shape note singers and scale

The Harmonia Sacra

Posted by

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Cover of Harmonia Sacra

Go to Harrisonburg, Virginia and you’ll find them in just about any of the numerous old, old Mennonite churches in the area. They’re “Old Folks Singings,” an event unique to that religious group in that region. People filter in and out of the one-room churches, picnic in the church yard, rub tombstones if the church has a cemetery. And sing hymns. In some communities there is 100 percent participation in the singing. Their songbook is and has been since 1832 The Harmonia Sacra. No other hymnal in the English language has had such a long lifespan of constant use in any Christian denomination. Indeed, many of the families of Harrisonburg have also been in the area since the mid-1800’s — Buckwalters and Hosslers, Stutzmans and Brubakers.

The original Harmonia Sacra was a “four-shape” shape note book using the shapes and syllables “faw, sol, law, and mi.” Joseph Funk designed A Compilation of Genuine Church Music for use in singing schools. It contained 208 pages, including rudiments of music and tunes harmonized for three voices. In the early 20th century the singing consisted primarily of German hymns; however, not the slow tunes used in the church services. The 17th edition of 1878 was the one widely in use during the Depression era.

“The different musical grammar of these hymns makes them sound fresh, rugged, and often rough-hewn. As the layout suggests, this music is written as melodic parts, not in chords. Each line is an individual composition against the principal melody… In this style of hymnody each singer chooses any line which is comfortable, and then focuses on expressing that part, that personalized manifestation of the words. The parts do not necessarily form the identifiable and static chords which a modern congregation might encounter together in an improvised harmonization.”
—Review of The Harmonia Sacra, 25th ed.
Bradley Lehman, 1995 for Mennonite Quarterly Review

Songs of Appalachia: Shape note singing

Sources: http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/harplinks.html
http://www.mcusa-archives.org/MennObits/40/jul1940.html
http://www.mcusa-archives.org/MennObits/43/oct1943.html
https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Harmonia_sacra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonia_Sacra
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/hsreview.html
http://www.blueridge.net/~larryb/larryxh.html

More articles on shape note singing:

The origins of Old Harp singing, part 1 of 2(Opens in a new browser tab)

The origins of Old Harp singing, part 2 of 2(Opens in a new browser tab)

3 comments

  1. Yes, It contained 208 pages, including rudiments of music and tunes harmonized for three voices. Thanks for sharing your post

  2. I’ve just enjoyed reading your article on Joseph Funk and his shape note hymnal, Harmonia Sacra. We now have a new non-profit society who’s purpose is to preserve and promote the influence of the Joseph Funk family on sacred music in the Shenandoah Valley and beyond.

    A few critiques of this article include the fact that there were 2 editions of the hymn book printed after the 1878 one, and before the depression; the 18th in 1915 and the 19th in 1923 which would likely have been the ones used during the depression. (The book is now in it’s 27th edition.) The picture accompanying the article actually refers to a much older European hymn collection not related at all to this Harmonia Sacra. Sam Showalter, Exec.Dir. Harmonia Sacra Society

Leave a Reply