As a no-longer Christian, I still find singing Sacred Harp extremely compelling. There is a group that gathers at an LGBTQIA+ affirming baptist church near the University of MN whose meetings I used to join irregularly until my kids were born. Communal singing is powerful by itself and pretty rare in America, but in addition this repertoire/tradition has something raw and real about it that transcends the dogmas of its authors.
edit: my habit of first skimming the comments and then reading the article led to attributing the appreciation to you instead of OP. I'll leave it here anyhow :-)
I've noticed that some of the original 3-part harmony settings, by self-taught singing masters like Billings, have parallel/empty fourths and fifths, but that these were removed in later 19th-century 4-part settings by "properly educated" musicians. A good example is "Idumea":
Voice crossing is also very common, especially between the tenor and treble parts ("treble" is what shape note singers call the top part on the page, where the soprano part would usually be). Both men and women sing tenor and treble, so there's a lot of overlap leading to a pretty thick sound.
I don't know about Sacred Harp stuff specifically, but generally speaking in classical music "treble" means prepubescent boys and "soprano" means female singers, and since the vocal ranges are roughly the same the choice of word used on sheet music tends to be based on which type (boy vs. any age female) the composer expected to sing it.
So my guess is that if shape note singers call it "treble" it's because historically it started as a male-only thing, with sopranos (women) and female altos joining later while keeping the tradition of calling the top part "treble".
I think it's more likely the old composers took the old part names and adapted them to congregational music. It's not that Shape note singers (we're talking Americans in the late 1700s, early to mid 1800s) didn't accept women in the congregation, it's that folks like Tallis had called the top part the "treble", and the creators of new tunebooks didn't bother to change the name of the part. So IMO shape note music has probably always accepted women on the treble part.
The alto part seems to be a different story though. In fact, in one of the old shape note tune books I've got (a reprint of The Southern Harmony, originally from 1854), the alto part is labeled "counter", suggesting it was adapted from the Reformation-era countertenor parts. It was occasionally sung by boys, or by women, but often left out entirely (most of the tunes in the Southern Harmony are three part, with no alto). Later on, this "second part from the top" reemerged as a standard alto part, labeled as such, and sung by only women and possibly boys (but by this time, certainly not men in falsetto).
To go along with this, I looked up one of the songs recorded in the piece to find the words and found much more[^1]. What got my attention was the player on the right that seems to use some DECtalk-like composition to generate the tracks.
There's something peculiarly sublime about the intersection of a fundamentally low tech, folk form of music and the retro tech voice synthesizer. Everyone should experience listening to the "all parts" selection.
FaSoLaMix is a paid iOS app that lets you listen to a small selection of well-recorded songs where you can listen to the individual parts but sung by real people. Might be interesting to people on here.
From the FaSoLaMix site [1]:
> "FaSoLaMix" is an iOS app designed to teach Sacred Harp singing to newer singers. When someone wants to learn to sing, our instinct is usually to recommend that the inquirer go to a good singing and sit next to a strong singer. But not everyone lives near many all-day singings. Our intent is to give the listener the virtual experience of sitting next to a couple of strong singers in whichever section suits their voice. The app features high-quality recordings of many Sacred Harp songs where the mix of the four parts can be controlled manually. For example, a singer wanting to learn the treble line of a particular song could leave the treble track at full volume, mute the other three parts, and sing along with the solo treble part for practice. While the most obvious benefit will be to new singers, longtime singers will also find it useful and fun. For example, experienced singers may wish to mute one part and fill in that missing part with their own voice.
I've read both the linked article (which was great) and the Wikipedia entry for Sacred Harp. But, I still don't quite understand how this works. That's probably because I have no understanding of musical theory and couldn't read any form of sheet music anyway. With that said, my question is: what is lost as a result of using this notation? I can see what's gained: simplicity and ease of learning. But why wouldn't you use this notation for every form of singing?
I'm not an expert, but I have been able to sight read sheet music (to play or to sing) since I was a young kid.
From the article and wiki page, I see claims that the sacred harp system makes things easier, but I can't actually see if or why I might've found it any easier to learn than the standard western notation I did learn.
So my guesses are that either it's not actually an improvement, or it's a small enough improvement on a good enough already internationally recognised system that there just hasn't been pressure for this niche form to take over in many places.
I've grown up with both shape note singing and regular "round note" singing. Shape note is best for music that doesn't change key, and doesn't use many accidentals. The more "modern" the harmony, the less useful the shapes are.
This is because a shape note singer learns to associate the shapes with the degrees of the scale. If a good shape note singer is given sheet music with just the shapes, with no staff, they can usually still sing it. But a shape note singer must "switch gears" every time the key changes or a note outside of the scale is used.
I just took a quick look, but as an instrumental musician (4th grade - freshman year in college), what I'm gathering is this notation lets you use the shape of the note's head to tell you where it is in position to the fundamental of the key the song is in.
