Lecturer and then Professor in Church History, as well as Librarian, and Director of Music. He edited the Bulletin of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 1948 to 1975. While continuing as a Congregationalist Minister in England and Scotland, Routley wrote prolifically about church music, publishing 50 monographs and editing 15 hymn books. He was the first non-Anglican to become a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music. In 1967 Routley was made a Fellow of the Westminster Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey, and later Professor of Church Music and Director of Chapel there. This hymn, a paraphrase of of psalm 98, was written in 1972 for the hymnal Cantate Domino, commissioned by the World Council of Churches. Some phrasing in Routley’s paraphrase is based on a French translation made in 1970 by Roger Chapal (1912-1998). The three 8-line stanzas of the hymn reflect the three parts of the psalm, where verses 1-3 extol the victory of God, verses 4-6 develop the idea of the kinds of music that should make up a “new song,” and verses 7-9 call for the created world to make its music.

 

Routley wrote the hymn in alternating 9 and 8 syllable lines to fit the tune “Rendez à Dieu,” which he called “one of the simplest and most moving” of the Genevan Reformist tunes. The tune first appeared in Calvin’s 1545 psalter printed in Strasbourg. It may have been composed by the musician Loys Bourgeoys [Louis Bourgeois] (ca. 1510-ca.1559), who was the musical editor of the French Protestant Psalter of Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze in Geneva. Bourgeois may, however, have only revised an earlier tune by Guillaume Franc (1515-1570), who taught music in Geneva. Bourgeois, a brilliant arranger and harmonizer as well as a composer, published Pseaulmes de David in 1547, setting all the tunes of the French Psalter in four parts, with the melody in the tenor, as was customary He was a protégé of Calvin, serving as Music Director and Master of the Choristers in both St Pierre and St Gervais. Calvin intervened to have Bourgeois released when he was jailed for changing some psalm tunes which the people already knew to new ones (including this one). This tune set the words of psalm 118, as translated by Marot (Rendez à Dieu louange et gloire), in the 1551 Genevan psalter; it was used for both psalms 118 and 98 in the 1562 psalter.