Digital Splitleaf Blog

Category: Monthly Blog

  • Andrew Melville and the Psalms: Songs for the darkest days

    Andrew Melville and the Psalms: Songs for the darkest days

    Andrew Melville (1545-1622), who led Scottish Presbyterianism in the late sixteenth century, is remembered by many as a heroic and resilient figure. This is probably because, alongside his various achievements, numerous famous anecdotes have been passed down that show him refusing to yield, regardless of whom he was confronting.

    Drawing on his ten years of experience on the European continent, he reformed the educational systems of Scotland’s major universities, including the University of Glasgow and the University of St Andrews, where he served as principal and rector. Furthermore, based on his experience in Geneva, the cradle of the Reformed Church, he devoted many years to establishing and maintaining Presbyterian polity, rather than episcopal polity, within the Church of Scotland. In particular, the well-known episode in which he rebuked the king, who sought to make himself the head of the church, and exclaimed, “God’s silly vassal!” clearly demonstrates that Melville was a bold figure who feared not even the king when it came to defending what he believed was right.

    File:Glasgow University in 1650.jpg
    University of Glasgow in 1650, James Howie, The Scots Worthies, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glasgow_University_in_1650.jpg

    But even for this strong and courageous hero, there came a moment when everything he had built collapsed. In 1607, Melville was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and this was not just an overnight stay. His extended period in the Tower resulted in the end of his public life. He lost his position as principal of St Mary’s College, his final official post in Scotland, and never would return to Scotland.

    Melville’s imprisonment in the Tower of London occurred for two main reasons. In 1584, the so-called Black Acts were passed as a set of anti-Presbyterian laws that placed the General Assembly under royal control, giving the king sole authority to determine whether and when it would be convened. Thereafter, James VI obstructed the Church of Scotland’s regular proceedings by controlling the General Assembly. He moved its meetings from Edinburgh to remote northern locations and sometimes postponed gatherings that had previously been held annually.

    Melville confronts the Bishops and James VI
    Melville upbraids bishops in the presence of James VI, from C. Hanley, The History of Scotland, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrew_Melville_upbraids_a_bishop_at_the_court_of_James_VI.jpg

    In 1605, the General Assembly, which had already been postponed for a year, was scheduled to meet in Aberdeen. However, James VI suddenly postponed it indefinitely. Nevertheless, Melville and several other ministers gathered in Aberdeen as planned, held a small assembly, and fixed the date for the next General Assembly. James VI regarded this as an act of disobedience against his command and summoned the key figures to London, and Melville also travelled there. While in London, Melville composed a poem criticising the worship practices of the Church of England. This caused controversy, leading to his summons before the English Privy Council, and he was eventually imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1607.

    Tower of London, Wenceslaus Hollar (1625-77), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tower_of_London_MET_DP823173.jpg

    Because no end date had been set for his imprisonment, Melville was confined to prison for an indefinite period of time. Moreover, the conditions of his imprisonment during the first ten months were particularly severe. The room in which he was confined had poor ventilation, and he was forbidden both from using writing materials and from receiving visitors.

    These practical circumstances must have been extremely difficult for Melville, but more than anything else, the gradual disappearance of the hope of returning to his homeland must have been the hardest thing for Melville to endure.

    In fact, towards the end of 1608, the second year of his imprisonment, hope briefly seemed to revive. He was moved to a room in better condition than before, and from that point onward he was allowed to write letters and other pieces of writing and to receive visitors. It was at this time that he began exchanging letters with his nephew and colleague, James Melville. He was also visited on several occasions by several individuals, including Scottish noblemen who brought news of the latest developments in Scotland.

    Towards the end of 1608, several noblemen who visited Melville mentioned the possibility of his release and advised him to compose and send a poem to the king. John Spottiswoode, the Archbishop of St Andrews, also advised him to send a letter to the English Privy Council, which had originally imprisoned him. Following this advice, Melville sent a poem to the king and a letter of explanation to the Privy Council. Afterward, he wrote his nephew expressing that he did not place great expectations on these efforts, but if he had truly had no hope at all, he would not even have made such attempts.

