Psalm 98 GW

Feb 26, 2026

∙ Paid

There have been some great songs written for Psalm 98.

The Genevan tune for this one is one of the most memorable and singable of the entire corpus. And the Thomas Jarman tune from 1803, which I learned first in the Book Of Psalms For Singing (RPCNA) and then later in the Cantus Christi 2002, is a really memorable fugue. Everybody who grew up in my house knows every line of that one.

My tune is singable, but I do not think it will last like either of it’s predecessors. You can’t win ‘em all, someone said…

I have long been interested in writing tunes for every one of the psalms. I tried for many years to make singable, word-for-word compositions which could be sung by a congregation, but ran into my own lack of musical creativity, my narrowness of focus, and that problem that has plagued psalm-writers from the beginning; how do you sing a 17-minute song that a congregation can learn? These things defeated my project, though by then I had written about 80 songs from the psalms.

But then I saw the new psalter from the Canadian Reformed folk. I discovered the poetry to be exceptionally good, in clear English verse. I tried my hand at building my own tunes to some of the songs and discovered a whole new venue by which I could advance my original desire. This poetry was structured, bounded by the Genevan tunes and their rhythms. These songs could be hymned, done in hymn style. I knew a great many hymns, and had noted their genius at getting an entire song onto one page.

I had not personally written a lot of hymns, but I found that I had a bit of a knack for it. My head is an overflowing fountain of tunes, and I was able to focus it on these excellent psalm versions. I had completed probably seventy of them before I decided that I would just try to rewrite the whole book.

I am sure that folks who follow will discover my hymn tunes to have a sameness about them, that the songs may not all sound the same but they are definitely cousins. I suppose that is bound to happen. Some folks can pick out Beethoven after a few seconds of listening, and I am no Beethoven. What I hope will eventually happen is that some of these songs will make their way into various collections of psalm tunes, and into psalters eventually, regarded as standards. Some music wonk three hundred years from now will probably have “the entire Jamie Soles Psalmbook!” which he will hawk on the interweb, and not be able to sell enough of them to make a living…

Here are the lyrics for Psalm 98.