This eclipse of psalmody in the late nineteenth century is quite unprecedented. The Psalms, as we have seen, had been the dominant form of church song beginning with the church fathers, all through the Middle Ages, during the Reformation and Post-Reformation eras, and into the modern era. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the church had lost the voice through which it had expressed its sung praise for more than eighteen hundred years.

Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, Loc. 1219.