That's great if you process music in those terms... but as a mostly sight-reading instrumental musician, I'm thinking about what note is written, and what fingering that requires on my instrument. When playing from sheet music, it never really mattered much to me what key we were playing in, or if I was playing the fundamental or a third; maybe if I were better attuned, I might adjust my fingering ever so slightly, but if I did that, it was unconscious and by ear.
Now, when I was playing in Jazz band, improvising bass lines, the key makes a real big difference, because I'm going to play like 1-3-5-3 and such, but then I'm just working from a chord chart, not sheet music, and note shapes still don't help me.
I was never very good at choral music, and never thought in do-re-me, etc. But I can see it being useful for people trained in that; move the do to the new fundamental, and go from there. Not sure how (or if) they handle accidental sharps and flats that take you away from the key signature... maybe not, since the emphasis seems to be on simplification.
The other thing that was touched on is arrangement --- rather than a melody and harmonies arrangement, it seems like each part is arranged to sound nice on its own as well as together. This makes it easier to practice the parts individually --- sometimes harmony parts sound really iffy by themselves, so you don't want to practice it.
I don't think there's necessarily much lost by using these shapes more, but I don't think there's much gained. And of course, it adds more labor to typesetting or hand writing the scores --- until you get to computer based typesetting where you can probably convince the computer to do the shapes for you.
I've sung a lot of Sacred Harp and Christian Harmony that use four-shape and seven-shape shapenote notation respectively. I've never sung roundnote notation so a bit hard for me to compare but I know lots of people who've done a lot of both.
A couple of things you gain with shapenote notation…
You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from shapenote notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
> You don't have to learn key signatures to sing from shapenote notation. So it's less work to pick it up.
You don't really need to learn them in roundnotes either? Like yeah, I know that C major is all natural, G major is one sharp, etc but I don't really need to know that, the key signature is on the left side of the staff. I guess you need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of course.
> Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like.
This makes a lot of sense. I never really internalized intervals with scored music (although maybe a bit with playing from chord charts); I internalized the position on the staff to the fingering for the note. If I learned to sing this way, I'd internalize position on the staff to pitch; like B flat sounds like [hmmm] or something. I guess you're saying singing by intervals is easier than singing by named notes? But you can really do both with shaped notes, so all the better. :)
> I guess you need to learn to apply those sharps and flats though, of course.
Yeah, there's a big difference between fingered instruments and singing. When you're playing on a fingered instrument, it's quite easy to apply incidentals – you get a feeling for the shape of the scale (and you practice scales to help with that). But unless you have perfect pitch, you're only _ever_ singing intervals. And good luck when the key changes from F# Major to Eb Minor halfway through the piece!
Another factor is that these singers likely do not play any other instruments, so they don't have any visual or tactile reference for sharps or flats – all keys are sung exactly the same way. When you're singing "by ear", you place the note in the scale you're singing.
There aren't any accompanying instruments but singers do play other instruments in the rest of their life.
In Sacred Harp, before a song is sung, somebody sings out the notes of the opening chord of the song using a combination of ear/feel/memory/practice/experience. The same song can be keyed a bit higher or lower depending on things like: energy of the singers, time of day, whether the last song was quite high or low, how easy the highest or lowest written notes are for the singers in the room. It is a skill! But most keyers will usually pitch songs written in F major at roughly the same pitch and will pitch songs written in D major differently to F major.
> "Sightsinging is easier with shapenote notation. After a while, you internalise the intervals between the shapes – you just know what a fa up to a sol feels and sounds like."
I can't speak to which is easier to get to a competent level, but that doesn't sound any different to traditional notation - after a while you internalise the intervals between notes (but you're just looking at where the note is in the score's lines, along with any flats/sharps in the key or on the note - rather than shapes). But you still get to the point where you see two notes and "just know what [x to y] feels and sounds like".
Basing it off of [1], nothing is lost from traditional notation, inasmuch as it's extra notation on top of traditional notation. In this sense, it's a bit similar to furigana[2] for Japanese, as an aid to readers. Something that surprised me is that [1] is of a minor key, but the solfege marks are for the relative major. I'm not a singer, so I can't say as to how/why that makes sense.
> Something that surprised me is that [1] is of a minor key, but the solfege marks are for the relative major
Major and minor keys use the same shapes / solfege system. The major scale is "fa, so, la, fa, so, la, mi, fa", while the minor scale uses the same syllables but starts on la. This means that the shapes always represent the same intervals (i.e. pattern of whole and half steps) whether a song is in a major or minor. It's hard to describe but makes sense when singing.
I'm aware that they are the same intervals; perhaps my brain is destroyed by my music theory classes, but I really think of a minor scale as a different beast from a major scale starting on the submediant. [1] indicates that other movable do systems may use "la" based minors, and that it is "sometimes preferred in choral music, especially with children," so I suspect this distinction is something I learned.
