by Kip Lornell
“Wondrous Love.” Courtesy of Kip Lornell.
The vernacular roots of these tunebooks are evident in their utilization of a system based on four to seven shapes. This system initially used four shapes, while the seven-shape method came into use in the mid-nineteenth century. These shapes help the inexperienced to quickly sing without a working knowledge of key signatures or an ability to recognize pitches. The appearance of anthems and fuguing tunes by American composers drawn from oral tradition further establishes its folk roots. These facets are readily apparent in the first southern tunebook Kentucky Harmony, compiled by Ananias Davidson and published in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1816. A singing-school master, Davidson used the book to help teach his classes in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
The tunes are presented in four-part harmony with the main melody given to the tenor voices. The voices are unusually independent for this time, marking a move away from the harmonizing so commonly found during this time. The tunes themselves (the melody lines) often came from broadside ballads, fiddle pieces, or popular songs of the day, which the tunebook compilers reworked rather than created. They are written in a mixture of major and minor keys, with some modal tunes occurring also. Some of the most stringent rules of Western music composition are routinely broken in these tunes: parallel fifths, octaves, and unisons abound, while inner voices cross to higher and lower levels. In these tunes alone the arrangers proved themselves to be American originals. Although such tunes did have some parallels in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century hymnody, these writers undeniably created a distinctive sound that would seem a bit unruly to those trained in the standard European classical music.
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MUSICAL EXAMPLE
This group of older singers was recorded by George Pullen Jackson in northeastern Tennessee in the early 1950s. Most of the singers were older because at this time relatively few younger people were involved with shape note singing in this section of Tennessee. “Wondrous Love” is found in a variety of seven-note books from across the southern United States and is a very popular, beloved song that is universally sung at a slow, deliberate tempo. At the beginning of the song you can hear the names of the shapes being sung before they launch into the words themselves.
Title “Wondrous Love”
Performers Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee
Instruments eight voices
Length 2:05
Musical Characteristics
1. The singers weave the four lines into a polyphonic texture.
2. Its melody is conjunctive and you hear a minor key.
3. The tempo is slow and quite deliberately somber.
4. The song uses a simple ab form.
What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul.
What wondrous love is this, oh my soul.
What wondrous love is this, that cause the Lord of bliss,
To lend a dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul.
To lend a dreadful curse for my soul.
This song was originally released on Smithsonian Folkways 2356.
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Because they proved so popular and practical, many people eventually followed Davidson’s lead. In 1831 Reverend James Carroll of Lebanon, Virginia, published The Virginia Harmony. William Moore of Wilson County, Tennessee, brought out the Columbian Harmony in 1825, while another Tennessean, William Caldwell of Maryville, presented the Union Harmony in 1837. Perhaps the second most popular shape note book, after The Sacred Harp by B. F. White, came out in 1835 and went through five editions. The Southern Harmony by William Walker of Spartanburg, South Carolina, touched the consciousness of religious singers throughout the South. Like The Sacred Harp, Walker’s book was set almost entirely in three parts.
Old Harp Singers of eastern Tennessee, circa 1953. Eugene Kerr photo, courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.
“Singin’ Billy” Walker was part of the social and economic class of people who used such books. The Southern Harmony presented itself as “A Choice Collection of Tunes, Hymns, Psalms, Odes, and Anthems; Selected from the Most Eminent Authors in the United States,” though its authors did include a European composer named George Frederick Handel. Some very familiar songs, most notably “Amazing Grace,” appear in these shape note collections as did two other popular compositions: “Sherburne” and “The Good Old Way.”
In the 1840s, a slow shift from books of four to books of seven shape notes began. They argued that since there were seven distinctive tones in the major and minor scales, each one should have its own name: mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, re. This was viewed as progressive by younger singers, and publishers eventually moved to fill the need for new books. Jesse Aiken’s The Christian Minstrel (1846) was perhaps the first popular book to use seven shapes, but it was quickly followed by others. Many of these publishers were once more concentrated in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Joseph Funk was the most notable, and his seven-shape Harmonia Sacra (1851) was so successful that it went through six editions in nine years.
These books all contained a wide variety of material. Their texts came from English hymnody, anthems composed by New Englanders, southern spirituals, and camp meeting songs, among others. The music is from equally eclectic sources, with only the tunes from spirituals and camp meeting songs being closely related to the ballads and fiddle tunes that were so often used to accompany folk songs and dancing. Shape note singing contains elements of our aural and elite culture; thus, it is at least partly tied to folk music.
Shape note singing is, above all, a social form of religious music. The singing-school teachers brought people together to instruct them in the rudiments of music theory. People also gathered in small and large groups for the express purpose of singing this music. By the late 1800s formal singing conventions were being held across the South. These lasted from an afternoon to several days, depending on the gathering’s size and the distance people had to travel.
