Archive for the 'Reading list' Category

I couldn’t be at the local singing this week, so a post on some reading I’ve been doing.

Many — probably most — of today’s Sacred Harp singers, if they consider the matter at all, would assume that by the middle of the nineteenth century, the singing school tradition had died out in New England. But the singing school persisted in the rural areas of northern New England through the nineteenth century. Northern New England in the nineteenth century was a remote, rural region — even a frontier region — in the northern Appalachians, and it had more in common with the rural South than with urban New England. I do not believe they were using shape notes, but nevertheless they were conducting singing schools.

Jennifer C. Post, in her book Music in Rural New England: Family and Community Life, 1870-1940 (Durham, N.H.: University of New Hampshire Press, 2004), reports on a mid-nineteenth century Vermonter who attended singing schools:

Charles Cobb (1835-1903) of Woodstock, Vermont, provided information on his attendance at “singing school” in his mid-nineteenth century diary. He notes that the earliest singing school he went to was in 1845, and in 1850 he was reluctant to go during a period when his voice was changing. He went often with his mother during this period (though he noted that his mother attended on her own as well). In 1854 he wrote about a friend who attended the singing school with him, providing rare details of the event that include references to issue pertaining to economic value, sociability, aesthetic concerns, lyrical content, and performance practice:

“He has bought a singing book & paid 58 cents and is impatient to get his money’s worth. He starched up & went to singing school Jan. 1 — I went also — they bawled some psalm tunes, out of tune, in such a manner that the words could barely be heard only by those who had them before their eyes, and to close off, thing singing master (Oscar Perkins), Harvey Vaughan and Smith the schoolmaster sung some funny songs accompanying on Vaughan’s melodeon. After such a monotonous and universal howling it was a treat to hear some real singing.

I note with interest that some of this sounds quite familiar: after my first singing school I went and bought a singing book and yes I did want to get my money’s worth out of that book; when I go to a convention I “starch up,” that is, put on good clothes; and I’ve been to one or two singings where I’ve heard psalm tunes bawled out of tune so that you couldn’t understand the words (and I’ve been guilty of some bawling myself).

Post goes on to note that in some rural regions in northern New England, the first singing schools were not established until the mid-nineteenth century; in Colebrook, New Hampshire, the first singing school was not established until 1870. This is not so different from the course of events in the South, where singing schools were established through the mid-nineteenth century.

Today, we Sacred Harp singers tend to think of conventions and all-day singings and shaped notes as the defining features of our tradition. But we still call the group that gathers at a convention a “class,” and shape notes are merely a pedagogical tool to help us learn sight singing. I’d argue that the conventions and all-day singings were built on the foundation of the singing school. If we think of ourselves as part of a broader singing school tradition, that might mean we have some interesting musical cousins outside Sacred Harp singing.

I found a copy of Makers of the Sacred Harp by Warren Steel at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco a few eeks ago, and since then the book has been sitting in our bathroom, and I’ve been dipping into it now and then. It’s an odd book, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

On the one hand, it should be an indispensable reference work for anyone who sings Sacred Harp music from the 1991 Denson edition, very much in the tradition of the various “Companions” to different hymnals. However, usually a hymnal companion will have information on both the authors of the texts as well as the composers. Steel made the odd decision to include very little information about authors of texts, saying this information is widely available in other reference works — but the whole point of a hymnal companion is to have a one-volume reference work. And I wonder how many Sacred Harp singers are going to have access to a collection of biographies of hymn writers — I’m a working minister, and I don’t have such a reference work. So while this is a good reference work for learning about composers, this book is not what I’d consider to be an adequate one-volume reference work.

If this book is not going to be an adequate one-volume reference for the average singer, I’d expect it it to instead be a work aimed at scholars. But I can’t say it is that, either. There is good scholarly work contained in this book, and any scholar who’s interested in Sacred Harp singing will want it. Having said that, there are some bits that are not particularly scholarly, e.g., the chapter on Sacred Harp and the Civil War has too much on the war (material most scholars won’t bother paying attention to, since it’s not based original research), and not enough on the music. Given that Steel de-emphasized authors of texts so much, I expected more scholarly work on the musical aspects of Sacred Harp, and while some of that is in here, there’s not enough to make this a scholarly work per se.

So the book represents something of a compromise between a work for the non-specialist Sacred Harp enthusiast, and a work for scholars; it’s not quite either fish or fowl. But it’s still a book that most Sacred Harp singers will want to own, if for no other reason than to finally learn who Deolph was.

We’ve been working on setting up Bay Area Sacred Harp as an unincorporated association; up until now, money for conventions and all-day singings got ran through checking accounts of an individual member of BASH, which is not an ideal situation for anyone. California state law allows for unincorporated associations — an easy and cheap way to set up a group entity that legally can have a bank account.

I was one of the people who helped draft the bylaws. We tried to balance the traditions of Sacred Harp singings against the need for fiscal and organizational protection. So, for example, most Sacred Harp business meetings take place during an all-day singing or convention, and everyone present is automatically a member. But what do you do if the organization needs to hold a special business meeting in between annual conventions? — an unlikely occurrence, but a possibility that should be allowed for. And how can you provide at least some protection from the possibility that unscrupulous people could take over control of the organization? — also unlikely but such takeovers have happened to other too-trusting nonprofits. I’m not sure we got the balance just right, but I do feel that managed to favor tradition to some extent over other considerations.

(Draft bylaws are online at the BASH Web site.)

I had a committee meeting tonight and could not attend the weekly Berkeley singing. Instead, a short reflection on an essay by Stephen Marini about Sacred Harp singing:

When he was writing Sacred Song in America, Stephen A. Marini spent seven years traveling across the United States finding out about American sacred song traditions. He participated in and listened to many different kinds of sacred singing, and he interviewed notable composers and performers of sacred song. Since he is a historian by trade, of course his book talks about the history of sacred song in the United States. The third chapter in the book, “Sacred Harp Singing,” is devoted entirely to the Sacred Harp singing tradition.

Marini has been singing Sacred Harp since the mid-1970s, and he is a central figure in the New England branch of the Northern revival. He not only has an intimate and first-person knowledge of key moments in the history of the Northern revival, he also knows a fair number of the most influential traditional Southern signers.

In “Sacred Harp Singing,” Marini tells us how Sacred Harp singing is a form of sacred song, although the way in which it is sacred may differ for Northern and Southern singers. He interviewed several prominent traditional Southern singers, and they told him that they explicitly consider Sacred Harp singing to be a form of sacred song. However, many Northern singers don’t talk about Sacred Harp music as being a form of sacred song and, says Marini, “the cultural divide between northern and southern singers could hardly be greater.” Many northern singers do say that they find something implicitly “sacred” in Sacred Harp singing, and some Northerners even talk about it as being sacred song. Yet even then, Northern notions of the sacredness of the music are typically different from, and less unified than, traditional southern notions. We could say that while traditional Southern singers are modernists, Northern revival singers are postmodernists.

Continue reading ‘Reading list: Sacred Song in America‘