    Melville’s suspicions were confirmed early in 1609, when he received news that his petition had been denied. It seemed there were influential voices within the king’s circle who preferred he stayed in prison where the king could control and limit Melville’s influence. From that point on, Melville completely lost hope of returning to Scotland and came to accept that, even if he were released, he would have to leave for some new place rather than return home. By 1609, Melville was no longer the resilient hero of Scottish Presbyterianism, but simply a powerless prisoner who had lost even the hope of returning to his homeland.

    Yet it was precisely at this time that Melville began to devote himself to something unexpected: the paraphrasing of the Psalms. Throughout his four years of imprisonment, from 1607 to 1611, Melville continued to exchange letters with his nephew James, often enclosing Latin poems that he had composed. This was one way in which he forgot the hardships of prison life and overcame its monotony. It was therefore all the more striking that, during 1609, the most difficult and painful year of his imprisonment, and particularly during September and October, Melville devoted himself to paraphrasing eight Psalms into Latin and sent them to his nephew.

    If we look at the letters accompanying the dates on which Melville sent his Psalm paraphrases, we can see that his circumstances, already difficult and painful, were not improving but were instead becoming even worse. In the letter of 4 September, which accompanied his first Psalm paraphrase, Melville records his reaction to the news of the deaths of people close to him.

    “I am just come from reading in the second epistle to Timothy, which has allayed the tumult raised in my breast by the tidings I have received. Yet I cannot but feel. See that the funeral obsequies be duly performed. Let no mark of respect and friendship be wanting to the memory of two brethren—brethren both of them by the bonds of piety, grace, and celestial parentage, and one of them by the additional tie of nature, and still more nearly allied to me than to you. Act, I pray you, a pious and becoming part.”

    — Letter from Andrew Melville to James Melville, 4 September 1609

    In the letter of 26 September, he reports that all the money he had with him in prison had been stolen. Melville did not begin writing the Psalms after the most difficult period of his life had passed; rather, he began writing them in the very midst of his suffering. In other words, for Melville, the Psalms were a confession of faith and a prayer that he held firmly onto in the middle of his affliction.

    The fact that Melville’s immersion in the Psalms was both a confession of faith and a prayer is also clearly reflected in the message of the eight Psalms he chose In the letter he sent on 4 September 1609, Melville enclosed a paraphrase of Psalm 1; in the letter he sent on 12 September, paraphrases of Psalms 2 and 16; on 30 September, a paraphrase of Psalm 8; and on 15 October, paraphrases of Psalms 11, 12, 13, and 36, all of which he sent to James. What is particularly interesting is the common theme shared by these eight Psalms. Psalms 1, 2, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 36 all speak of trusting in God despite the prosperity of the wicked, seeking God’s protection and deliverance, and expressing either confidence or a plea that God will ultimately preserve the righteous. Melville’s choice of these Psalms appears to have been a confession of faith that reflected his own circumstances at the time. In the darkest period of his suffering, Melville immersed himself in these eight Psalms and sang them as his own confession.

    “How long will you abandon me to the swift winds of forgetfulness, forever unmindful of me? How long will you hide from me the lovely radiance of your serene face, O Jehovah?

    How long shall I burden my troubled soul with uncertain counsels and carry anxieties in a sorrowful heart? How long shall my enemy triumph over me without restraint?

    Turn your gracious eyes toward me and hear me, O Jehovah, my God. Illuminate the light of my life, lest I close my eyes forever in the night of death, and lest my cruel enemy sing triumphantly over me.

    Let not the hostile multitude rejoice over my downfall. For all my confidence is firmly fixed upon you, O gracious one.

