WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Timbrel and Lyre: The Sacred Harp Tradition

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

This week we dip our toes into theory, studying music scales, music teaching, and how the Great Awakening gave birth to one of the most haunting, exotic sounds in Christian music.

Hello everyone. I'm Gwen Thompson, and you're listening to The Timberl and the Liar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome. Last episode, we came back from a long hiatus, sorry about that, to talk about chain gangs, prison farms, and field haulers. This week, we're going to transition to something more cheery and talk about a kind of folk song that I got to experience personally this summer. Sacred harp, also known as Fossil Law or Shaped Note singing. It sounds like this. Sacred harp is a style of Christian harmony. Coincidentally, that's the name of one of the hymnals. In fact, the only music arranged for sacred harp is hymns. I've never heard of a single secular song.

Secular tunes are a different story. We'll talk about that later. That's because it's a style of music teaching that was developed specifically for hymn singing and quick learning. Just like most classically trained musicians sing the Solfedge scale, Do re me for so la. Sacred harp singers use a four-note scale. Fa sola, fa-sola me fa.

Each note has a shape, a triangle for fa, a circle for so, a square or rectangle for law, and a diamond for me. Although there are a few churches in the deep south, mostly primitive Baptist, who still use this style on Sunday mornings, you're far more likely to hear this music at an organized singing that's maybe two or three hours long, or at a convention, which lasts up to two days with hearty potlucks for every meal. Like students learning to sight sing, or a choir learning its notes, the group sings the syllables first, before adding in the words.

The singer's sit sorted by parts on benches arranged in a hollow square. They take turns leading, which involves standing in the middle, choosing the song, and marking time with their hands. The singers measure each other's voices by volume, not clarity or any of our other usual standards of beauty. The result is an intense, eerie, congregational, and hearty sound. Now there's a lot of Sacred Harp history, and there's even more Sacred Heart musicology. I'm not a music theorist, but I'm going to do my best to explain this to both of us, and you're just going to have to forgive my gaps. In the 11th century, an Italian monk developed the Solfedge scale to help his brothers,

who were struggling to remember the tune of a certain chant. He based it on the first syllables of the chant's lines, and it sounded like this. Oot, re me, fa, sola, see, ut. Four of those syllables got lost in the English Channel. Only fa, sol, and la survived the voyage intact. But it's pretty clear to the ear that you need more than three notes, so Elizabethan-era England sang,

Fa sola, fa sola mi fa, with the me acting as a warning that a new octave is about to begin. Initially, Protestant Europe and Puritan America resisted harmonic adornments in their religious music. Prayer, preaching, and music were supposed to be individual and unique, never wrote or by rule. There was no printed music in church. Instead, the congregation chanted out of him after the preacher in a practice called lining out, which continued to be practiced, especially in black churches, well into the 20th century. In these congregations, the gospel itself, as spoken word, was much more important than music.

But when the Great Awakening came to the United States in the 1730s, personal and emotional faith became much more important. Suddenly there was a lot more room for congregational singing. Singing schools exploded. Hymnals written and shaped notes were among the first books to be published in the United States. Singing teachers traveled across the country, taking fees to host singing schools. With the help of the shaped note system, constant drills taught the barest beginners to sing harmonies from sight. Soon, a triangle looked and sounded like a fa, and one could sing it unconsciously. Just like if you or I were asked to sing a scale, we would probably start on the same note that Julie Andrews sang in her famous sound of music number.

These These These singing schools were popular In fact they were common Forting couples to attend together If you ever read Little House on the Prairie You might remember that Almanso took Laura Ingalls to singing school when they were courting Laura loved singing school.

It began with singing scales to limber up the voices. Then Mr. Cluitt taught them a simple exercise, the first one in the book. He gave them the pitch with his tuning fork again and again until all of their voices chimed with it. Then they sang. Then they sang rounds. See how they rise.

They love and nice. She knows and nice. See how they run is. They see how they rise. They sing the noise. The basses chased the tenors that chased the altos, that chased the sopranos around and around until they were all lost and exhausted from laughing. It was such fun. Each singing school night, the class sang farther and farther over in the book.

On the last night, they sang the anthem at the very end, page 144, the heavens declare the glory. The shaped notes made learning easy, so the singing teachers could move on every few weeks. Leaving behind them, congregations ready to adorn their Sunday services with harmony. Now, remember that this is a participatory tradition. Compare these two styles. That's Old Hundred, commonly known as the doxology, sung in Sacred Harp style. In fact, that tune is named Old Hundred because it was Page 100 in the Sacred Harp hymnal. Compare that to...

