Where have they all gone
As I read old Crossville newspapers looking for interesting
facts from the past to put in the Looking Back column I enjoy
some chuckles, but often I am left with unanswered questions.
Many times there are brief announcements of a singing school
about to begin. I wanted to learn more about this activity, but
I found very little information on the subject.
And then one of those stranger than fiction occurences happened.
I was looking through catalogs in an office as I waited for my
appointment when I came across a sheet of paper with the heading
The Harpeth Valley Sacred Harp Newsletter. The return address
was Nashville, but there was no indication of who had received
it.
I mentioned it to the owner of the office and by that evening
I had an answer. It belonged to Marie Draudt, and she had just
attended one of their singings along with Faye Brandon. She added
that Faye owned a Sacred Harp song book. Mrs. Brandon kindly
loaned me the book, a reprint of the 1844 first edition, and
I had the answers to many of my questions.
The singing schools taught sacred harp singing, also called
shape-note or fasola singing. Sacred harp was an early term to
describe the human voice. The schools began on the east coast
in the early 1700s and as the country grew they spread westward
and into the South where they were fervently embraced.
This unique singing started in the churches of New England in
colonial days. The old Baptist church was actively involved as
the practice evolved. In those days there were no hymn books,
but the congregation took part in psalm singing as a regular
part of the service. Actually they chanted the words. A deacon
lined out a psalm by reading the line, and then the people repeated
it. It must have been like sing-a-longs where the audience follows
the bouncing ball.
At first there was no written music, but those early colonists
from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales remembered tunes that
had been handed down for hundreds of years. There were old love
songs and ballads, but they soon put biblical poetry to those
tunes.
The chanting proved to be less than inspirational, and in
1721 a minister took action. With the assistance of a friend,
two tune books with notes were published. The notes of the scale
were shown with different shaped heads. Fa was a triangle, sol
a circle, la a square and mi a diamond shape. These four note
designations were from the Old English. It was many years later
that do, re, mi was introduced in Europe, and found its way into
American cities in the East.
Thus singing schools were born to teach this new skill. Early
on, some of the church folks looked on this new diversion with
suspicion. But because hymns were used and the teaching was done
in churches and schools, they grudgingly accepted this new method.
Young people were enthusiastic about the whole thing because
they met the opposite sex in a perfectly acceptable setting.
There was never a problem getting the youth to attend singing
schools.
There was no accompaniment for the hymns taught in the singing
by note classes which usually ran from two to three weeks. Teachers
were most often itinerant musicians who traveled from village
to village. Some used a blackboard as well as tune books. These
books were and are today oblong and measure about 6 inches tall
and 8 to 10 inches wide.
The participants formed a hollow square. The tenors who carried
the melody sat together on one side, the bass on another, the
treble on the third side and finally the altos completed the
square. With the exception of the bass singers, men and women
together sang the other parts. The singing master took his place
in the middle of the square and set the tempo and established
the pitch with a tuning fork. There were both three-part and
four-part tunes. First the singers spoke the notes until they
felt comfortable to sing them.
Eventually there were some old folk tunes added to the books.
Voices rang out lustily, often accompanied with foot-stamping
and arms swinging. The singings were embraced by the South, and
they became a standard part of camp meetings and all-day social
gatherings. They were so popular that there were at least 21
Southern shape-note hymnals on the market in the 1800s.
There has been a rebirth of singing conventions or singing
schools across the nation today from Maine to California. In
many places Vermont, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama the custom
never stopped.
Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident whose column
is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.
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