A Study of Selected Representative Settings of Psalm 100 for Choir
[Thesis]
Park, Song Yi
TUCKER, PAUL
University of Kansas
2019
44 p.
D.M.A.
University of Kansas
2019
Through much of the history of the Judeo-Christian tradition the book of Psalms has been a primary resource for the liturgical and devotional life of both Jews and Christians. Psalms is one of the most familiar and frequently used books in the scriptures and it has had a huge influence on Western culture. The Hebrew Psalms is an anthology of 150 poems drawn from five different collections that have been combined into one book. Among them, Psalm 100, popularly known as the "Jubilate," is perhaps the most frequently set psalm of praise. This lecture-recital will survey representative choral settings of Psalm 100 drawn from the works of selected composers writing from the sixteenth through the twentieth century. I will begin with an introductory discussion of the origin, genres, and liturgical settings of the Psalms. Following this I will examine the poetry of Psalm 100 in some detail. Finally, I will engage in a comparative analysis of the stylistic characteristics of the selected choral settings of Psalm 100, focusing especially on the different approaches to text setting taken by each composer. The composers I have selected for this study include: Josquin des Prez (c.1440-1521), William Byrd (c.1543-1623), Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847), and John Høybye (b.1939).