A body of rural American sacred music published in any of several musical notations in which a note head of a certain shape is assigned to each of the solmization syllables fa, sol, la, mi (in the four-syllable ‘fasola’ system) or do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si or ti. Most shape notations (also sometimes called ‘buckwheat’, ‘character’ or ‘patent’ notations) employ key signatures, deploy the notes on a five-line staff and use the rhythm signs of conventional notation (see Notation, §III, 5, fig.151). They are intended to help singers with little musical expertise to sing at sight without having to recognize pitches on the staff or understand the key system.
HARRY ESKEW/JAMES C. DOWNEY
The shape-note tradition originated early in the 19th century and flourished among many whites and some blacks, particularly in the South and Midwest, where it still survives, and furnished the principal printed sources of folk hymns and white spirituals. A later 19th-century offshoot formed an important branch of white gospel music.
Much of the music in the shape-note hymnbooks was written by the late 18th-century singing-school composers of New England, who also introduced the practice of including a pedagogical preface to a tune book, and were responsible for its oblong format. To the New England repertory of psalm and hymn tunes, fuging-tunes, set-pieces and anthems the shape-note hymnbook compilers made a significant addition – folk hymns and spirituals drawn from oral tradition. All these types of music were set for three or four voices, with the principal melody in the tenor and the other parts composed quite independently to produce a rugged, harmonically crude, ‘archaic’ style that has reminded some (e.g. Seeger, 1940) of medieval polyphony. The first shape-note tune book to contain a sizable number of folk hymns and to influence later tune books published in the American South and West was the Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (1813/R) compiled by John Wyeth.
Shape-note collections not only preserved the 18th-century New England repertory (when it had given way in New England to other kinds of psalmody) and introduced into print a large body of folk melodies, they also became the means of imparting to many generations the pleasures of choral singing by note and of sharing a rich repertory of Anglo-American music. Indeed, the practice of shape-note hymnody was more social and recreational than liturgical; the title-pages of the hymnbooks often emphasize their nondenominational character, and, from very early, groups met in ‘singings’ apart from worship services. Some singings were informal meetings of small numbers from a single parish or town, held perhaps one evening a month (often a Sunday); others were larger-scale, annual events which functioned as religious services, lasting for many hours and attracting perhaps as many as 100 participants; largest of all, and least numerous, were annual ‘conventions’ lasting two days (often Saturday and Sunday) or even longer, and attracting singers by the hundreds.
Characteristic of shape-note singings, which persist to this day, are the disposition of the singers in the form of a hollow square; unaccompanied performance, with trebles and tenors often doubling each others’ parts; and the rotation among various singers of the responsibility for choosing the work to sing next, setting its pitch and leading the group (usually first singing the solmization syllables, then a second time with the text).
The first shape-note system to gain acceptance was that in The Easy Instructor of William Little and William Smith (1801), based on four-syllable or ‘fasola’ solmization (ex.1). Another experimenter, Andrew Law, developed systems of staffless shapes which he used in tune books published between 1803 and 1819. The appearance of these tune books coincided with a significant migration of settlers into the South and Midwest, and shape-note publications appeared in the centres along the routes of travel. Wyeth, an editor and printer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, published the Repository of Sacred Music (1810) for settlers passing through to the new lands; modelled on Isaiah Thomas’s extremely successful Worcester Collection (1786) and Andrew Adgate’s Philadelphia Harmony (1789), it contained anthems, psalm tunes and fuging-tunes of the New England composers. The Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, for which Wyeth’s musical adviser was the Methodist minister Elkanah Kelsey Dare, included many folk hymns in addition to the earlier repertory. After 1813 shape-note publications appeared in three areas. The first stretched westwards from the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, and Cincinnati to St Louis; the second, the centre of German-language shape-note hymnody, lay between the Shenandoah Valley and Philadelphia; and the third was further south, embracing South Carolina and Georgia.
The first southern shape-note tune book was Ananias Davisson’s Kentucky Harmony (1816), which included 15 tunes from Wyeth’s Repository … Part Second (though Davisson claimed that several were his own). Davisson’s Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (1820) contained many more folk hymns than his initial book, and included some of the newer spirituals from the frontier camp-meeting revivals. In Tennessee William Caldwell issued his Union Harmony (1837), in which he listed himself as composer of 42 tunes. Describing his relation to the folk tradition, however, he admitted ‘Many of the airs which the author has reduced to system and harmonized have been selected from the unwritten music in general use in the Methodist Church, others from Baptist and many more from Presbyterian taste’. James M. Boyd borrowed from both Wyeth and Davisson for his Virginia Sacred Musical Repository (1818). James P. Carrell and David L. Clayton published The Virginia Harmony in 1831. This was very successful and, although Carrell deplored his contemporaries’ use of ‘light airs’ for sacred music, was comparatively rich in the best of the folk hymn repertory.
