Northern Harmony, our visiting friends from across the pond, will be with us on 20th March. We at The Village Quire are all very excited and looking forward to meeting our guests. Northern Harmony sing in a variety of different styles but at the core of their repertoire is a type of unaccompanied singing called shape note music. We thought that it might be of interest if we told you a little bit about this type of singing.
It all began in New England in the early years of the eighteenth century. At this time there was a practice of singing the psalms whereby the minister would sing one line which was then repeated by the congregation but in a much ornamented, drawn out and ad lib. way. It seems that each individual was pretty much free to, ‘do their own thing’! Can you imagine what that must have sounded like? By the 1720s, according to Larry Gordon from Northern Harmony, it was felt that: ‘...People had abandoned all semblance of the original written tunes and ... the anarchic use of ornaments, quavers, and turns of melody was resulting in cacophony’. To put all this right, a campaign grew up to teach ‘regular’ as opposed to ‘usual’ singing. It was this that led to the establishment of singing schools all over New England in the middle years of the eighteenth century.
One of the difficulties that trainee musicians complain of from time to time is that of learning to read music. Of course, if you have a school to teach ‘regular’ singing it will help if everyone is ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. Singing school teachers developed a simplified and readily accessible system of writing music. They came up with a, so called, ‘solmisation’ system a little like the famous one we all know from The Sound of Music : ‘Do: a deer; a female deer. Re: a drop of golden sun’, and so on. The American system was, however, more economical than this, using only four syllables: fa, sol, la and me. Thus, a major scale would be: fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, me, fa. Now we get to the ‘shape’ bit! Each of these syllables was represented by a note head of a different shape. Fa is shown with a triangular note head. Sol note heads are circular. La notes have square heads. Finally, me notes are distinguished by their diamond shaped heads. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: shape notes!
These shapes are still placed on the normal, five line, stave of music. I must say that this has led some members of the Village Quire to question the point of all these shapes! But, ‘ours is not to reason why’. They thought it might be useful in the eighteenth century and we are simply left with this interesting fact of musical history.
The music itself is fantastic; typically, vigorous and direct. Larry Gordon talks of the, ‘fiery and hard edged sound...’. It sounds like music that has come out of communities living hard, simple lives, close to the earth and the elements. Many of the texts set are from the pen of Isaac Watts whose popularity, says Gordon, comes from: ‘... the marvellous power of the language with which he expressed ... complex spiritual and emotional themes ...’. It’s great to sing and it’s great to listen to!
If you fancy a go at singing some shape note songs, these will be included in our singing workshop with Northern Harmony on 20th March. You don’t need to read music, shape or otherwise! Just enjoy singing and love a good tune (see separate workshop and concert details).