Southern Harmony Revisited— in the Pew and on the Organ Bench Charlie W
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Southern Harmony Revisited— in the pew and on the organ bench Charlie W. Steele signifi cant part of America’s musical A heritage originating in the nine- teenth century is the popular shape-note tunebooks that were an outgrowth of the “singing schools.” These collections, which, in their musical notation, used different shapes of note-heads for each syllable of a solfège system, are antholo- gies of the styles and genres of Ameri- can music of the time, both sacred and secular. Nineteenth-century American shape-note tunebooks serve as sources for an important body of music—shape- note hymn tunes—which has been, and continues to be, assimilated into the late twentieth-century editions of the hymnals of mainline Protestant denominations. The availability and popularity of the shape-note tunes in current hymnals has inspired organ composers to use them as cantus fi rmi for organ chorale pre- ludes and variation settings. As a result, a wealth of organ chorale settings using shape-note hymn melodies has been Figure 2. Shapes of Little and Small. published in the twenty-fi ve years span- Figure 1. Notation system of Tufts. John Tufts, An Introduction to the Singing of William Little and William Small, The ning 1980–2005. Many of these organ Psalm-Tunes, 1723 Easy Instructor, 9 works were composed for use as volun- taries in the worship services of the late lections using the new notation system. twentieth and early twenty-fi rst century During the fi rst half of the eighteenth Christian church; moreover, some of the century, numerous compilers published compositions are important contribu- editions of the shape-note tunebooks. tions to the organ concert literature. George Pullen Jackson, one of the twen- tieth-century pioneers in the research Origins of the shape-note tradition, lists thirty- The shape-note phenomenon traces eight collections published in the four- its origins to the psalm singing of New shape system between 1798 and 1855.4 England. Congregational singing in the Twenty-one of the books Jackson desig- churches of the early eighteenth century nated as works by compilers who lived had, in the opinion of the clergy and mu- in the South. Richard J. Stanislaw’s more sicians of the day, fallen into a deplorable recent research provides evidence of an state. One person, eloquently describ- even larger number of four-shape col- ing the state of congregational singing Figure 3. Four-shape major scale. George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals in the lections. Stanislaw lists some ninety-fi ve in 1724, said, “The Singing appears to Southern Uplands, 14 tunebooks published in the four-shape be rather a confused Noise, made up system in the United States between of Reading, Squeaking, and Grumbling, system of solfège (fa, sol, la, mi) that had note-head shape. The collection became 1798 and 1859.5 than a decent and orderly part of God’s been imported to America from Eng- so popular that, according to Marion A signifi cant contribution of the worship.”1 In order to improve the state land. Tufts used abbreviations of the Hatchett, thirty-four editions or printings shape-note collections was their function of congregational singing, a form of mu- syllables on the musical staff rather than of The Easy Instructor were published as a repository of American tunes from sical education, the “singing school,” traditional music notation. Tufts’s sys- between 1802 and 1832.3 The shapes, the oral tradition. Though these types of was developed. Its purpose was to teach tem, as it appeared in his book, is shown as developed and notated in Little and tunes had appeared in hymnals or col- congregations the elements of music so in Figure 1. Small’s collection, are shown in Figure lections, such as the United States Sa- the people could sing “by note, instead In 1801, William Little and William 2. Using these four shapes, a major scale cred Harmony (1799) and The Christian of rote.”2 Small compiled what is considered the notated in shape-notes consists of the se- Harmony (1805), the fi rst shape-note One of the earliest books developed fi rst shape-note collection, The Easy In- quence demonstrated in Figure 3. hymnal to incorporate a large number for use in singing schools was John structor. Rather than using conventional For the many Americans who had of oral tradition tunes was John Wyeth’s Tufts’s An Introduction to the Singing notation, the two men devised a system little or no formal musical background or Repository of Sacred Music: Part Second of Psalm Tunes, which appeared in the in which the four syllables—fa, sol, la, education, this new approach to notation (1813).6 Irving Lowens observes that 1720s. Tufts’s book utilized the four-note mi—were each notated with a different made music reading much simpler. The forty-four of