From the second decade of the 19th century Cincinnati became a significant centre of shape-note publications. The first shape-note tune book, Patterson’s Church Music (1813), was followed in 1820 by the most popular tune book of the Midwest, The Missouri Harmony by Allen D. Carden. Carden drew heavily on Davisson’s Kentucky Harmony. His other tune books, Western Harmony (1824), compiled with S.J. Rogers, F. Moore and J. Green, and United States Harmony (1829), did not achieve the success of The Missouri Harmony.
The most active publisher of German-language shape-note hymnody was the Mennonite Joseph Funk. In 1816 he compiled Die allgemein nützliche Choral-Music, the first German-language shape-note tune book to be widely used. Another collection, A Compilation of Genuine Church Music (1832), was in English, reflecting the acculturation of the area; its fifth edition (1851) was retitled Harmonia sacra, being a Compilation of Genuine Church Music and published in seven-shape notation (it reached its 25th edition in 1993 under the title The New Harmonia sacra). Although Funk was only one of several German-Americans to publish shape-note tune books in German (during the period 1810–83 at least 14 German or German-English books were published, mainly in Pennsylvania), his influence on Southern musical thought and practice was considerable. His family successors adopted the more flexible seven-shape notation and introduced the new gospel songs of the urban North into the South.
The first tune book to become widely popular in the Deep South was William Walker’s The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1835). This was the first Southern shape-note book to be distributed nationally, and Walker reported in 1866 that it had sold 600,000 copies. Walker, a Baptist layman, made extensive use of folk hymns and spirituals and composed or arranged about 90 tunes, including such popular folk hymns as ‘Complainer’, ‘Sweet Prospect’ and ‘Amazing Grace’ (see fig.1), one of the best-known, which had first appeared in The Virginia Harmony and was widely used by other tune book compilers under the names ‘Harmony Grove’ and ‘New Britain’.
The best-known and most widely used shape-note tune book, The Sacred Harp (1844), was compiled by Benjamin Franklin White and E.J. King. King wrote two popular tunes in Southern Harmony and The Sacred Harp, ‘Bound for Canaan’ and ‘Weeping Savior’. White exerted a lasting influence on so-called Sacred Harp singing, a tradition of hymn singing based on the book, through his own compositions (of which there are more than 30 in The Sacred Harp), his work on the revision committees for the editions of 1850, 1859 and 1869, and his establishment in 1845 of the Southern Musical Convention, which fostered Sacred Harp singings. Other singing conventions using The Sacred Harp were established in the late 19th century and early 20th; Sacred Harp singings spread from Georgia to Alabama, west to Texas and Oklahoma, north to Tennessee and south to northern Florida.
Four 20th-century revisions of The Sacred Harp remain in use. J.L. White’s version (1911) is used for a few singings each year in the area around Atlanta. J.S. James’s The Original Sacred Harp (1911) had alto parts added by Seaborn M. Denson to 327 previously three-part pieces. This revision, reprinted in 1965, is used in about 15 singings in central and southern Georgia. A revision by W.M. Cooper, entitled The Sacred Harp: Revised and Improved (1902) and retitled The B.F. White Sacred Harp (1949, 2/1960), is used along the Gulf Coast, especially in northern and central Florida, in southern Alabama and Mississippi, and in about a dozen singings in eastern Texas. This is the second most popular version of The Sacred Harp in current use. The most widely used revision is The Original Sacred Harp, Denson Revision (1936, 2/1960, 4/1971), which is increasing in popularity and gradually replacing some of the others. The Denson revision is most used in central and northern Alabama and western Georgia; it is used at only a few annual singings in Tennessee, Mississippi and northern Florida. It is also used in universities (e.g. the University of Illinois and the University of North Carolina). Singings that use the Denson revision are announced and recorded in the annual Directory and Minutes of Annual Sacred Harp Singings (Birmingham, Alabama). J.L. White’s and Cooper’s editions of The Sacred Harp attempted to modernize the book by including gospel-style music, whereas those of James and Denson, while admitting new pieces, remained basically within the style originally associated with four-shape-note music.
A 20th-century tune book modelled on Cooper’s revision of The Sacred Harp, The Colored Sacred Harp (1934/R) by Judge Jackson, consists of songs composed by black shape-note singers. As in Cooper’s book, some of the songs are in the older, predominantly folk hymn style, and others are influenced by the gospel hymn idiom. Black singers use Cooper’s edition of The Sacred Harp for most of their singing, but sing from The Colored Sacred Harp on special occasions.