    May I rejoice in safety through you; and, having obtained salvation, may I gladly offer thanks to you, eternal ruler of all things, for so great a gift and for the goodness you have shown toward me.”

    — Andrew Melville’s Latin Paraphrase of Psalm 13 (1609)

    After the intense period of Psalm paraphrasing that occupied him throughout September and October, Melville’s circumstances did not particularly improve. He had to endure a further two years of imprisonment, and afterwards he departed for Sedan in France, having pledged never to return to Scotland, where he eventually spent the remainder of his life. Although his singing of the Psalms and his prayers through them brought no change to his bleak circumstances themselves, in the first letter he sent to his nephew after completing his work on the Psalm paraphrases, we once again hear Melville’s strong and resolute voice.

    “Therefore, I cannot but exhort you to be vigilant, and prepared with renovated vigour to fight this glorious battle, for which you have been restored to health and reserved to this day. All effeminacy of mind must be laid aside; the old man must be put off; and we must behave ourselves stoutly and resolutely, lest in the last scene of the conflict we fail through error or fear, not to say dotage, to which every slip of old men is commonly imputed.”

    — Letter from Andrew Melville to James Melville, 28 November 1609

  • Psalm 103: A woman’s song of healing

    Over the coming months, the Digital Splitleaf Blog will be recounting examples of metrical psalm singing in Scotland over the centuries. We will explore how Scots transformed these texts, originally written centuries earlier for Israelite worship, into songs of Christian worship. Scots sang psalms in various contexts, from private devotional life to public worship and national pride and solidarity. In this example, we turn to one of the earliest illustrations of the impact and importance of the metrical psalms in the lives of Scots.

    The first story centres on a woman called Elisabeth Adamsoun, who does not appear in the grand narratives of the Scottish Reformation. She held no political office, wrote no treatises, and played no formal role in the upheaval that would reshape her country’s religious life over the years that followed. But her story offers something that the formal histories rarely do: a glimpse into the interior life of an ordinary believer, and the role that a single psalm played in anchoring her through suffering and into death.

    On the surface, Scotland in the 1550s was Catholic, governed by the regent Mary of Guise in the name of her young daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. The old church still held sway in its cathedrals, monasteries, and parish kirks. Yet there was growing unrest and disapproval within this apparently settled religious landscape. The ideas of Martin Luther and fellow continental reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli had been percolating through Scottish ports and universities for a generation, carried by merchants, scholars, and returning travellers. Those who embraced the new evangelical faith did so at considerable personal risk: the burning of Patrick Hamilton in 1528 and George Wishart in 1546 cast long shadows. Small, determined communities of Protestant believers were quietly gathering in private homes across the country’s burghs and estates, reading scripture together, debating theology, and wondering when, or whether, the old order might finally give way. Within these communities, a new reformer was beginning to exercise influence: the psalm-singing John Calvin.

    John Knox statue at New College, University of Edinburgh

    It was into this charged and uncertain world that John Knox returned in the summer of 1555. Arriving near Berwick, he set foot on Scottish soil for the first time since the fall of St Andrews Castle in 1547, an event that had set his life on a remarkable and at times harrowing course. He had been captured by French forces and had spent nearly two years chained to an oar aboard French galley ships. Released in 1549, he had made his way to England, where he served for around four years as a Protestant minister under the reforming church of Edward VI, preaching in Berwick and Newcastle before being appointed a royal chaplain. When Edward died in 1553 and his half-sister Mary I, determined to restore England to Rome, came to the throne, Knox was among the many Protestant clergy who fled across the Channel. He spent approximately two years on the European mainland, moving between Frankfurt and Geneva, deepening his Reformed theology under the influence of Calvin himself, before resolving to return north and see what had become of the reformation cause in his native land.

