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Sacred Harp singing is an tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.
The name of the tradition comes from the title of the shape note book from which the music is sung, The Sacred Harp. This book exists today in various editions, discussed below.
"Shape note" music means that the notes are printed in special shapes that help the reader fluently identify them on the musical scale. Each of the four shapes is connected to a particular syllable: fa, sol, la, and mi; and these syllables are employed in singing the notes, just as in the more familiar system that uses do, re, mi, etc. (see solfege). The system used in the Sacred Harp is able to cover the full musical scale because each syllable-shape combination other than mi is assigned to two distinct notes of the scale. For example, the C major scale would be notated and sung as follows:
As can be seen, the shape for fa is a triangle, sol an oval, la a rectangle, and mi a diamond.
The shapes and notes designate degrees of the scale, not particular pitches. Thus for a song in the key of C, fa designates C and F; for a song in G, fa designates G and C, and so on; hence it is called a moveable "do" system.
When Sacred Harp singers begin a song, they normally start by singing it with the appropriate syllable for each pitch, using the shapes to guide them. For those in the group not yet familiar with the song, the shapes help with the task of sight reading. The process of reading through the song with the shapes also helps fix the notes in memory. Once the shapes have been sung, the group then sings the verses of the song with their printed words.
Sacred Harp groups always sing a cappella, that is to say, without accompanying instruments. The singers arrange themselves in a square, with a row of chairs or pews on each side assigned to each of the four parts: treble, alto, tenor, and bass.
The treble and tenor sections are usually mixed, with men and women singing the notes an octave apart.
Typically, there is no single leader or conductor; rather, the participants take turns in leading. The leader for a particular round selects a song from the book, and "calls" it by its page number. Leading is done in an open-palm style, standing in the middle of the square facing the tenors.
The pitch at which the music is sung is relative; there is no instrument to give the singers a starting point. The leader, or else some particular singer assigned to the task, finds a good pitch with which to begin and intones it to the group (using the appropriate syllable). The singers reply with the opening notes of their own parts, and then the song begins immediately.
As the name implies, Sacred Harp music is sacred (Protestant Christian) music. Many of the songs in the book are hymns that use words, meters, and stanzaic forms familiar from elsewhere in Protestant hymnody. However, Sacred Harp songs are quite different from "mainstream" Protestant hymns in their musical style: in texture they are polyphonic, and for harmony they employ a stark and robust style which emphasizes open fifths.
Many Sacred Harp songs are fuguing tunes, which are not actually fugues but resemble them in having each voice enter in succession. There are also anthems, which are longer songs sung through just once, rather than in multiple verses.
Sacred Harp singing normally occurs not in church services, but in special gatherings or "singings" arranged for the purpose. Singings can be local, regional, statewide, or national. Small singings are often held in homes, with perhaps only a dozen singers. Large singings have been known to have more than a thousand participants. The more ambitious singings include an ample potluck dinner in the middle of the day, traditionally called "dinner on the grounds."
Some of the largest and oldest annual singings are called "conventions". The oldest Sacred Harp convention was the Southern Musical Convention, organized in Upson County, Georgia in 1845. The two oldest surviving Sacred Harp singing conventions are the Chattahoochee Musical Convention (organized in Coweta County, Georgia in 1852), and the East Texas Sacred Harp Convention (organized as the East Texas Musical Convention in 1855).
Sacred Harp singers view their tradition as a participatory, not a passive one. Those who gather for a singing sing for themselves and for each other, and not for an audience. This can be seen in several aspects of the tradition.
First, the seating arrangement (four parts in a square, facing each other) is clearly intended for the singers, not for external listeners. Non-singers are always welcome to attend a singing, but typically they sit among the singers in the back rows of the tenor section, rather than in any particular designated audience location.
The leader, being equidistant from all sections, in principle hears the best sound. The often intense sonic experience of standing in the center of the square is considered one of the perquisites of leading, and sometimes a guest will be invited as a courtesy to stand next to the leader during a song.