Contemporary singing conventions (most of which are found in Georgia and Alabama) are held not only at churches but also in other public buildings. The singers sit in sections arranged by the distribution of the four voices. A different singer often leads each song, which is first sung with the syllables to familiarize everyone and then with the words. The leaders often choose their favorites, leading the same tune or tunes at each convention; sometimes they are identified with these tunes. The singers participate for the spiritual movement of the singing itself and secondarily the fellowship afforded to the singers as they greet old friends. These conventions often also involve food, usually potlucks, and frequently a religious service. The sessions themselves open and close with a prayer.
Contemporary shape note singing continues not only in the Deep South but also among younger revivalists across the country. With song leaders and singing-school teachers such as Hugh McGraw of northern Georgia and Mrs. Helen Nance Church of Yadkin County, North Carolina, spreading the word, the tradition has remained alive. Although it has never disappeared from our cultural landscape, this style of singing has undergone something of a renaissance since the 1990s. I first encountered shape note singing while a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the middle 1970s; our singings involved a mixture of local folks and students. There are now many other revival groups across the country, including in New England, where this type of singing went largely unheard during its days of greatest popularity. Nonetheless, traditional shape note singing remains almost entirely within the borders of the South, and The Sacred Harp remains in enough demand that a new edition came out in 1991.
The Phipps Family gospel group. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.
CAMP MEETINGS
During the first decade of the nineteenth century a revival of hymns and spiritual songs swept across the United States. The Methodism of John
Wesley was behind this movement; circuit-riding ministers rode their horses across the frontier to meet with the widely scattered settlements. Camp meetings developed in the early nineteenth century as it became clear that the word of God could be spread more effectively when large numbers of people gathered together in worship. Caught up in a grassroots movement, the first camp meeting adjourned in July of 1800 in Logan County, Kentucky.
Baptist and Presbyterian preachers soon became part of the camp meeting revival, promoting salvation through conversation and unfettered contact with God through the acceptance of Jesus Christ. Methodists predominated the early camp meetings because of their body of popular, familiar revival hymns, many of which appeared in the often-reprinted The Pocket Hymn Book of 1797. By the early 1800s several camp meeting songbook collections had appeared, such as John Totten’s A Collection of the Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs, With Choruses Affixed as Usually Sung at Camp-Meetings (1809) and Lorenzo and Peggy Dow’s A Collection of Camp-Meeting Hymns (1816).
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MUSICAL EXAMPLE
The Phipps Family of eastern Kentucky blends a secular and sacred repertoire; they are heavily influenced by the pioneering country music group, the Carter Family, who came from nearby Maces Spring, Virginia. This selection is structured like many other camp meeting songs and its verse/chorus structure is very easy to learn. The incremental textual substitutions of “father,” “brother,” and so on help to increase the song’s length and enables it to encompass more segments of the family.
Title “Away Over in the Promised Land”
Performers The Phipps Family
Instruments autoharp, two guitars, three voices
Length 2:15
Musical Characteristics
1. Its texture is homophonic.
2. The vocals are quite relaxed and in the middle range.
3. A 2/4 duple meter is heard throughout the song.
4. The dynamic range is limited and moderate.
5. The chorus is sung in unison.
I’ve got a father in the promised land (repeat)
I hope someday we’ll all get there
Away over in the promised land
Chorus: Away over in the promised land (repeat)
I hope someday we’ll all get there
Away over in the promised land
I’ve got a mother in the promised land (repeat)
I hope someday we’ll all get there
Away over in the promised land.
Chorus
I’ve got a brother in the promised land (repeat)
I hope someday we’ll all get there
Away over in the promised land
Chorus
Sister is a-waiting in the promised land (repeat)
I hope we’ll all get there
Away over in the promised land
Chorus
Gonna see my savior in the promised land (repeat)
I hope someday we’ll all get there
Away over in the promised land
Chorus
This selection was originally issued on Smithsonian Folkways 2375.
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The camp meetings themselves were lively and spirited religious events. Imagine several thousand frontier women, children, and men camped together for worship; African Americans, though segregated, often participated, too. These uplifting gatherings often lasted several days with people witnessing their faith, reaffirmed by preachers shouting about hell while fires from the nearby campfires roared brightly. Perhaps most striking were the “jerking” masses of humanity caught up in their holy whirling with visions of heaven dancing through their brains. Their happy frenzy was oft described by contemporary witnesses struck by the unlikely sight of the nightly contortions, replete with wild gesticulations, leaping, and shouting. Not surprisingly the term “holy roller” came from this fervent period, though today it is more often applied to adherents of the Pentecostal faiths. Such happy, willing, and photogenic congregations would no doubt be admired and coveted by today’s televangelists.
At the edge of this new frontier the older methods of Christian education were strained by a lack of trained ministers and a low level of literacy. The major Protestant denominations turned to revivals as a means of reaching a great number of people who would otherwise go unserved by ministers of God. Methodists became particularly successful at revivals. One of the main reasons was their new songs that reached directly for the spirit and soul of each individual.