    In Edinburgh, Knox was welcomed into the home of David Forres, Laird of Dun, a man whose household had become something of a quiet sanctuary for the city’s evangelical community. There, in conditions of relative privacy, Edinburgh’s Protestant-leaning elites gathered to worship, hear the scriptures expounded, and encourage one another in their faith. It was an intimate, almost clandestine world, and it was here that Knox’s preaching would lay the foundations of a reformation that would come less than five years later.

    Edenburgum, Scotiae Metropolis (1582). Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.

    Among those who came to hear Knox speak was Elisabeth Adamsoun, wife of James Barroun, burgess of Edinburgh who himself was a committed supporter of the Reformation. Like many who encountered Knox for the first time, Elisabeth found herself profoundly unsettled by what she heard. His preaching was not gentle or reassuring in the way she might have expected from religious discourse. It was searching, precise, and unsparing, the kind of preaching that holds up a mirror to the soul. As Knox spoke, Elisabeth became greatly troubled, seeing her own sin more clearly than she ever had before. Yet Knox’s message was not one of despair. Woven through his preaching and discussions were divine mercy and redemption, and with each meeting Elisabeth found herself not crushed but gradually drawn forward: troubled, yes, but also strangely hopeful. She was present every time Knox spoke, eager and attentive, hungry to understand more of the gospel he proclaimed.

    Some time after Knox’s ministry among them, Elisabeth fell gravely ill. The nature of her ailment is not recorded, but it was serious, attended by great torment and physical pain. What struck those who cared for her, however, was the manner in which she bore it. Despite her suffering, she praised God without ceasing and expressed grief only for the trouble her condition caused those who looked after her. Far from becoming a source of complaint, her sickbed became a place of quiet witness.

    Her sisters, who were among her closest companions and carers, were curious. They had known Elisabeth through her earlier spiritual crisis and now watched her endure physical suffering with extraordinary composure. At some point they asked her directly: “What do you think of this pain that you are enduring? How does it compare with the troubles that have plagued your spirit since Knox came?”

    Her answer was immediate and striking. “A thousand years of this torment, and ten times more joined to it, is nothing compared to the 15 minutes that I suffered in my spirit. I thank my God, through Jesus Christ, that he has delivered me from that most fearful pain. I welcome this, as long as it pleases God’s majesty.”

    It is a remarkable statement, and a deeply revealing one. For Elisabeth, the anguish of spiritual conviction, of seeing her sin clearly and fearing God’s judgment, had been a more acute suffering than anything her body was now enduring. The physical pain was real, but it was, in her accounting, almost trivial by comparison with what had preceded her peace with God.

    As her condition worsened and it became clear that she was approaching death, Elisabeth made one final request. She asked her sisters and those gathered around her to sing. And the psalm she chose was no arbitrary selection. It was Psalm 103, the very psalm through which, under Knox’s ministry, her troubled soul had first tasted the mercy of God. We are unsure of the particular verses that were important to her, but surely the following were particularly influential:

    8. The Lord is kind and merciful,
    when sinners do him grieve:
    The slowest to conceive a wrath,
    and readiest to forgive.

    9. He chideth not us continually,
    though we be full of strife:
    Nor keepeth our faults in memory,
    for all our sinful life.

    10. Nor yet according to our sins
    the Lord doth us regard:
    Nor after our iniquities
    he doth not us reward.

    11. But as the space is wondrous great,
    'twixt earth and heaven above:
    So is his goodness much more large
    to them that do him love.

    -1564 Forme of Prayers
    view the full verse

    When the singing was done, Elisabeth spoke once more: “At the teaching of this psalm, my troubled soul first began to taste of my God’s mercy, which now is more sweet and precious than if I ruled over the whole earth for a millenium.”

    Shortly after, she “slept in the Lord Jesus, to no small comfort of those that saw her blessed departing.”

    Narrative from John Knox, The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing (Vol. 1, Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1848), pp. 246-47. Knox’s account has been enlarged here and the quotations have been modernised.

  • Digital Splitleaf: What is it about?

    Digital Splitleaf: What is it about?

