This spring, I joined my friend André Knevel in Ontario for organ concerts at a Free Reformed Church and a Canadian Reformed Church. Both programs included congregational psalm-singing, yet the differences in singing style were notable, requiring us to adjust our playing accordingly. André, who grew up in the Netherlands, noted how the rhythms of the Genevan Psalter used in Europe were altered in the Psalter used in several Reformed denominations in North America.
That experience in Ontario nudged me to recall an anecdote from Dutch history. You might admit that disagreements over worship music can be contentious, but all contention pales in comparison to the “psalm uproar” in the Dutch city of Maassluis in the 1770s. It was a scene so vivid that it became famous in a historical novel by Maarten ‘t Hart, Het psalmenoproer.1 I think it’s a scene that still yields lessons today.
Before the Uproar
For context, the Dutch Reformed churches had sung from the Book of Psalms in a musical/metrical version known as the Genevan Psalter, commissioned by John Calvin in the 1500s.2 Petrus Datheen (1531–1588) produced a Dutch translation of the Psalms that aligned with the Genevan melodies. At the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618–1619, Datheen’s version was confirmed as the official psalm book of the Dutch Reformed Church. Jaco van der Knijff, lecturer in practical theology at the Theological University of Apeldoorn, lays out the history of all this in the Reformatorisch Dagblad.3
Datheen’s version became the de facto psalter, but it was not without critique. Many noted deficiencies in his translations. For instance, at one point, Datheen’s versification of Psalm 78 compares God to a drunken man; at many other points, the poetry is wooden and stilted. Alternative translations appeared, but none of them could become official since the government called no national synod for the church. Occasionally disgruntled churchgoers would mumble the words of a different translation during the singing.
In 1762, the States General (national government) finally acceded to the requests of the Reformed churches to appoint a commission to create a new rhyming of the Psalms. The committee worked until 1773 (not bad, considering that the creators of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal labored for 20 years). The texts were compiled and edited from three existing versifications by Johannus Eusebius Voet, Hendrik Ghysen, and the society “Laus Deo, Salus Populo.”
In considering this songbook, which today is practically synonymous with Dutch Reformed piety, two historical quirks stand out. First, the somewhat mysterious society just mentioned, “Laus Deo, Salus Populo,” turned out to be the followers of a Remonstrant (Arminian or anti-Calvinist) poet and playwright named Lucretia van Merken (1721–1789). The texts the society had authored included the beloved Psalm 42 and several dozen others. Calvinists were less than pleased to discover that the new psalter contained poems by Arminians, and Van Merken in turn called the psalter creators “psalm-ravagers” and “trash poets” for their edits to her work. Nevertheless, the project moved forward.
The second quirk is that the finished psalter contained 151 psalms. The extra text was “The Very Words of David” or het Eigen Geschrift van David, an apocryphal psalm that was not included in the Hebrew Book of Psalms but was apparently a Greek combination of two other non-canonical Hebrew texts.4 I am not aware of any twentieth- or twenty-first-century songbook that included this entry. In addition, the psalter included a limited number of sung prayers, creeds, and liturgical hymns, which I have written about previously.5
Despite these quirks, the completed psalter gained the approval of the States General, which declared that the book contained nothing contrary to the Scriptures or the Three Forms of Unity. Still no uproar . . . yet.
Why the Uproar?
Discontent over the 1773 rhyming of the psalter came from surprisingly unrelated places. For one thing, the national government’s promulgation of a church songbook struck many as a misuse of power (a sentiment that would fester even more after the government’s imposition of hymn-singing on the churches in 1806). From a different angle, some pastors were concerned that their older members and the poor could not easily procure a new psalter, and some preachers permitted individual congregants to continue to sing the old words in church, as long as they did it softly.
But what sparked the riot in Maassluis was neither of these sentiments. Rather, it was the tempo of the singing. Van der Knijff explains that the new psalter came with a new “short singing style” in which “the notes are no longer sung in equal length (isometric), but in each line the beginning and the end notes are long, while the notes in between sound shorter.” This new style was dictated not by the organist or the song leader, but by the magistrate. And that went too far.
