Proclaimer Blog
Athanasius on singing the psalms
But why do we sing the psalms to music? Athanasius says the reason is not just aesthetic, to please the ear. No, for “Holy Scripture is not designed to tickle the aesthetic palate” (!). He offers two reasons:
- Poetry enables us to express our love for God with all the strength and power we possess
- Chanting the Psalms has a unifying effect upon the singer, because it demands our full concentration: “For to sing the Psalms demands such concentration of a man’s whole being on them that, in doing it, his usual disharmony of mind and corresponding bodily confusion is resolved… and he is thus no longer to be found thinking good and doing evil… And it is in order that the melody may thus express our inner spiritual harmony, just as the words voice our thoughts, that the Lord Himself has ordained that the Psalms be sung and recited to a chant.”
Following on from (2), he says that “the melody of the words springs naturally from the rhythm of the soul and her own union with the Spirit”; this has a correspondingly good effect on the hearers, as did David when he sang to Saul (1 Sam.16). “When, therefore, the Psalms are chanted, it is not from any mere desire for sweet music but as the outward expression of the inward harmony obtaining in the soul, because such harmonious recitation is in itself the index of a peaceful and well-ordered heart.” When a man sings well he “puts his soul in tune, correcting by degrees its faulty rhythm so that at last, being truly natural and integrated, it has fear of nothing, but in peaceful freedom from all vain imaginings may apply itself with greater longing to the good things to come. For a soul rightly ordered by chanting the sacred words forgets its own afflictions and contemplates with joy the things of Christ alone.”
He adds towards the end a word of warning: “No one must allow himself to be persuaded, by any arguments whatsoever, to decorate the Psalms with extraneous matter or make alterations in their order or change the words themselves. They must be sung and chanted in entire simplicity, just as they are written, so that the holy men who gave them to us, recognizing their own words, may pray with us, yes and even more that the Spirit, Who spoke by the saints, recognizing the self-same words that He inspired, may join us in them too.”
He concludes, “And so you too, Marcellinus, pondering the Psalms and reading them intelligently, with the Spirit as your guide, will be able to grasp the meaning of each one, even as you desire. And you will strive also to imitate the lives of those God-fearing saints who spoke them at the first.”