    Can you read the music in the example below from The Psalmes of David in Prose and Meeter (1635)? This was the edition produced by Edward Millar in an effort to consolidate psalm-singing practice in churches across Scotland. While some of the symbols may be similar to what you might find in music books today, nearly 400 years of music history have changed our approach to notating music to the extent that one would struggle to find four singers who could read and sing it without some professional training.

    Psalm 134 set in four parts in The Psalms of David (1635), also known as the Great Psalter
    “Psalm 134” in Church of Scotland. The Psalmes of David in Meeter. with Baptisme, the Lords Supper, and Marriage: And Certaine Psalmes and Prayers. 1635. https://www.proquest.com/books/psalmes-david-meeter-with-baptisme-lords-supper/docview/2240891070/se-2.

    This example highlights an issue facing metrical psalmody as it is practiced across Scotland (and around the world): What if someone stumbled across a copy of your church’s psalter in the year 2426? Would that person know how to use your book (particularly if it is a text-only or split-leaf format)? If it does not include any melodies, would the reader even know that your book was used for singing? Would they know what tunes were used to sing those texts? If it does include printed melodies, would the reader know how to read the notation in that book? Would they be able to tell that tune selections used in your congregation may differ from those used by others across your denomination? Will the reader know whether your congregation sang in 4 parts or only the melody? Or, perhaps your church preferred to sing the melody only for the first stanza before breaking into parts for the rest of the psalm.

    A Biblical mandate

    Throughout the Bible, God repeatedly calls his people to remember his works and to pass them on with care. This responsibility is not optional. It is a vital part of the life of faith. Before Israel had even left Egypt, God instructed parents to explain the meaning of the Passover to their children. When future generations asked about the ceremony, the parents were to tell how the Lord delivered His people from slavery (Exodus 12:26-27). The celebration itself was therefore more than a ritual. It was a living act of teaching, and this pattern continues in Jewish Passover observances to this very day.

    The Lord reinforced this pattern through many other signs and commands. His people were to speak about His mighty deeds during ordinary daily activities, so that remembrance would become part of the fabric of life (for example, in Exodus 13:8-14 and Deuteronomy 11:19). When Joshua set up memorial stones in the Jordan, he did so to ensure that when children asked about their meaning, their parents would tell them how God stopped the river for His people (Joshua 4:6-7). These instructions reveal a consistent truth. God provides His people with remembrances that both look back to His works and look forward to the faith of generations yet to come. Even the four Gospel accounts reflect this same concern. They preserve the life and ministry of Christ in a form that can be shared, read, and remembered by the entire Church.

    Scripture also teaches that preservation is not limited to historical events. It includes the worship of God itself. The Psalms frequently call God’s people to teach future generations how to praise Him. Psalm 145:4 tells us that one generation will praise the works of the Lord to another. Psalm 78:4 tells God’s people not to hide His works from their children, but to make His praise known to those who come after them. Psalm 22:30 extends this vision even further. It speaks of a seed that will serve the Lord and of a people yet unborn who will hear of His righteousness. Psalm 102:18-20 again takes up this theme, directing future generations to continue praising God. Worship is therefore one way in which the memory of God’s actions is kept firmly in our consciousness.

    The Christian Church has carried out its responsibilities of both preservation and teaching in many ways. For instance, churches have long kept records of the goings-on. The earliest existing parish records date from 1303 in Givry, France. Lutheran churches built upon this foundation by establishing Kirchenbücher in 1518, which tracked births, marriages, deaths, and even financial resources for each church. In England, Cromwell ordered parishes to begin maintaining similar documentation starting in 1538. These practices eventually spread throughout the United Kingdom, leaving a documentary trail that serves not only as an administrative record but also as a witness to the spiritual life of local congregations across centuries.

    Entry in the church register of the Lutheran parish of Menzerath about the marriage on November 8, 1753. Wikimedia Commons. Photo by JPBentzin.

