The Plough Music Series is a regular selection of music intended to lift the heart to God. It is not a playlist of background music: each installment focuses on a single piece worth pausing to enjoy.

The first book of Samuel tells how Saul – having disobeyed God – was tormented by an evil spirit, and sent for David, who was known as a skilled musician. “Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.” (1 Samuel 16:23)

David as musician is very present in Leonard Bernstein’s setting of five psalms, which was commissioned in 1965 for an annual music festival held at Chichester Cathedral. In specific, David’s boyhood as a shepherd is recalled in the second movement: the composer insisted that the soloist who sings the Twenty-third Psalm be a boy, and the movement opens with a rising scale on the harp. (The harp is prominent throughout the piece, and Bernstein completed the harp parts before working on the music for the choir and orchestra.) The tranquil confidence of the solo “I fear no evil, for thou art with me” is interrupted by a dissonant setting for tenors and basses of Psalm 2: “Why do the nations rage?” which in turn is overpowered by a return to Psalm 23 sung by treble voices that are “blissfully unaware of threat,” as Bernstein directed in the score. “This will be our reply to violence,” he had written in 1963, “to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

The Chichester Psalms end with words from Psalms 131 and 133 – a prayer for Israel that can be prayed with special significance today.

Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and forever.

Behold how good, and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.

"David" and sopranos (Psalm 23)

Sopranos (Psalm 23)

Tenors and basses (Psalm 2:1-4)

Sopranos (Psalm 23)

"David" (Psalm 23)