One of the voices from the past which I have come to appreciate is Andrew Blackwood (1882-1966), pastor and professor for many years at Princeton. He wrote much on pastoral ministry which remains quite helpful today. Because he wrote in a different day some of his points are dated, but also he often exposes blind spots of today.

In his helpful book, The Fine Art of Public Worship (Abingdon Press, 1939), he wrote this about the place of the singing the Psalms:

Many of our noblest hymns are from the Book of Psalms.  “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” is a modern version of the seventy-second psalm, and “our God, our help in ages past” is a paraphrase of the ninetieth.  In the United Presbyterian book of praise are a hundred and fifty selections from the Psalms, with an equal number of classic hymns.  Perhaps our other denominations would have greater love for the Bible if we sang from the Psalms as often as our fathers did after the Reformation.  Many of those songs came out of the fiery furnace, and so they brought our fathers a mighty sense of God’s holiness, as well as a keen awareness of his laws. (110)