In the fishing town of Maassluis in South Holland, the fishermen would go out to sea for weeks at a time, holding Sunday services on one of their ships. When they landed in June 1775 and walked into churches, they were confronted with the singing of different words in a different tempo by official order. The results were spectacular. The website Canon van Nederland describes it this way:
The opponents of the fast singing sabotaged a service in the Groote Kerk. During the singing they began bleating like sheep at the top of their lungs in protest. At the end of the service, during the benediction, a spectacle erupted: a gang of fishermen, women, and other rioters ran screaming through the church. The organist tried his best to drown out the noise, but that did not work. After the service they continued their noisy protest on the street.6
This was no isolated incident. That year, churches throughout the city became centers of contention, with “slow” and “fast” singers trying to drown one another out at the top of their lungs. Ministers were threatened. A precentor and a blind organist were abused. A mob broke into the mayor’s house with a wheelbarrow. Rioters caught and beat a poet who had advocated the new singing style; later, they sat next to him in church to make sure he sang in the old tempo. By the beginning of 1776, the situation had become so violent that the chief bailiff in Delft had to impose order. It took several years for peace to settle upon Maassluis once again as the new singing style gained acceptance. History moved on. The 1773 rhyming of the psalter became the norm. Van der Knijff estimates that more than 500,000 people still sing from it in churches today.
Lessons from the Uproar
Some might look back on the events in Maassluis and see only a bunch of stubborn fishermen who would rather die than change (the title of the article I quoted mentions “hot heads and cold hearts”). Others might look at the riots and point out genuine theological concerns in some of the new songs, not to mention the fact of a government dictating the form of Christian worship. Both reactions point to real trends we continue to see at work in churches and the world today.
But perhaps there is also a simpler lesson we can learn from the psalm uproar of 1775: that the activity of congregational singing cuts so close to our piety, our spirituality, and our very sense of self that we can’t help but react strongly when those norms are challenged. Singing the same texts and tunes week after week, year after year, builds patterns, habits, and beliefs that become central to our identity as believers. That is what singing is supposed to do. That is why Calvin promoted the idea of the Genevan Psalter in the first place—and why he specified that the tunes should first be taught to children.
Perhaps that also helps to commend an attitude toward worship and music that combines total devotion to the Scriptures, respectful deference to tradition, and a willingness to allow our norms to shift and develop organically over time. Needless to say, that trifold vision is not easy to keep in focus.
For our family listening, I have compiled a Spotify playlist that includes over 13 hours of music based on the Psalms. The spectrum is incredible, from Dutch chorales on organ to Latin polyphony, Renaissance-style psalms in Polish, Anglican chant, a cappella Scottish metrical singing, and the work of a Nashville-based Messianic Jew—and I am sure I have barely scratched the surface. Each one of these traditions, to one extent or another, seeks to fulfill God’s command for His people to sing psalms of praise. May He continue to give each of us wisdom amidst our various contexts, conflicts, and convictions to do just that.
Dr. Michael R. Kearney is a board member of Reformed Fellowship.
1. Maarten ‘t Hart, Het Psalmenoproer (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 2006). The English word “uproar” has nothing to do with roaring but is instead directly derived from the Dutch oproer; see https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-history-of-uproar.
2. See David Koyzis’s article on the Genevan Psalter in The Outlook 72, no. 1 (January/February 2022).
3. Jaco van der Knijff, “Hoe het psalmboek van 1773 er kwam,” Reformatorisch Dagblad, March 20, 2023, https://www.rd.nl/artikel/1013433-hoe-het-psalmboek-van-1773-er-kwam. The material that follows is summarized from Van der Knijff’s article.
4. The Dutch text of this poem can be found at https://psalmboek.nl/psalmen.php?psalm=160#psvs.
5. Michael R. Kearney, “The Eenige Gezangen and the History of Dutch Hymnody,” The Outlook 72, no. 1 (January/February 2022).
6 .“Psalmenoproer: Over hete hoofden en koude harten,” Canon van Nederland, https://www.canonvannederland.nl/nl/page/32565/psalmenoproer (translation mine).