A bit of background first. Our pastor Rev. H.D. den Hollander enjoys singing and recognizes the important role it plays in the worship service. He noticed that if the first Psalter of the service had a lot of high notes, voices would be strained, and the quality of the singing suffered for the other selections as well. So he would try to pick an opening Psalter with lower notes. Of course, the words are more important than the notes, so if the first selection had high notes, he instructed the organists to use the electronic transposer. That worked fine until we built a new sanctuary and installed a pipe organ. Pipe organs generally do not have transposers. What to do?
A small group of volunteers was set up to make transposed versions of the Psalters. One person volunteered to scan the music into music notation software and fix up the main errors. Another person volunteered to proofread the notes, and someone else checked the words. Another task was setting up a file system and eventually programming this website. Together, this group of volunteers completed the process in about a year. We thought that other organists could benefit from these efforts, so we are making them available for free on this website.
This is a collection of the Psalters in digital form with multiple transpositions for each. The file names indicate how they are transposed. For example, file 2-1.pdf is Psalter 2, transposed down one semitone. Most of the Psalters are transposed down a number of semi-tones, but there are a few transposed up as well. Using all of these in combination can foster a better understanding of the words. For example, Psalter 353 can be done as written for the first stanza, then transposed down to D-Major for stanza 2 (which is more subdued) and then up to G-Major for the third, more joyful stanza.
If you want a PDF of the entire Psalter book, you can download it here: The Psalter.pdf
If you want a .zip file containing all the psalters below, you can dowload that here: All Files.zip
Please enjoy this resource! If you notice any errors in the scores or have other suggestions, please email organist@nrcfortmacleod.ca.
Filter by Psalter number: