The Roots of Southern Harmony: Exploring Shape-Note Singing
- Victoria Sullivan
- Nov 18
- 4 min read
On December 15th at 7:30 pm, Crestwood Christian Church will host Musick's Company once again for our annual Christmas Concert, where we will be celebrating the music of Appalachia and the South. In particular, our singers have challenged themselves with a new technique: Southern shape-note singing, one of the foundational building blocks of our program. If you're wondering what shape-note is and how it found its way to the United States, read on!
One of the oldest forms of music in America, shape-note singing has endured since 1801 (at least). During the 19th century, it thrived as an important form of education and socializing, and persists both in Appalachia and across the world. However, to understand where shape-note began requires a bit more digging. Shape-note singing, sometimes referred to as Sacred Harp, uses "sol-fa-mi-la" as placeholders for traditional notation, and assigns these notes different shapes — a triangle for “fa,” an oval for “sol” and so on — to indicate each note’s pitch. This helps singers easily sight-read and learn new pieces of music. Though less familiar to trained musicians of today, amateur singers with no formal musical education benefit greatly from this system.
If that technique sounds kind of familiar, it should -- shape-note can trace its origins all the way back to the solmization system: the beginnings of notated music. Guido d’Arezzo, an 11th-century Italian monk, assigned the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la to the six-note series—or hexachord—that corresponds to what are now recognized as the first six degrees of the major scale. In 16th-century England, singers discovered they could operate effectively with only four syllables (mi, fa, sol, and la), and eventually English colonists carried the four-syllable system to North America.
At the same time, on the European continent, the hexachord expanded to seven syllables, one for each note in the major scale (in Italy, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and si) -- the system made famous by Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music". While the seven-syllable system ultimately dominated in composition during the 19th century in England and America, shape notation has been adapted to both the four-note fasola and the seven-note doremi system.
Now that we better understand the theoretical underpinnings of shape-note singing, one has to wonder: why did shape-note find so much success in 19th century America? As with many sociocultural movements, it took root as a response to another movement: eighteenth-century rationalism. America was founded by logical deists who championed science and questioned the nature of God himself, and many religious folks believed their mindset would imperil and threaten their very souls. Their reaction was startling and extreme, ushering in the Great Awakening in the U.S. This movement was marked by "camp revivals", where groups of people gathered to worship in dramatic fashion. Author Frances Trollope describes one such meeting in her 1832 travel book, Domestic Manners:
"About a hundred persons came forward, uttering howlings and groans so terrible that I shall never cease to shudder when I recall them," she recalled with a shudder. "They appeared to drag each other forward, and on the word being given 'Let us pray,' they all fell on their knees; but this posture was soon changed for others that permitted greater scope for the movements of their limbs; and they were all soon lying on the ground in an indescribable confusion of heads and legs."
Like much of Southern and Appalachian culture, shape-note came together as a mish-mash of influences, and to this day there's no single tradition that truly dominates. Most groups adhere to one of two twentieth-century versions of 1844 "Sacred Harp" book. The B. F. White Sacred Harp, also known as the Cooper revision, has a wide distribution in the lowland South, from Texas to northern Florida. The Sacred Harp, also known as the Denson revision, has a smaller traditional territory—the upland northern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi—and is a some what more traditional book. In mountainous eastern Tennessee, "Old Harp" groups sing from The New Harp of Columbia, first published in 1867 in Nashville. In this book there are seven shapes for the syllables do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. Seven-shape singers regard the four-shape method—the repetition of syllables and shapes within an octave—as too complicated rather than too simple, while four-shape singers consider seven-shape unnecessary.
After the Civil War, African Americans created a unique form of shape-note singing of their own. Folk music collector Alan Lomax wrote about southern music in general, the isolation of the South fostered the "growth of two separate, hybrid traditions, which were similar enough to permit a back-and-forth movement of songs, but sufficiently different to keep this exchange a stimulating one." The first collection of African American compositions, called The Colored Sacred Harp, was published in 1934 by Judge Jackson, a farmer and businessman in southeastern Alabama. Though largely in keeping with the New England models, some of the parts sometimes incorporate a call and response, a form brought from Africa, and also includes gospel-style embellishments.
By no means is this form of worship extinct; shape-note singing and "revival-style" worship both live on in Appalachia, the South, and throughout the world. That said, it's not hard to see how this tradition aligns with Musick's Company and its dedication to presenting early music. This form of music has existed for nearly a millenia, and its legacy continues today. We hope that you'll join us on Dec. 15th at 7:30 pm, at Crestwood Christian Church, to experience shape-note for yourself.
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