Two competitors of The Sacred Harp in Georgia before the Civil War were The Hesperian Harp and The Social Harp. The Hesperian Harp (1848) was compiled by perhaps the most learned and versatile of the shape-note musicians, the Methodist minister William Hauser; it was the largest shape-note tune book (552 pages), but does not seem to have been widely used. Hauser provided 36 of its tunes, including many carefully recorded from oral tradition. The Social Harp (1855/R), compiled by John Gordon McCurry, a Baptist farmer, contained what Jackson (1943, p.121) called ‘by far the biggest single-book and single-edition batch of revival spirituals produced in the South’. The 49 pieces in The Social Harp attributed to McCurry include numerous folk hymns.
Thus in the period from the second decade of the century until the outbreak of the Civil War the publication of shape-note hymnody spread from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia south to Georgia and west to Missouri. Shape-note tune books were also published in Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio; use of The Sacred Harp spread into Alabama; and The Missouri Harmony was used as far south as Mississippi. With the Civil War, however, the publication of new rural shape-note tune books ceased, and after the war newer developments from the urban North brought about a considerable change in shape-note hymnody.
Northern composers influenced by European music, such as Lowell Mason, opposed shape notes and advocated seven-syllable solmization; as their solmization method became accepted in the South there was a gradual change from four-shape to seven-shape notation. The first such system to be widely used was that of Jesse B. Aikin in The Christian Minstrel (1846), which retained the fa, sol, la and mi shapes of The Easy Instructor but added three others (ex.2). Aikin’s system eventually prevailed over several rival seven-shape systems, invented because it was thought that Aikin’s had been patented (hence the name ‘patent notes’). In the development of shape-note hymnody the systems of notation and the physical appearance of the various publications were associated with different types of music. The oblong four-shape tune book, associated with a combination of folk hymnody and earlier New England music, was followed by the oblong seven-shape tune book, with less folk hymnody and earlier New England music and more European music, music of the Lowell Mason school, music with secular texts and early Southern gospel hymnody. When Southern gospel hymnody became the main repertory of shape-note books the format changed again: the collections, known as songbooks, were smaller, taller than they were wide and often had paper covers.
Only two years after the appearance of Aikin’s seven shapes, The Harp of Columbia (1848) by W.H. Swan and M.L. Swan was published in the compilers’ own seven-shape notation. After the Civil War M.L. Swan published The New Harp of Columbia (1867), which is still used in eastern Tennessee; the singers who use it are known as ‘Old Harp singers’. Also in 1867 Walker yielded to northern influences and published his Christian Harmony in his own seven-shape notation; he included in it a preponderance of European music and music by Mason and his followers. Like his earlier Southern Harmony, it is still used in singings in several southern states, especially Alabama, which has a state Christian Harmony Convention; an extensively revised version of the book, by O.A. Parris and John H. Deason (1958) is also used at a number of annual singings (25 reported in 1974, mostly in Alabama). Although a number of seven-shape notations had been developed after 1846, in 1877 Aldine S. Kieffer, a grandson of Funk and the leading seven-shape competitor of Aikin, negotiated an agreement to use Aikin’s shapes. He promoted shape-note music chiefly through Musical Million, a monthly periodical edited mainly by himself and published at Singers Glen and later Dayton, Virginia, from 1870 to 1914. Kieffer’s other activities included editing tune books and the new style of songbooks, and writing numerous texts and tunes, both sacred and secular.
Aikin’s system became the standard seven-shape notation, and predominated in a large area of the South. Hauser, another of the older tune book compilers to adopt seven-shape notation, published The Olive Leaf (1878), in which he used Aikin’s seven-shape system and included music influenced by the urban gospel hymns that Bliss and Sankey were publishing in the North. In addition to its use in tune books and gospel music collections Aikin’s notation was used extensively in the 20th century for church hymnals, such as B.B. McKinney’s popular Broadman Hymnal (1940) and those published by the southern branches of such denominations as the Church of God and the Primitive Baptists. Most of these hymnals contain gospel music, but a few, such as C. Cayce’s The Good Old Songs (1913, 23/1961) which is used by conservative Primitive Baptists, contain mainly songs from the older shape-note tradition.
The term ‘gospel hymn’ originated in the popular northern hymnal Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, compiled from 1875 by Ira D. Sankey. Unlike the northern gospel hymns, those of the South often have melodies that use pentatonic and other scales inherited from the folk hymn tradition. Of the numerous late 19th-century southern shape-note gospel hymn composers, three of the most prominent were Asa Brooks Everett, Rigdon McCoy McIntosh and A.J. Showalter, some of whose hymns are still sung.
