Pat Keating's personal page for Sacred Harp materials

What happens when a professional researcher with a webpage becomes an amateur but enthusiastic Sacred Harp singer?   ::Things done for fun get posted in case someone else might also find them fun or useful:

• contents of several early shapenote tunebooks (from the first 50 years of shapenote books) - about 800 songs altogether - compiled so that the most popular tunes can be identified: click here for spreadsheet file (last updated 10/1/02).  The tunebooks included are:
• The Easy Instructor, orig. 1801, edition of 1816
• Kentucky Harmony, orig. 1816, facsimile copy, Augsberg Publishing House, 1976
• The Missouri Harmony, orig. 1820, facsimile copy of 1840 ninth edition, U. Nebraska Press, 1994
• Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, orig. 1810, republication of 1820 fifth edition, DaCapo Press, 1974
• Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, orig. 1813, republication of 1820 second edition, DaCapo Press, 1964
• Virginia Harmony, orig. 1831, 1836 2nd edition
• Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, fifth printing of 1854 edition, U. Kentucky Press, 1987
and also noted are whether the tunes in those books appear in The Sacred Harp (1991) - or, if not in (1991), then whether in the (1860) edition issued in facsimile - and in The Core Repertory of Early American Psalmody, ed. Richard A. Crawford (Recent Researches in American Music Volumes XI and XII, A-R Editions, Madison 1984).  In the spreadsheet, yellow rows indicate songs that appear in 5 of the 7 books and also in The Sacred Harp (1991), while blue rows indicate songs that likewise appear in 5 of the 7 books but not in The Sacred Harp.  (There may well be errors in the spreadsheet, and if you see any, please let me know.)
 
• a listing of tunes in Crawford 1984 (which compiles "representative versions of the 101 sacred pieces most often printed in America between 1698 and 1810"), referenced by shapenote books in which each tune can be found (and almost all of them are in one tunebook or another, so one can sing one's fasola way through Crawford): click here for spreadsheet file (last updated Jan. 2003 with many contributions from Berkley Moore, whose help is gratefully acknowledged).  The shapenote tunebooks are sorted into categories according to availability.
• "In-print shapenote sources" are those for which editions or facsimiles are currently in print and readily available: not only the 1991 Denson edition of the Sacred Harp, but also the 1860 edition of Sacred Harp (SH 1860 - available online, and from Amazon.com for $89), the Cooper edition (Cooper), the Southern Harmony (SoHarm - available online, and from Amazon.com for $23), Northern Harmony (NoHarm), the Missouri Harmony (MissHarm - available from Amazon.com for $12), and Eclectic Harmony I (EclecHarm)
• "Out-of-print shapenote sources" are those for which the published facsimile is out-of-print but potentially still widely available from libraries and used book sellers: Wyeth's Repository (Wyeth), Wyeth's Repository Part Second (Wyeth Second), Social Harp (SocHarp) and Kentucky Harmony (KentHarm).
• "Obscure shapenote sources" have no facsimile versions, but library special collections may have originals: here, just Easy Instructor (EasyInstr - almost always a copy available, for a price, through Abebooks.com) and Virginia Harmony (VirgHarm).
• "7-shape sources" which are readily available, even though their use in "fasola"ing through Crawford is limited: Harmonia Sacra (HarmSacra), Christian Harmony (ChrHarm), New Harp of Columbia, and the second book of Eclectic Harmony (EclecHarmII).  (Harmonia Sacra versions are included only if no more than 1 part is different from the Crawford version; cases where Harmonia Sacra has the same tune, but other parts different, are not included here.)

• information about our region's closing song, Bridgewater (276), including scans of versions from different tunebooks: click here

• some quotes taken from Billings's introductions to his books, giving his opinions about sharp vs. flat keys, doubling of parts by men and women, beating the different time signatures, pitching, singing, accenting: click here

• traditional Christmas carols matched to metrically appropriate songs from The Sacred Harp: click here

• (someday, not soon)  Notes on whether the sixth is raised in recorded performances of minor tunes in The Sacred Harp

• link to Bruce's page of some songs set, or re-set, into shapes
  

 


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