the tunes in this collection singers needed to know only the shapes were “folk hymns.”7 The Repository of of the notes; they did not have to deal Sacred Music: Part Second played an with a music reading system in which lo- important role in the dissemination of cating the tonic note depended upon the these tunes. According to information ability to distinguish key signatures. The provided by Lowens, Ananias Davisson, shape-note system did have one major the compiler of the infl uential Kentucky disadvantage—no means was devised to Harmony and the Supplement to Ken- indicate accidentals by using shapes. As tucky Harmony, used fi fteen tunes from many of the tunes used in the collections Wyeth’s Part Second collection. William were diatonic in nature, this disadvan- Walker, in his Southern Harmony, “bor- tage evidently was not a major concern rowed” twenty of these tunes.8 to either the compilers or the singers. Walker’s Southern Harmony Collections A signifi cant source of the shape- The invention of the shape-notes led note tunes found in today’s hymnals to a proliferation of published music col- is Walker’s The Southern Harmony & 20 THE DIAPASON Jan 2011 pp. 20-23.indd 20 12/9/10 11:52:53 AM Musical Companion (hereafter referred its existence (even as recently as 1991), Table 1. Shape-note Tunes in Hymnals to as Southern Harmony). One of the Southern Harmony has had no additions most popular and successful of the nine- or corrections to its music since the fi - teenth-century shape-note tunebooks, nal version of 1854. As it stands, South- Southern Harmony stands as an impor- ern Harmony is a repository of musical tant “anthology” of the musical styles styles and tastes of nineteenth-century and genres of its day. As Harry Eskew America, particularly of southern and notes, it is probably the fi rst shape-note rural America. Eskew remarks that, “No collection to be compiled in the “Deep wonder Southern Harmony was so popu- South.”9 The legacy and tradition of this lar: the hymns . were united with tunes popular collection continues even today which had circulated among the people at the “Big Singing Day” held annually in for years in oral tradition, and they were Benton, Kentucky. furthermore printed in easy-to-read Walker was born on May 6, 1809, shape-notation!”24 in South Carolina, near a small village known as Cross Keys.10 Around the time New England “reforms” he was eighteen years of age, Walker’s As the shape-note tradition moved into family moved to a small community the southern and western states, a mid- called Cedar Springs, near Spartanburg, to-late nineteenth-century movement South Carolina.11 In 1835, Walker mar- emerged in New England to eliminate ried Amy S. Golighty, the sister of Thurza American tunes, as found in shape-note Golighty, the wife of Benjamin Franklin tunebooks, from church hymnals and White, who would become the compiler music collections. New England reform- of The Sacred Harp.12 Not only is 1835 ers, among whom were Lowell Mason the year Walker married Amy, it is the and Thomas Hastings, considered mu- same year he published his fi rst and most sic and hymns of European background popular shape-note collection, Southern and infl uence to be superior to America’s Harmony.13 In addition to Southern Har- “folk-style” music. Hymn tunes and mu- mony, Walker compiled three other col- sic composed in the European style were lections during his lifetime, including the “based on ‘scientifi c’ principles produc- Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist, ing ‘correct’ harmonies.”25 It is ironic The Christian Harmony, and Fruits and that the New England area, whose mu- Flowers.14 Although Walker is consid- sicians gave America its singing schools ered the compiler of Southern Harmony and shape-notes, is the same geographic and his name graces the cover, the work area that led reforms contributing to the was initially a joint project of Walker and demise of shape-note singing and the use his brother-in-law, B. F. White. of these tunes in hymnals. Twentieth-century acceptance melodies in older hymnals, were not After its introduction in 1835, Southern Jackson, in White Spirituals of the Five Protestant denominational hym- within the parameters of the research. Harmony underwent several revisions, Southern Uplands, devotes a chapter nals—Southern Baptist, Episcopal, Lu- The numerical results of the American with the fi nal one being the 1854 edi- to the subject of the disappearance of theran (ELCA), Presbyterian (USA), and tune survey, shown in Table 1, verify the tion.15 During the years of its publication, folk-hymns as denominational hymnals United Methodist—were selected to be thesis that there is a defi nite increase in the collection was obviously popular, as began to emerge in the nineteenth cen- surveyed as to their inclusion of shape- the number of shape-note tunes in the Walker later claimed that 600,000 copies tury.