The music itself is also meant to be participatory. Most forms of choral composition place the melody on the top (treble) line, where it can be best heard by an audience, with the other parts written so as not to obscure the melody. In contrast, Sacred Harp composers have aimed to make each musical part singable and interesting in its own right, thus giving every singer in the group an absorbing task. For this reason, "bringing out the melody" is not a high priority in Sacred Harp composition, and indeed it is customary to assign the melody not to the trebles but to the tenors. Fuging tunes, in which each section gets its moment to shine, also illustrate the importance in Sacred Harp of maintaining the independence of each vocal part.
The earliest roots of Sacred Harp singing are found in the American colonial era. At that time, singing schools were created to provide instruction in choral singing, especially for the use of churches. In 1801, a book called The Easy Instructor¹ by William Smith and William Little was published for the use of this movement; it was the first book printed in shape notes. There was, however a rival shape system: Andrew Law (1749-1821) introduced a shape note system in his The Musical Primer of 1803. Although this book came out two years later than Smith and Little's book, Law claimed earlier invention of shape notes. In his system, a square indicated fa, a circle sol, a triangle la and a diamond, mi. Law used the shaped notes without a musical staff. It was the Smith and Little shapes that ultimately prevailed.
Shape notes were abandoned in most of the U.S. only shortly after their invention, as the result of a so-called "better music" movement spearheaded by Lowell Mason. But the shapes became popular in the South, where they were specifically adapted for the dissemination of sacred music. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, a whole series of shape note hymnbooks appeared, many of which were successful and were widely distributed. Probably the most successful shape note book prior to The Sacred Harp was William Walker's Southern Harmony, published in 1835 and still in use today. Even after the appearance of The Sacred Harp (next section), shape note systems continued to evolve; for a more complete history, see shape note.
Sacred Harp singing as such came into being following the publication of Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King's The Sacred Harp in 1844. It was this book, now distributed in several different versions, that came to be the shapenote tradition with the largest number of participants.
B. F. White (1800-1879) was from Harris County, Georgia. He prepared The Sacred Harp in colloboration with a younger man, E. J. King, (ca. 1821-1844), from Talbot County, Georgia. Together they compiled, transcribed, and composed tunes, and published a book of over 250 songs.
King died soon after the book was published, and White was left to guide its growth. He was responsible for organizing singing schools and conventions at which The Sacred Harp was used as the songbook. During his lifetime, the book would go through three revisions - 1850, 1859, and 1869. The first two new editions simply added appendices of new songs to the back of the book. The 1869 revision was more extensive, removing some of the less popular songs and adding new ones in their places. From the original 262 pages, the book was expanded by 1869 to 477. This edition continued in use for several decades.
The turn of the twentieth century saw something of a crisis in Sacred Harp singing, documented by the Sacred Harp historian Buell E. Cobb (see reference below). B. F. White had died in 1879 before completing a fourth revision, and copies of his book gradually became hard to obtain. Without a book to sing from, the Sacred Harp tradition clearly would have died out. Moreover, the last years of the 19th century had seen changes in the public's musical tastes. Notably, gospel music - syncopated and chromatic, often with piano accompaniment - had become popular, along with a number of church hymns of the "mainstream" variety, such as "Rock of Ages." It was an important and open question how far any new Sacred Harp edition should go in responding to these changes.
The first new Sacred Harp to appear at this time was the work of W. M. Cooper, of Dothan, Alabama, who in 1902 prepared a revision that, while retaining most of the old songs, also went some way towards incorporating contemporary music styles into the Sacred Harp. Cooper made some other changes as well, retitling many songs, transposing some into new keys, and writing new alto parts for songs that originally just had three vocal lines. The Cooper revision was widely adopted in many areas of the South, such as Florida, southern Alabama, and Texas, where it has continued as the predominant Sacred Harp book to this day. The "Cooper book," as it is often called, was revised by Cooper himself in 1907 and 1909; and since then has been supervised by an editorial committee which produced new editions in 1927, 1950, 1960, 1992, and 2000.