Camp meeting singing appears to have taken the mid- to late-eighteenth-century New England revival hymns one step closer to the masses. Many of the camp meeting hymns were constructed from the verses of already familiar religious songs by using a simple strophic structure—verse and chorus—that permitted almost unlimited improvisation within a theme. “Satan’s Kingdom,” first published in Revival Hymns (Boston: H. W. Day, 1842), provides a good example of this style. No one knows, of course, exactly what such hymns actually sounded like, but contemporary written accounts suggest that most camp meeting songs might have been sung in a major key in a spirited, simple duple meter. Repetition is one of the keys to the success of camp meeting songs, for this strategy serves to reinforce the fervor and message as well as the lyrics. This type of thematic recombination adheres on an emotional level similar to that of the blues.
Camp meetings continued to grow in popularity during the first four decades of the nineteenth century. They spread from their mid-South hearth by way of direct personal contact (cultural geographers refer to this as contagious diffusion) that disregarded social and economic status in favor of religious conviction. The powerful message of direct communication with God swayed many people to join the ranks of the saved, a process no doubt assisted by the beauty and directness of the a cappella hymns. By the 1850s camp meetings were commonplace throughout the South and were not unknown in the Midwest and back East. Just as any manifestation of popular culture must slowly lose its power, the camp meeting revivals had lost much of their punch by the beginning of the Civil War. The songs, however, continued to be sung throughout the country, but most especially in the South.
SHAKERS
Shakerism is one minor and unique offshoot of the camp meeting movement. Started by Mother Ann, who came to the United States at the beginning of the Revolution, the Shakers were always a small, self-contained religious movement whose music has been related to their rituals or laboring exercises. Although there were some 8,000 to 10,000 songs in surviving Shaker manuscripts—an astounding number of them were written between 1837 and 1847—very few have survived to the present day. Playful and simple by nature, Shakers believe that life should combine hard, clean work with a spiritual vision that is sometimes manifested by “gift” songs. The best known Shaker song is “Simple Gifts,” which Aaron Copland used as part of “Appalachian Spring” and Judy Collins and others—have recorded since the middle 1960s. Other important Shaker folk songs that are still sung today include the quick dance tune “Come Life, Shaker Life” and “Willow Tree”:
I will bow and be simple, I will bow and be free
I will bow and be humble, Yea bow like the willow tree.
I will be, this is a token, I will wear the easy yoke
I will lie low and be broken, I will fall upon the rock.
Unfortunately there will be no more Shaker songs, for it is truly a moribund religion with only a handful of members living in Sabbath Day Lake, Maine. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Shaker religion will almost certainly have joined the ranks of sects that no longer exist.
LATER HYMNODY AND GOSPEL SONGS
These revival hymns and camp meeting songs set the stage for the final third of the nineteenth century. A new wave of evangelism, which emphasized revival “song-services” with sweet lyrical compositions, flourished after the close of the War Between the States. Ira D. Sanky and Dwight Moody, two of the key figures in this movement, collaborated on a number of gospel song collections between 1
874 and 1894. This duo helped to popularize gospel hymns, such as “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” that proved fashionable among both black and white Christians. They delivered an evangelical message that was as simple and direct as their advertising slogan: “Mr. Moody will preach the gospel and Mr. Sanky will sing the gospel.”
Singers, evangelists, and publishers began forming new alliances. Normal singing schools, intensive music education courses that taught all of the rudiments of music by using religious texts and songs, began replacing the shorter singing schools. The Ruebush-Kieffer Publishers of New Market, Virginia, conducted the first such school in 1874. Ten years later, A. J. Showalter, manager of Ruebush-Kieffer’s southern office, formed his own company at Dalton, Georgia, and also began teaching normal singing schools. These songbook publishers also printed monthly or quarterly newspapers that expedited communication between singers and teachers. The Musical Millions, published by Ruebush-Kieffer, began in 1870 and continued for forty-five years.
The new hymnals appealed to a wide audience because of their catchy melodies and their often strophic form, which made them easy to remember. Some of the tunes came from well-known secular songs. Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs by P. P. Bliss and Ira D. Sanky as used by Them in Gospel Meetings (1875) achieved such immediate and widespread use that it went through four versions within sixteen years. Such books were used across the country, but they gained particular favor in the South.
The singings themselves were becoming more organized, first on a regional basis within a state. Statewide “conventions,” however, did not occur for many years. Alabama, for example, held its first statewide singing in 1918. Larger conventions met once or twice a year, while local sings often transpired on a monthly basis. The repertoire became so well known that many people knew the songs by heart; new songs were sometimes introduced aurally. But the demand for new books was constant and a handful of new publishers sprang up to meet this demand.