Make a Joyful Noise

Make a Joyful Noise (‘Know the Lord God’). Linnea Good* (1962– )  Linnea Good’s paraphrase of Psalm 100, written in 1991, appears in the psalter section of Voices United (VU, 1996). Her paraphrase retains the parallelisms emblematic of this Psalm, where each line repeats the previous idea but with variation and intensification of its meaning. These characteristic textual repetitions are well-matched by Good’s choice of the cyclic song form, with its melodic reiterations rather than the more linear logic of a classic hymn structure.  According to the language guidelines of the United Church hymnal committee, hymn texts were to avoid the use of the honorific ‘Lord’ and masculine pronouns for...