One limitation is that the shapes are really only useful for singing, not for instrumental music. They also would not be meaningful for music that switches keys or that isn't tonal (i.e. isn't in a particular key at all). So they are a very good fit for what you might think of as "church music" (at least written before the 20th century), but for other settings they would be either meaningless or a hindrance.
That's one reason shape notation never caught on; another reason is that the notation was introduced by publishers of American sacred music and not by, say, music conservatories.
It’s not uncommon for vocal music to have different conventions like this, especially which the pitch isn’t absolute so standard notation isn’t quite correct anyway. Note the use of neums for chant – and those are harder to learn!
Same here. I've sung with "respectable" choral groups and never even heard of this. I suspect it's kinda looked down on by serious musicians. But hey, people like it and that's all that matters. Even in my choruses, they gave us each a practice tape with our parts; so much for snobbery.
Ear training is really difficult if you didn't grow up with it. Some intervals are easy ("Here comes the bride" for a perfect 4th, "My bonny lies over the ocean" for a 6th. There are lots of apps to learn this. If shape notes help, hey.
You’re probably right that some people who participate in music that has high status in society (that you might call “serious musicians”) would sometimes look down on Sacred Harp and shapenote notation. Also agree that snobbery isn’t good.
I’ve sung a lot of Sacred Harp and people with a background in this high status music just blend in with everyone else really.
I had not heard of this, and I find it interesting and compelling.
But I do not get the comparison to heavy metal. Heavy metal, as I understand it is defined by dissonance, instrumental virtuosity, and overdriven amps. Musically, it seems almost like the complete opposite of sacred harp. What's the connection?
I think comparing it to metal is just a quick shorthand to say "it's heavy music."
> dissonance, instrumental virtuosity, and overdriven amps
I'm probably just splitting hairs here, but although those elements are common, metal is a really diverse genre (I think the only one more diverse is jazz). Really the only two things music needs to fall under the "metal" umbrella are 1) being heavy and 2) having double bass drum. Sacred Harp seems to meet the former.
> Heavy metal is usually based on riffs created with three main harmonic traits: modal scale progressions, tritone and chromatic progressions, and the use of pedal points.
Tritones are notably present in heavy metal, as a genre, to my understanding. That's consistent with what wikipedia is saying. The tritone (6 half-steps) is generally regarded to be one of the most dissonant intervals in western music.
In my church we still use the Genevan Psalter in our worship. It is not the same as Sacred Harp, but many of the same principles apply, and it makes for excellent communal singing. I could definitely hear the similarities, but it is hard to explain exactly what they are.
The principles used during composing the Genevan Psalter was:
1) It should be easy to sing for untrained singers
2) It should sound sacred
3) It should be of high artistic quality
Also, the article meations the "deepest past." The Genevan Psalter comes from the 1540's, and many Reformed churches still uses it all over the world. That's some serious deep past.
I wonder if the Genevan Psalter influenced Sacred Harp?
>These Southern singing conventions thrived because the untrained singers, who had to sing from written music, could learn how through a technique called “solfège,” to use the music-school word for it. Plainer folks called it shape notes. You know the system. You’ve heard it a thousand times.
I know this type of music writing as "shape note singing" and I've never actually heard it referred to as "sacred harp". There is a tradition of shape note singing in some Quaker circles -- quite a bit different from the Southern Baptists, but probably similar repertoire.
Churches of Christ frequently use shape notes in hymnals as a sight-reading aid, and they almost all sing a capella, but the style and arrangements are usually very different than what you'll hear with Sacred Harp-- more melody-focused, like a conventional choral style.
(I grew up in the Church of Christ and what I've heard of Sacred Harp sounds pretty chaotic to my ear, even arrangements of hymns I know well. But it's an interesting sound, and it's probably fun to participate in.)
I did not expect a Bell Street Burritos reference in this article, but that's a staple food item for those in Atlanta. Kids that went to Georgia Tech will know it by heart.
(I still prefer authentic Mission burritos. Bell Street Burritos are unfathomably greasy, but have a distinctive Southern charm to them.)
> “Almost all music is written with a strong melody line,” she said. “We call that the lead line. Then, the three parts that harmonize with that, usually they are written just to harmonize. And they do. With this dispersed music, each line is a tune unto itself. It is not written just to harmonize with the lead. It's a tune unto itself. That's why they call it dispersed harmony.”
> The light came on. Four separate melodies, sung simultaneously. Four different songs, really, but each with the same words. Which makes it an even more welcoming tradition than the one I grew up with. If you don’t like the treble line of a song that much, then sing one of the other three. Nobody cares.
This is of course more commonly known as "polyphony". Written sources of polyphony in western sacred music survive from at least the 12th century AD, and the unwritten practice must go back even further. Polyphony has been a inseparable, and some may even say distinguishing feature of western (literate) music ever since. It seems that the author and her interviewee are somewhat insulated from the mainstream of western music to be unaware of this.
