Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Singing Schools and Shape Notes

by Ramona K. Cecil






I can’t sing a lick. When my daughters were young and misbehaved, I sometimes threatened to sing to them if they didn’t behave themselves. They begged for any other punishment and immediately became little angels.

 

Despite my lack of singing ability, a good singing voice is something I’ve always admired and coveted. A desire to express one’s self in song has inhabited the human soul since the dawn of mankind. Worldwide, the music business is a multi-billion dollar industry.

 

So it’s not surprising that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the average person enjoyed few cultural opportunities, singing schools became a popular social activity.

 

The rural singing school first emerged in England in the late 1600s. English immigrants brought the idea to America, and the first American singing school appeared in New England in 1720. Originally developed to improve singing in churches, the singing school soon became an important social and cultural activity.

 






1800s Singing School
As Americans moved westward they took the idea of the singing school with them. Itinerant singing school masters would hold school for two weeks to a month, generally during the winter months, in a local school house or church building. For a fee of fifty to seventy-five cents per pupil, the singing master would school his rural vocalists in the art of singing a cappella by reading shape notes, often called “buckwheat” notes because they resembled buckwheat seeds.

 

In shape note singing, invented in 1801, students learn to read music by associating the particular shape of a note with a corresponding music syllable. The four-note system used fa, sol, la, and mi, while the seven note system used do, re, mi, fa, sol, la and ti. This method was thought to help singers otherwise illiterate in reading music find the correct pitch. Though melodious, shape note singing can sound a bit halting and stilted.



 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The group will sing the song through first replacing words with fa sol la mi, then will sing the song using the words.  
 
 
 
 
During the 1800s, singing schools using the shape note method became wildly popular, especially west of the Alleghenies. While both sacred and secular music was taught in the singing schools, most of the songs were sacred since the 
Sacred Harp sing school class
1892 Macedonia Primitive Baptist
original purpose of the schools was to improve singing in churches. Books like Kentucky Harmony, Missouri Harmony, Southern Harmony, and Sacred Harp printed in the four shape notation, became popular in protestant congregation of the South and the southern Midwest. I remember hymnals with the “funny shaped notes” as a child in southern Indiana.
 
 

 
         










Today, groups such as the Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association are devoted to keeping the art of shape note singing alive. Holding all day or multi-day singing conventions complete with traditional pot-luck dinners on the grounds, they continue to train the singing challenged. 

Mt. Union Sacred Harp Singers

 











Could learning to read shape notes help to improve my singing voice? It’s doubtful, but maybe worth a try. Have you heard of shape note singing or even tried it? I’d love to hear your story.   

 
Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

                                                                                                                      

20 comments:

  1. Thanks for your interesting post, Ramona. I'd never heard of shape notes. What a clever concept.

    I'm curious. You said, "Though melodious, shape note singing can sound a bit halting and stilted." Why is that? I'm not a musically gifted person, so I don't see why the shape of the notes would make a difference.

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    1. Keli, my guess is that it's because once the students learned to sing very specifically to the notes, they might not be as willing (or knowledgeable) about singing outside the "notes" as it were.

      The best example that I can give is my brother-in-law who's an accomplished musician...about the only thing he can't play is the bagpipes his wife gave him for Christmas many years ago, and he gave up too soon on those. I think the screeching made my sister-in-law regret the gift! lol

      He played the saxophone in high school and was the absolute best sax player they had, but was never 1st Chair. That's because he didn't bother to read the music...as a matter of fact, I'm not even sure he COULD read the music. He just listened to the others and played this amazing sax. But the guy/girl who played every note perfectly would have been 1st chair because they were following the notes, aka the "rules".

      Both types of playing ... by note and by ear ... can be beautiful, but generally, music played by ear will be more fluid and pleasing to the ear than music played strictly by note, unless the musician is extremely talented.

      This is just my opinion... and the fact that I'm NOT a musician and it's early and I haven't had my coffee means I should probably delete this whole comment because it's probably completely FALSE!

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    2. Thanks for the explanation, Pam. Makes sense to me. Perhaps the reason I never did well in choir is because I was too busy trying to learn the rules instead of immersing myself in the music. Had I lived back in the days of shape notes, I could have been one of those with the halting, stilted voices.

