Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
Louis Bourgeois
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Browse piano sheets by Louis Bourgeois on Zen Virtual Piano. In 1551 Loys Bourgeois spent a day in prison for altering the accepted Psalm tunes without authorization; Calvin secured his release, and Bourgeois’s changes were eventually approved. A day in prison for changing a melody suggests how seriously the tunes of the Psalter were guarded, and how closely an editor’s work could be watched. Britannica gives his birth as c. 1510 in Paris and calls him a Huguenot composer who wrote, compiled and edited many melodic settings of Psalms in the Genevan Psalter. He moved to Geneva in 1541 and lived there until 1557, when he returned to Paris. In 1547 the Council admitted him to the rights of citizenship without a fee, in consideration of his being a respectable man and willing to teach children. A composer admitted to citizenship for his willingness to teach children suggests that his standing in the city rested on teaching as well as on writing tunes. Bourgeois based his Psalm settings on French texts by the poet Clément Marot and the theologian Theodore Beza. His melodies drew on fragments of popular tunes and possibly of liturgical chant; the most familiar is Psalm 134, known as Old Hundredth. He was himself responsible for about 85 melodies in the Psalter, which was completed by his successors in 1562. Fragments of popular tunes set to Marot’s and Beza’s French can be read as melodies whose character was made familiar by popular sources and by French words together. Though his harmonizations were not widely popular, the melodies he created were used by many later composers. The United Methodist Hymnal pairs the text Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow with the hymn tune Old 100th, which is attributed to Louis Bourgeois. Bourgeois left Geneva in 1557, and the Hymnology Archive says he undoubtedly had no connection with the Genevan Psalter after that time. Tunes that outlasted both his harmonies and his time in Geneva hint that the melody, not the setting, carried his work forward.
Browse piano sheets by Louis Bourgeois on Zen Virtual Piano.
In 1551 Loys Bourgeois spent a day in prison for altering the accepted Psalm tunes without authorization; Calvin secured his release, and Bourgeois’s changes were eventually approved. A day in prison for changing a melody suggests how seriously the tunes of the Psalter were guarded, and how closely an editor’s work could be watched.
Britannica gives his birth as c. 1510 in Paris and calls him a Huguenot composer who wrote, compiled and edited many melodic settings of Psalms in the Genevan Psalter. He moved to Geneva in 1541 and lived there until 1557, when he returned to Paris. In 1547 the Council admitted him to the rights of citizenship without a fee, in consideration of his being a respectable man and willing to teach children. A composer admitted to citizenship for his willingness to teach children suggests that his standing in the city rested on teaching as well as on writing tunes.
Bourgeois based his Psalm settings on French texts by the poet Clément Marot and the theologian Theodore Beza. His melodies drew on fragments of popular tunes and possibly of liturgical chant; the most familiar is Psalm 134, known as Old Hundredth. He was himself responsible for about 85 melodies in the Psalter, which was completed by his successors in 1562. Fragments of popular tunes set to Marot’s and Beza’s French can be read as melodies whose character was made familiar by popular sources and by French words together.
Though his harmonizations were not widely popular, the melodies he created were used by many later composers. The United Methodist Hymnal pairs the text Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow with the hymn tune Old 100th, which is attributed to Louis Bourgeois. Bourgeois left Geneva in 1557, and the Hymnology Archive says he undoubtedly had no connection with the Genevan Psalter after that time. Tunes that outlasted both his harmonies and his time in Geneva hint that the melody, not the setting, carried his work forward.
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Loys (Louis) Bourgeois, born c. 1510 in Paris, was a Huguenot composer who wrote, compiled and edited many melodic settings of Psalms in the Genevan Psalter.
Psalm 134, known as Old Hundredth, is the most familiar of the melodies Bourgeois made for the Genevan Psalter, and the United Methodist Hymnal pairs Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow with the tune Old 100th.
In 1551 he was imprisoned for a day for tampering with the accepted Psalm tunes without authorization; Calvin secured his release and his alterations were eventually approved.
He was responsible for about 85 melodies in the Psalter, which was completed by his successors in 1562.