The Complete Spanish Psalter has now been published and is available for purchase. It has been published by Publicaciones Faro de Gracia and can be purchased online here. It contains the 150 Biblical Psalms, complete and entire, and versified to be sung with the Genevan Psalter tunes. It contains a translation of John Calvin’s preface, and the introductions to each Psalm which appeared in the original French psalter. The publisher writes: “The guiding principle of the work has been to remain as close as possible to the Biblical text of the Spanish Reina-Valera translations of 1909 and 1960, in such a way that the Biblical text will be completely recognizable to everyone, in spite of the formal requirements of the versification.
This project has taken us seven years of constant work and revision. We do not conceal the satisfaction it gives us to see it now published, above all because the goal is nothing other than the public worship of the Lord by His church. We hope, then, that with it historic protestant worship can be recovered in the Spanish-speaking evangelical churches, an issue of immense importance in our day.
We know that the Psalter is practically unknown, and that there are some doubts as to whether it can be sung today. But we are completely convinced that it is possible. It is enough to believe in general in the importance of singing the Psalms and to cultivate in particular a love for the Geneva Psalter, as well as finding the right way to sing them congregationally in our day. Because of this, in following days we will be giving our suggestions on this matter.”
Thank you for bringing this information for us. What a blessing to see that the Psalms are being prepared for our Spanish speaking brethren. I put a link for this post at http://www.exclusivepsalmody.com for those who may be interested.
See here for some excellent resources on the Genevan Psalter:
http://genevanpsalter.redeemer.ca/
This is great news. Congratulations! I will be ordering my copy pronto.
While the Genevan tunes may at first seem foreign, they are eminently well-suited to congregational singing. One tip: the Genevan tunes are best sung by the congregation in unison. This is how our congregation sings them, and it works well.
Another tip: teach the children and let the children “lead” the congregation. This was Calvin’s suggestion, and it works very well — particularly when it is possible to include such memory work in the daily school routine.
Wonderful! We also rejoice in our Genevan-German Psalter here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47615097@N05/4948879822/
So happy about this. There is definitely a need for singing the Psalms in Spanish. Just bought it for Ruben to consider for use in the Spanish church at OURC.