In the original core geographic area of Sacred Harp singing, northern Alabama and Georgia, the singers did not in general take to the Cooper book, as they felt it deviated too far from the original tradition. Obtaining a new book for these singers was made more difficult by the fact that B. F. White's son James L. White, who would have been the natural choice to prepare a new edition, was a non-traditionalist. Ultimately, a committee headed by Joe S. James produced a new edition (1911) that largely satisfied the wishes of this community of singers. Later revisions of this edition went further in the direction of traditionalism; these were carried out in 1936 by a committee under the leadership of the brothers Seaborn and Thomas Denson, both influential singing school teachers. Later editorial committees produced further revisions of their work (still often called the "Denson book") in 1960, 1967, 1971, and 1991.
Even the traditionalist James and Denson books followed Cooper in one important respect: virtually every song that had originally been written in three parts was given a newly composed fourth part for the alto singers. Some people believe that the new alto parts imposed an esthetic cost by filling in the former stark open harmonies of the three-part songs; for this view, see the reference by Cobb listed below, and for an opposing opinion the article by McKenzie. McKenzie judges that the Cooper revision was rather more successful in retaining the original harmonic style. In any event, there is little support today for abandoning the added alto parts, since most singers give a high priority to letting every side of the square have its own part to sing.
Both of the primary Sacred Harp books, Cooper and Denson, have incorporated new songs in their various 20th-century editions. Such songs are written so as to preserve the general style of the tradition.
Two other books are currently used by Sacred Harp singers. A few singers in north Georgia employ the "White book," an expanded version of the 1869 B. F. White edition edited by J. L. White. African-American Sacred Harp singers, although primarily users of the Cooper book, also make use of a supplementary volume, The Colored Sacred Harp, produced by Judge Jackson (1883-1958) in 1934 and later revised in two subsequent editions. In his book, Judge Jackson and The Colored Sacred Harp, Joe Dan Boyd has identified four regions of Sacred Harp singing among African-Americans - eastern Texas (Cooper book), northern Mississippi (Denson book), south Alabama and Florida (Cooper book), and New Jersey (Cooper book). The Colored Sacred Harp is limited to the New Jersey and south Alabama-Florida groups. Sacred Harp was "exported" from south Alabama to New Jersey. It appears to have died out among the African-Americans in eastern Texas.
In summary, three revisions of and one companion book to The Sacred Harp are currently in use in Sacred Harp singing:
Sacred Harp books generally contain a section of Rudiments, describing the basics of music and Sacred Harp singing.
In recent years, Sacred Harp singing has experienced a resurgence in popularity, as it is discovered by new participants who did not grow up in the tradition. As such, it is now a national phenomenon, and is strongly represented in locations such as Chicago, Minneapolis, and Boston, as well as in its original southern territory. There are also a few Sacred Harp groups in other countries.
The new singers typically strive to follow the original southern customs at their singings. Traditional singers have responded to this need by providing help in orienting the newcomers. For instance, the Rudiments section of the 1991 Denson edition includes information on how to hold a singing; this information would be superfluous in a traditional context, but is important for a group starting up on its own. The tradition of the singing master is still carried on today, and singing masters from traditional Sacred Harp regions often travel outside the South to teach. In recent years an annual has been established, at which newcomers can learn to sing Sacred Harp.
The music used in Sacred Harp singing is eclectic. Most of the songs can be assigned to one of four historical layers.
There are a few additional songs in The Sacred Harp, 1991 edition that cannot be assigned to any of these four layers: some very old songs of European origin, two songs by the little-known classical composer Ignaz Pleyel. The book even includes a couple of hymns by Lowell Mason, long ago the implacable enemy of the tradition that The Sacred Harp has preserved to this day.
The Sacred Harp was a popular name for 19th century hymn and tune books, with no less than four bearing the title. The first of these was compiled by John Hoyt Hickok and printed in Lewiston, Pennsylvania in 1832. The second was compiled by Lowell and Timothy Mason and printed in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1834, as part of the "better music" movement mentioned above. Amusingly, the Mason brothers' publisher brought this book out in a shape note edition, much against their wishes.
The third Sacred Harp was the one by B. F. White and E. J. King (1844), the origin of today's Sacred Harp singing tradition.
Lastly, according to W. J. Reynolds, writing in Hymns of Our Faith, there was yet a fourth Sacred Harp - The Sacred Harp published by J. M. D. Cates in Nashville, Tennessee in 1867.
See also the bibliographic entries under Shape note.
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