Description
This book was initially published in the Netherlands in 2004, after a long process of composition, which happened over the period September 2001 to October 2003. I am most honoured that the Canadian Reformed Churches intend to use this book during their services of worship.
One of the things I had in mind while working on this book was the fact that in many congregations the singing of the Psalms does not happen at the quality it could. Congregations often wait for the organist to play the first chord at the beginning of each verse, and sometimes even at the beginning of every new line, then take a breath, and only then start singing. As a result, every line is metrically disconnected from the previous and gone is the sense of pulse.
In order to create such a continuing pulse, I decided to fill the pauses between the lines with connecting chords. In the original preface I suggested to omit these chords in situations where the congregation does not have any problems to start the next line in proper time. In that case, the original pause between the lines should be applied.
