All People That On Earth Do Dwell: A Song History
The words are William Kethe's rhymed paraphrase of Psalm 100, one of the metrical psalms produced by British Protestants who took refuge in Geneva during the reign of Mary I.[1] Little is known of Kethe himself; he is thought to have been a Scot, and neither his birth nor his death can be dated with any precision.[2] His psalm was first printed in 1560/61, in five stanzas, in the psalter of the English congregation at Geneva and in a London edition, though sources differ on which of these printings came first.[1][2] Its path into the standard English psalter was uneven: John Day's complete psalter of 1562 used a different version of Psalm 100 by John Hopkins, and Kethe's text came back in later editions.[1] Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, as quoted by Hymnary.org, places that return in an appendix of 1564 and in the main body of the book in 1565.[2]
The Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, The Book of Psalms with Royal Stuart arms, book cover, satin worked with silk and metal thread, ca. 1624. An embroidered binding for a volume that includes the Psalms, shown for its subject; it has no connection to Kethe's text.
The melody came from the French psalter of Geneva, where it was printed in 1551 for Théodore de Bèze's version of Psalm 134.[1] Kethe tailored each of his psalm versions to a French melody, and his Psalm 100 was built around this one.[3] Hymnals usually credit the tune to Louis Bourgeois, a musician who led congregational psalm singing in Geneva, but the authorship is uncertain.[4] Sources differ on how much of it is his: the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology finds no evidence that Bourgeois composed it, while a Baptist hymnal handbook quoted by Hymnary.org traces only its opening phrases to older plainsong and folk melody and credits the rest to him.[3][4] English books at first called it simply PSALM 100; the word "Old" was added after Tate and Brady's New Version of the psalms (1696) and after composers began writing new tunes for that psalm, with the earliest known use of the "Old" name in a Dublin collection of 1701.[1]
The Canterbury Dictionary calls it "the most durable of all hymn tunes in the English-language repertory."[3] Hymnary.org counts Kethe's text in about 800 hymnals and the tune in more than 2,400.[2][4] The same melody carries Thomas Ken's doxology, which is why the tune is sometimes called simply "the Doxology."[1] Lorinda Jones includes it in her Sacred Music Collection, 31 hymns, spirituals and gospel songs arranged for mountain dulcimer with lyrics, chords and tablature in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[5]
Sources
- Hymnology Archive: "All people that on earth do dwell, with OLD 100TH (GENEVAN 134)".
- Hymnary.org: "All people that on earth do dwell".
- The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: "OLD HUNDREDTH".
- Hymnary.org: "OLD HUNDREDTH".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Lorinda Jones, Sacred Music Collection".
- Image: The Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, The Book of Psalms with Royal Stuart arms, book cover, satin worked with silk and metal thread, ca. 1624. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.