    The Church’s approach to remembrance has also shaped psalm-singing. During the Reformation, John Calvin placed great importance on teaching the psalms to the young. The children of his church were taught to sing psalms first, and adults joined only once they had learned them from their children. In post-Reformation Scotland, instruction in worship was also  taken very seriously. People were expected to know the catechism and to memorize psalms before they were admitted to the Lord’s Supper. Teaching, learning, and singing were woven tightly together so that faith might be formed through disciplined worship.

    Psalmody’s fragile state

    Psalmody today is in a genuinely precarious state unless we act now to preserve and promote it. History shows how easily a singing tradition can fade when it is not tended with care. For example, the melodies of ancient Israel are entirely lost because they were never written down or intentionally safeguarded. We know the words they sang, but the music that once carried those words has vanished. A similar pattern appears in more recent history. Before the first edition of the 1650 Scottish Metrical Psalter, Scottish congregations used a collection of more than one hundred and fifty tunes for their psalm singing. Very soon afterwards, during the period that Millar Patrick calls the Great Eclipse, that number collapsed to only twelve. These twelve tunes dominated Scottish worship for nearly a century, to the extent that many beautiful and apt tunes have vanished from singing practice. This raises an important question for our own time. What is the experience of psalm singers today? How many new or previously unfamiliar psalm tunes has the average worshiper learned in the past ten years? Is it truly possible to maintain a living singing tradition without actively expanding it? How can we be certain that some tunes are not already slipping away as they are sung less and less? These questions remind us that psalmody survives only when God’s people make a deliberate effort to sustain and enrich it.

    Photo by Timothy Duguid, 2026. CC BY-SA

    The pressures on metrical psalmody are not only internal but also external. Even when congregations desire to preserve their musical practices, they often depend on others for the tools that make this possible. In 2004 the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland learned that its publisher had decided to sell the equipment required to print split-leaf psalters, a format that had served generations of psalm singers across multiple denominations. A resource that once seemed secure had suddenly become difficult to obtain. This is a clear reminder that the physical supports for psalm singing cannot be taken for granted. The same is true of technological supports. Over the past several decades, many digital resources have emerged to preserve and promote the musical practices of the Christian Church, including apps and websites that provide access to individual metrical psalters. For example, the 1650 Psalter app, the Psalms for Singing app, and the Sing Psalms app each allow worshipers to view and sing from a single psalter on a mobile device. These are helpful tools, and many people have come to rely on them for personal devotion and congregational worship.

    However, none of these digital resources addresses the deeper preservation concerns raised at the beginning of this article. They present the psalms as they exist today, but they do not protect the wider musical tradition or ensure that it will be carried forward. Even more concerning is the fragile nature of digital media itself. Software developers face constant challenges from operating system changes, device updates, and shifting platform requirements. What happens to the data, recordings, or tune collections stored in an app once the developer can no longer update it, or when a major platform revision renders the app unusable? The history of digital technology gives many cautionary examples. Entire programs that were once dominant have disappeared. WordPerfect ruled the world of word processing in the 1980s and early 1990s, yet it was overtaken by Microsoft Word within a few short years. In a more dramatic case, Adobe’s Flash Player, once used across the internet, became effectively unusable after Apple’s CEO publicly announced that he would not support Flash on Apple devices. These examples reveal how quickly digital tools can vanish, even when they seem deeply embedded in daily life.

    Adobe Flash Logo
    Adobe Flash Logo. Wikimedia Commons.
    WordPerfect Corporation Logo
    WordPerfect Corporation Logo. Wikimedia Commons.

    In light of these pressures, both physical and technological, it is clear that the future of metrical psalmody cannot rest on habit or convenience. It requires deliberate planning, careful stewardship, and cooperation across the wider Church. If we hope to preserve a living tradition of psalm singing, then we must guard the resources that support it and invest in the work that will carry it forward for generations yet to come.