A.B. Everett, with his brother L.C. Everett and McIntosh, propagated musical knowledge in the manner of Lowell Mason’s normal music schools in the North. Despite Everett’s European training, some of his gospel hymns reflect the older shape-note tradition, for example his famous Footsteps of Jesus, which has a hexatonic melody. McIntosh exerted influence beyond the usual shape-note musical circles, for he directed the music departments of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, and was also music editor for the Nashville publishing house of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for about 30 years. He produced over 15 music collections, and his reputation can be gauged from the back cover of one of them, New Life (1881), where he is called ‘The Most Eminent Composer of Music in the South’. A.J. Showalter published over 1000 of his own compositions and left hundreds more in manuscript. His most famous gospel hymn (still widely used) is his setting of the text ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’, a predominantly pentatonic melody with diatonic harmony and dotted rhythms. By 1903, 165,484 copies had been sold of his Class, Choir and Congregation (1888) and 385,969 of Rudiments of Music (1887).
By the time of Showalter’s death (1924) numerous publishers of shape-note gospel music had appeared who were more interested in popularising their songs than elevating musical tastes. Jackson (1933) listed 29 shape-note publishers of gospel music active in ten Southern and Midwestern states in the early 1930s. This number had diminished by the 1940s, and in the decade following World War II three firms emerged as the leading publishers of shape-note gospel music: James D. Vaughan, Stamps-Baxter and Stamps Quartet.
James D. Vaughan established the firm bearing his name in 1912 in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and in the period 1912–64 it published 105 shape-note gospel songbooks. These collections were usually published twice a year and were known as convention books because they were used in singing conventions; for many years the company sold an average of 117,000 copies of such books annually. In 1964 the Vaughan Company was bought by the Skyliters Recording Co. of Memphis, a firm formed by the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen Quartets, but after a few months it was resold to a group in Cleveland, Tennessee, associated with the Church of God, a denomination which has made much use of shape-note gospel music. In 1965 the publication of convention books under Vaughan’s name was resumed under the editorship of Connor B. Hall, also editor for the Church of God’s Tennessee Music and Printing Co.
In 1926, two years after the death of Showalter, one of his associates, Jesse Randall Baxter jr, joined with V.O. Stamps to establish the Stamps-Baxter Music Co., known from 1929 as the Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Co., with main offices in Dallas, Texas. Stamps-Baxter became the largest publisher of shape-note gospel music, publishing convention books and other song collections as well as a monthly magazine, Gospel Music News. Much of the spread of the gospel music published by Stamps-Baxter can be attributed to the success of their male quartets, through which this tradition became widely known in recordings and radio broadcasts (the firm purchased station KRLD, Dallas).
The music of the new Southern rural shape-note hymnody is a synthesis of the gospel hymnody of the North and the four-shape hymn repertory. It is based on diatonic scales (which, however, often omit the fourth and seventh degrees) and is generally lively; dotted rhythms appear frequently, particularly dotted quaver and semiquaver patterns with the semiquavers on chromatic lower-neighbour notes, imparting a swing to the rhythm. The songs always contain refrains that are inseparable from the stanzas, with frequent answering figures between the voices (fig.2). Performers usually employ a nasal tone quality, without vibrato, but with extensive sliding between notes. The gospel male quartet consists of a lead singer (second tenor), who sings the principal melody, a high tenor chosen for his bright frontal tone placement, a baritone and a bass. The quartets often sing a cappella, though they are sometimes accompanied by a guitar or (since the 1930s) a piano. Indeed, a ‘hot’ gospel piano style, similar to that of the urban revivals around 1900, has developed, which in many ways resembles ragtime.
An important force in shape-note gospel music has been its organisation in singing conventions at county, state and national levels. The National Singing Convention was founded in 1936 in Birmingham, Alabama; its annual singings, lasting as long as four days, attract more than 1000 participants. These organizations (unlike the Sacred Harp conventions) do not use a single shape-note collection, but a variety of paperback songbooks supplied by different publishers. It is difficult to assess the full extent of shape-note gospel singings; however, Gospel Music News listed more than 1900 for 1974 (calculated from the January issue), not only in the South and Midwest but as far west as California and as far north as Michigan. Nevertheless after 1945 the increasing urbanization of the South and the introduction of traditional notation in the music programmes of public and private schools contributed to a decline in shape-note singing. Singing-schools and singing conventions tended to be replaced by gospel music concerts, where the music was increasingly similar to the popular secular repertory and audiences listened rather than participated.
See also Gospel music, §I, 2.
