Customer Reviews

Psalms of David Complete

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I almost hate to criticize this terrific thing. After all, where else can you get all 150 Psalms in a single collection sung by one of the world's great choirs?

How much do I like it? I bought it *twice*. I originally bought all the CDs separately, before they came out with a single boxed set. They were stolen from my car (no doubt converting the thief to Anglican Cathedral Music in the process). After they were stolen, I immediately bought them again.

One of the great pleasures of life is listening to the Morning and Evening Psalms while driving to and from work, and making listening a regular feature of Morning and Evening Prayer.

So what's the criticism? The sound is a bit muddy, so the words can be rather difficult to understand without reading along (which is a real problem when driving), and personally, I prefer the Psalter from the 1979 BCP instead of the old one, from the Coverdale Psalter. But that's unreasonable. They ARE a British choir after all. Those are the only criticisms.

Anyhow, if you have a taste for choral cathedral music, this is genuinely indispensable. St. Paul's has given the world a gift.

This is a monumental achievement and to be commended.

My only comment is that the recording was done in St. Paul's Cathedral where the sound is very resonant. This makes the feel very "churchy" which is nice for the experience of the music. But, I like these recordings for devotional use and the resonance blurs the lyrics such that they can be difficult to hear easily, and in my opinion this is too bad. Would that the recording equipment had been configured to hear the voices close and clear.

Maybe this recording could be remixed/enhanced so that the experience is first about the words and notes of the singers' voices?

But get this one nonetheless, it's great text, great music, great experience of choral worship.

This grand undertaking deserves high praise, and I'm struck, listening to chant after chant, how much Anglican chant as it used to be until the changes of the 70s was one of the great Victorian contributions to English life and art. For anyone who wants to hear almost the entire repertoire of Anglican chant deployed in singing the whole book of Psalms, this is an unrivalled source. It is wonderful, too, to hear the Coverdale translation: you realize what the churches have lost by abandoning the proper & regular singing of the Psalms. So one is immensely grateful to Hyperion for putting out this recording. It's not perfect, though.

The rhythmic pacing, though a little slow for my taste, is steady and sensitive, the diction clear, and the organ accompaniment superb (Providing an expressive accompaniment to a choir singing in 4-part free rhythm, and improvising descants to the melody at the same time, isn't easy). And of course there's the cavernous acoustic of St. Paul's, very impressive in the more thunderous psalms. Unfortunately, though, the "forward" style favored for the St. Paul's boys produces a sound that's unpleasantly chesty in the lower registers and reedy in the higher ones. The poorly integrated choral sound caused by this kind of voice-production can be downright unpleasant for anyone used to, or trained in, the classic English choral style. In fact, one has to wonder why this choir was chosen for such a huge project: even allowing for the near-universal decline in standards of vocal training for boys in England, better sounds than this can still be heard.

Dulcet Anglican chant seeps into the soul, calming, soothing, stabilizing, grounding. Any and every one of the 12 discs that compose "The Psalms of David," as recorded by the Choir of St Paul's Cathedral, London, directed by John Scott, is worth having. Superb for meditation or as perpetual ambiance, these discs, with their mellifluous melodies, enhance the atmosphere. Whether driving or at home or in my classroom, I almost always have one of these discs playing to lift up my heart.

I agree with another reviewer - it's often hard to hear the words. Some of the time, I'd understand just as much if they were singing in Latin. But the disks do vary. The first is one of the worst in terms of hearing the words, the later ones are mostly better, and on some I can follow the whole thing relatively easily. In any case, just soaking in the beautiful music is often enough.

For a while I was reading the psalms I was going to be listening to that day over breakfast out of the handy little (but extremely poorly copy-edited) book which is included in the box. That helped.

I listen to these in my car and it makes for a much calmer driving experience, even when people cut you off and run red lights in front of you. I'm sure it's doing me all kinds of good.

Personally I could do without the one very modern, atonal setting. But most of the settings are beautiful, and Psalm 23 just about makes me weep.

In our view the changes in pointing, and excellent selection of chants, give deeper meanings to the Psalms than those achieved in the "standard?" Parish Psalter.

We found great Spirituality and a wonderful sense of Worship whilst listening to this set. This is often sacrificed for brilliance of musical performance in other recordings.

Unfortunately the "St.Paul's Psalter" is not available (June 2007) but we are told that a new print run may happen within 12 months. This would be a most valuable companion to the recordings when and if it becomes available.