For the first 45 minutes of tonight’s singing, there were no altos. We had close to 20 singers, so it’s not like there was a light turnout; it was just one of those quirks of fate that no altos showed up. It was interesting to hear four-part songs without an alto part: some songs sounded empty, some sounded more Sacred-Harp-y.
I got to thinking: wouldn’t it be fun to sing to think of songs in the book that were originally written without an alto part? But what were they? I tried to sing while madly paging through the index. Distress — wasn’t Distress originally written with only three parts? I couldn’t remember. But Devotion, I was quite sure Devotion appeared in William Walker’s Southern Harmony with only three parts. But was that the first time Devotion appeared in print? I thought it probably was.
I was all ready to lead Devotion. But then one of our best alto singers arrived, 45 minutes late. When my turn arrived to lead a song, I passed.
Replaces a post that disappeared during problems with my Web hosting service.