      When it comes to singing praise songs in church, what I lack in musical prowess, I make up for in movement. I do enjoying swaying to the beat. I'm what one of our pastors referred to as and "enthusiastic worshiper."

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    3. We're pretty enthusiastic worshipers at our church too. Nice to meet another swayer! :)

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    4. Hi, Keli. Pam gave a great answer. In shape not singing, each note is sung individually so the notes don't quite flow together as we are used to hearing in singing. Listen to the video I of the Alabama Sacred Harp singers and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

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  2. I remember shape note singing with my grandmother when I was a little girl. I thought they looked so funny in the song books we used, and I had no idea what all the shapes meant. I played the piano and could read music, so I sang right along with the group. I never did learn what those notes meant until today. Thanks for an interesting and informative post. I learned something today that I hadn't thought about in nearly 70 years.

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed the post, Martha. Like you, I, too, had noticed the "funny" shaped notes in the hymnals as a youngster. Several year ago a Civil War era movie called "Cold Mountain" featured this type of singing. I found it interesting, but still didn't associate it with the oddly shaped notes I'd seen in hymnals years ago. I was also interested to learn that there are groups like the Sacred Harp that have kept that style of singing alive.

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  3. My husband's grandmother who's from a musically gifted family, talks a lot about singing schools and shaped notes from her childhood.

    Like Keli, I'm not musically gifted, even though I've taught myself to play by "ear" just a tiny bit. Just simple chording. Since I never practice, even that has fallen by the wayside. :( But when I first bought my antique upright piano and wanted to learn to play by note, Mamaw Lorene felt that playing shaped notes would be easier to learn, and it really is. She made me a shape note "key" out of a long strip of poster board... think the size of a ruler, but extended. You place the key on the backsplash behind the keyboard. The shaped notes on the "key" matched the shaped notes in the song book and on the piano keys, so it speed up the process of learning if you're just attempting to learn on your own without a teacher.

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  4. I've heard of the shaped notes (voice major in another life) but had never heard it. THANK YOU! Love the idea that it's being preserved. The idea that one would have to MAKE music to HEAR music is so foreign to our modern day experience. Sometimes I wonder what our young people would do if they were sent back in time to a rural setting in 1870. The silence would freak them out.

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    1. Hi, Stephanie! You are so welcome. I really enjoyed researching this post. I think you're right; most people now days wouldn't know how to function in a 19th Century setting. I think silence would be only one of the things that would freak them out. LOL

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  5. Wow, thanks, Ramona. I never heard of shape note singing before. I'll have to keep an eye out and see if it ever caught on in Canada.

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    1. Hi, Anita. I'm not sure if shape note singing found its way up to Canada, but I'm guessing it probably did. That would be something interesting to look into.

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  6. Ramona, what an interesting post. I never knew any of this info before. I sing in our church choir now, and took piano as a child. I've seen the funny-looking notes before (somewhere in my life), but never knew the story behind them. Thanks for enlightening me.

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    1. Hi, Marilyn! You are so welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the post. Like I'd mentioned before, I had noticed the oddly shaped notes in old hymnals, but didn't know why they were shaped that way. Not being musically inclined, I didn't give it much thought. While researching Indiana history for one of my books, I came across information about the singing schools and that's when I learned about shape note singing.

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  7. I had never heard of this... I was in band & played the piano but didn't know this about the notes... thanks that was such fun information...

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  8. Hi, Deanna! Glad you enjoyed the post. Shape note singing is nearly lost to history, but I was surprised to find groups that still keep this method of singing alive. Thanks for stopping by!

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  9. What an interesting post! I had not heard of shape note singing until now. Thank you for sharing, Ramona.

    texaggs2000 at gmail dot com

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  10. Hi, Britney! I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I agree. Shape note singing is a fascinating art. I'm glad there are groups that have preserved it. Thanks for stopping by!

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  11. This is really fun. I have a friend on FB that sings on a shape note cd. I couldn't quite picture what shape note sounded like then I listened to the clips. http://amzn.to/1xVhZeG Exiting to learn about an old way to sing.

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  12. Hi, Diana! Glad you enjoyed the post. Shape note singing really does sound unique. I first heard about it several years ago when I watched the movie Cold Mountain. It popped up again when I was researching singing schools in Indiana history. I love unearthing interesting historical tidbits! Thanks for stopping by!

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