G.P. Jackson: White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (Chapel Hill, NC, 1933/R)
A.M. Buchanan: Folk Hymns of America (New York, 1938)
C. Seeger: ‘Contrapuntal Style in the Three-Voice Shape-Note Hymns’, MQ, xxvi (1940), 483–93
J.W. Work: ‘Plantation Meistersinger’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 97–106
G.P. Jackson: White and Negro Spirituals (New York, 1943/R)
G.P. Jackson: The Story of the Sacred Harp (Nashville, TN, 1944)
G. Chase: ‘The Fasola Folk’, America’s Music (New York, 1955, 3/1987/R), 170–91, esp. 183
L.G. Presley: Heavenly Highway Hymns (Dallas, 1956)
C. Hamm: ‘Patent Notes in Cincinnati’, Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, xvi (1958), 293
E.O. Loessel: The Use of Character Notes and Other Unorthodox Notations in Teaching the Reading of Music in Northern United States (diss., U. of Michigan, 1959)
C. Hamm: ‘The Chapins and Sacred Music in the South and West’, JRME, viii (1960), 91–8
D. Yoder: Pennsylvania Spirituals (Lancaster, PA, 1961)
W.J. Reynolds, ed.: A Survey of Christian Hymnody (New York, 1963, rev. 2/1978 as A Joyful Sound Christian Hymnody, ed. W.J. Reynolds and M. Price)
H. Eskew: ‘William Walker, 1809–1875: Popular Southern Hymnist’, The Hymn, xv (1964), 5–13
I. Lowens: Introduction to J. Wyeth: Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (New York, 1964) [facs.]
I. Lowens: Music and Musicians in Early America (New York, 1964)
I.B. Horst: ‘Singers Glen, Virginia, Imprints, 1847–1878, a Checklist’, Eastern Mennonite College Bulletin, xliv/2 (1965), 6
H. Eskew: ‘Joseph Funk’s Allgemein nützliche Choral-Music (1816)’, Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, xxxii (1966), 38–46
H.L. Eskew: Shape-Note Hymnody in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, 1816–1860 (diss., Tulane U., 1966)
R. Stevenson: Protestant Church Music in America (New York, 1966)
R.A. Crawford: Andrew Law, American Psalmodist (Evanston, IL, 1968/R)
P.D. Perrin: Theoretical Introductions in American Tune-Books from 1801 to 1860 (diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1968)
C.L. Ellington: The Sacred Harp Tradition of the South: its Origin and Evolution (diss., Florida State U., 1969)
P.G. Hammond: A Study of the ‘Christian Minstrel’ (1846) by Jesse B. Aikin (diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1969)
M.L. Smith, ed.: Give the World a Smile: a Compilation of Songs by Frank H. Stamps with a Story of his Life by Mrs. Frank Stamps (Wesson, MS, 1969)
P.M. Hall: The ‘Musical Million’: a Study and Analysis of the Periodical Promoting Music Reading through Shape-Notes in North America from 1870 to 1914 (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1970)
D.D. Horn: Sing to me of Heaven (Gainesville, FL, 1970)
J.R. Baxter and V. Polk: Biographies of Gospel Song Writers (Dallas, 1971)
E.C. Krohn: Missouri Music (New York, 1971)
J.L. Fleming: James D. Vaughan, Music Publisher, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, 1912–1964 (diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1971)
D.L. Crouse: The Work of Allen D. Carden and Associates in the Shape-Note Tunebooks ‘The Missouri Harmony’, ‘Western Harmony’ and ‘United States Harmony’ (diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1972)
R.A.B. Harley: Ananias Davisson, Southern Tune Book Compiler (1780–1857) (diss., U. of Michigan, 1972)
J.W. Scholten: The Chapins: a Study of Men and Sacred Music West of the Alleghenies, 1795–1842 (diss., U. of Michigan, 1972)
D. Patterson and J. Garst: Introduction to J.G. McCurry: The Social Harp (Athens, GA, 1973) [facs.]
D.D. Bruce: And they All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 (Knoxville, TN, 1974)
J.F. Reed: Anthony J. Showalter (1858–1924): Southern Educator, Publisher, Composer (diss., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1975)
D.J. Dyen: The Role of Shape-Note Singing in the Musical Culture of Black Communities in Southeast Alabama (diss., U. of Illinois, 1977)
B.E. Cobb: Sacred Harp: a Tradition and its Music (Athens, GA, 1978), 2/1989
R.J. Stanislaw: A Checklist of Four-Shape Shape-Note Tunebooks (Brooklyn, NY, 1978)
E.J. Lorenz: Glory Hallelujah! The Story of the Camp-Meeting Spiritual (Nashville, TN, 1980)