The Fisher Psalter is a welcome addition to the growing list of resources available for the new Lectionary psalms. It is named after Fisher House, the home of the Catholic Chaplaincy for Cambridge University where the editor, James Bibey, is organist and director of the Chapel Choir, and with which the other contributors have some association.
The Fisher Psalter is a comprehensive collection for Sundays, feasts and solemnities of predominantly chant settings. But, though mostly chant, they are not necessarily modal. There are several contributors and their different styles of composing does provide for some variety, which can help avoid a repetitive feel over a succession of Sundays. It also means that, sometimes, more than one setting is available to choose for any given Mass.
The vast majority of the settings provide four bars of music for each stanza of the psalm. In the case of stanzas with fewer than four lines, one or two bars are simply omitted. But for those that have five or six lines, two of these lines are joined leading to what can be a long reciting note and which will require some skill from the psalmist so that that line doesn’t feel flat.
The collection appears to have kept rigidly to the response texts as found in the Lectionary. For example, for the response after the third reading at the Easter Vigil, some other collections – including chant settings – have repeated “Glorious his triumph” once or even twice; not so with The Fisher Psalter.
My own experience suggests that one or two may be a little challenging for a cantor or congregation that isn’t particularly confident. However, the music in this psalter has generously been made available for no charge under a Creative Commons license, meaning that they may be shared and adapted so long as credit is given. Therefore, if you wish to simply the music for a response of verses, or add an extra “Glorious his triumph”, you may do so, with appropriate attribution.
As I scanned through and played some of the psalm settings, I was often struck by how well the keyboard/organ arrangements work.
There is a YouTube channel where can be found recordings of a few of the psalm settings; it would be a good thing if these were added, to which would assist those in the music ministry whose sight-reading skills aren’t particularly good.
The psalms are logically ordered according to Seasons and at the end of the PDF file, there is an alphabetical listing of psalm responses and a seasonal/chronological listing of the psalms.
At present, there are no plans for a guitar edition. I rather hope that this will be rectified in the not-to-distant future; chant settings can work very well with arpeggio strumming in the verses, and there are many music groups for this is their only option. It would be a shame to deny such ministries the chance of using this valuable resource.
The Fisher Psalter can be downloaded for free from Fisher House or CC Watershed websites.
See here for more information about the various psalm settings published for the new Lectionary