You can hear the difference, can't you? The second is a traditional doxology to the same tune, but it sounds more refined, more clear. That's because Sacred Harp is not a different. designed to be refined or clear, it's designed to be participatory, humble. There are no performances and you never clap. If you're at a sacred harp singing, you're sitting on a bench with a book in your hand, and there are no seats for non-singers. The point is the process, not the outcome. It's the experience of singing more than the sound produced. Every singer is encouraged to sing loudly because it's more cathartic. Harmony composers focused on giving every vocal part an interesting

line to sing, rather than confining altos or basses to two or three sustained notes. And, And the vocal parts are less strictly divided. Only women sing alto and only men sing bass, but both men and women are welcome to sing tenor or treble, as soprano is known. In fact, Sacred Harp used to only have three voice parts, and adding in alto confuse everybody, which is partly the cause of all of this mix-up. And you can sing up or down the octave as you please.

The result is pleasantly consistent, a sound that calls to mind a congregation, a massive equals, The divided sound of distinct vocal registers is gone, or at least weakened. The music sounds almost spontaneous. The tunes themselves were often in minor keys and sometimes gloomy. The lyrics can be very dark, too. Ah, lovely appearance of death, a funeral hymn supposedly written by George Whitefield for his own funeral. The hymns are gloomy, yes, but remember that this tradition belongs to simple and often poor people who see death as a thing to look forward to not to be afraid of, and they fully expect to be singing in the sky.

As one West Georgia singer explained, I believe there's a place in the square for me. The hymns are comforting. It's common for a person when it's their turn to lead to dedicate their song to children. to a passed away family member, or to a shut-in, someone who's ill and can't come to today's singing. It's very common, too, to read out loud the names of any congregation members who have passed on before, or a list of those who are ill and cannot come, and to pray for them before singing. We have remembered those that have passed on. Now we want to think of another group, those that would love to be with us today, those that would be here, except for afflictions and illness,

And I'd like to remember them today, and I'd like for you to remember them and know that they are with you and singing in their heart. One journalist who traveled the South and the West to learn about Sacred Harp remembered hearing this song, David's Lamentation, while her son was at war in Iraq in the early 2000s. The song is about biblical King David mourning the death of his son, a traitor, and wishing he might have died himself. She found comfort in the raw and powerful sound. through the singing the sheer force of voices raised she said they meaning the singers had been washed in comfort their grief had been blessed another reason for the unique sound of these hymns is that many of the tunes were reworked folk ballads and fireside songs most of which in early america were inherited from england and have the characteristic eerie sound of the old land in fact it's a pretty obvious difference if you don't overthink it listen to these two hymns

don't think about music theory, just listen to their mood. They're both sung by traditional choirs, but only one is a sacred harp hymn, and I bet you can tell which one. If you couldn't tell, the first one, What Wonder's Love, is the Sacred Harp song, and there's strong evidence that its tune used to belong to a folk ballad about the wicked pirate Captain Kidd

before it was repurposed and adjusted for holier use. That's because, in the Puritan era, which downgraded the focus on religious and congregational singing, there were probably less than 25 hymns in regular use. They needed a big growth in new songs, and these tunes had to come from somewhere, even if somewhere was a bar room or threshing floor. Oh, me name is Captain Kit,

as I sailed, as I sailed. Oh, me name is Captain Kit, as I sail O me name is Captain Kit And God's laws I did for bit And most wickedly I did As I say Today, Shape Note singing is seen as a southern tradition

With offspring in the West and Midwest That's thanks to the so-called better music boys of the 19th century, who labeled shape notes buckwheat notes or dunce notes, and insisted on bringing a more educated, modern system of music to the U.S. They succeeded in the Northeast, which has always been comfortable with the new, but not in the South, which tends to value the old for its own sake. And anyway, there was a civil war involved, and no one in the South was interested in learning its music from the North. As for the West, it was still very sparsely populated, and so different towns just learned whatever system the occasional traveling teacher espoused. In the last 30 years,

though, sacred harp singings have grown slightly more popular there. Shape notes continued in the south the longest, even up till the present day. The 2005 biography film about country music singer Johnny Cash, walk the line, has Mother Maybell Carter referencing the tradition. And indeed it is very likely that Mother Bebel, her daughters, and probably Johnny Cash and his family would have learned to sing shaped notes before they learned any other kind of music. The tradition is still popular and alive in the South, and especially after the 2003 movie, Cold Mountain, featured Sacred Harp singing in its soundtrack.

The increased publicity brought sacred harp into vogue. The increased publicity brought Sacred Harp into vogue with some folk revival groups. Today you can go to Camp Fossola in northeast Alabama and spend five days learning to sing-shaped notes. You can attend to singing in just about any large southern city and some northern or western ones, and the tradition has even taken off in Ireland and parts of Germany.

It's a hospitable tradition, where newcomers are immediately friends and old-timers or family. One of my favorite stories to illustrate this is when one famed singing school teacher, Thomas Denson, who must have taught half the people in the southeast, died in Alabama in 1935. Radio and word of mouth spread the news of the funeral. Sacred harp singers from across the southeast drove all night to get to it.

They more than overflowed the church and there was nowhere to park. Without any prior planning or organization, so many singers showed up to this funeral that they covered three acres of land outside the church. They camped and they sang all day until they were hoarse. A beautiful tribute to the man who taught them to sing in the first place. What a beautiful and heartfelt tradition. that is.