    A digital answer?

    Over the past several years, new digital tools have appeared that offer hopeful ways to support and preserve psalm singing. Yet these tools also highlight how vulnerable our traditions can be if we do not act intentionally to safeguard them. The Digital Splitleaf (https://splitleaf.org) was created to address some of these concerns by applying digital preservation methods to the metrical psalms, both in their texts and in their tunes.

    The idea began in 2018, when I began to explore whether it might be possible to create an online version of a split-leaf psalter that would be easier to read than a printed one. The basic technologies already existed. It was, in theory, possible to combine text and music on the screen in the same way a hymnal places the words beneath the score. As I explored the psalm‑singing apps then available, I realised that none could place the text under the music, and none structured their musical and textual data in ways that met established preservation standards. These tools were helpful for personal use, but they did not protect the psalm‑singing tradition for the long term.

    In December 2019 I began building what would eventually become the Digital Splitleaf. I started with the psalm settings from the 1564 Scottish Psalter, because I had already created modern performing editions of them while working as a research assistant on two Arts and Humanities Research Council projects.[1] When the COVID lockdowns began in 2020, I used that time to expand the system by adding the text of the 1650 Scottish Metrical Psalter, as well as many public-domain tunes. The earliest version of the Splitleaf was simple. It could match texts with tunes, but not much else. Even so, it proved that such a system could function.

    The Wode Partbooks, courtesy of "The World of Reformation Britain as Seen and Heard in the Wode Psalters."
    The Wode Partbooks, courtesy of “The World of Reformation Britain as Seen and Heard in the Wode Psalters.” https://www.wode.div.ed.ac.uk/index.html.

    Six years later, the platform has grown significantly. Users can still pair any text with any tune of a matching metre, but the system now offers many other features. It can play a recording of the tune, and it allows users to isolate a single voice part for practice. Users can also adjust the playback speed, zoom in or out on the score, and even raise or lower the pitch so that families or congregations can find a comfortable range. The Splitleaf can also print psalm settings or allow users to share them with others on social media. These improvements make the system easier to use, but more important than any feature is the data underlying it. Without accurate data, nothing can be preserved.

    Basic functions of the Digital Splitleaf interface.

    For this reason, the current phase of development, funded by the University of Glasgow, is focused on community involvement. The goal is to empower psalm singers across Scotland to help preserve the texts and tunes that are used today. This work is essential because once these materials are gathered in a stable format, attention can turn to expanding tools for display and analysis.

    Digital publication also brings opportunities that printed media cannot easily offer. Churches in regions without ready access to published psalters could receive editions far more quickly and at a fraction of the cost. For congregations on the mission field, digital editions avoid the risks and logistical challenges of carrying printed religious materials. Composers, too, can share new psalm tunes with the wider Church without waiting for the next printed psalter to be produced. A digital platform can bring together psalm singers from around the world, allowing them to share their musical traditions and learn from one another.

    These possibilities point toward a hopeful future. If we take the next steps together, we can build tools that not only preserve what we have received but also enable future generations to add to it, enrich it, and delight in it. This is the moment to act. Strengthening our psalm singing today will ensure that the praises of the Lord continue to sound clearly in generations yet to come.

    Digital Splitleaf workshops and events

    You are warmly invited to join us at any of our upcoming workshops and gatherings. These events are designed to help singers, precentors, ministers, and anyone interested in psalmody learn how to use the Digital Splitleaf and strengthen their own psalm‑singing practice. For an up-to-date list, click ‘Events’ on this page.

    By Timothy Duguid

    [1] “Singing the Reformation: The World of Reformation Britain as seen and heard in the Wode Psalter,” Project website (2011): https://www.wode.div.ed.ac.uk/ and “Sing the Renaissance & Reformation: Performing Editions,” The Church Service Society Website (2012), https://www.churchservicesociety.org/wode.