11/19/2022 0 Comments Primitive quartet songbook![]() In recent years it has been adopted by those in the national shape note revival who are drawn to the slow, contemplative pace of the singing style, to the attentiveness of the singers to its exquisitely wrought poetic texts, and to the reverential demeanor of its traditional singers.Īfter a lengthy period with a single edition, The Sacred Harp underwent two separate revisions in the early decades of the twentieth century. Lloyd's hymn book is still available, kept in print over the years by the Lloyd family and more recently by a Primitive Baptist publishing company. Over the intervening generations of Primitive Baptists, this book has accumulated the invested sentiments of those who love the old sound. Primitive Hymns was compiled for the Primitive Baptist Church as a means to retain traditional worship practices during a time when there was much turmoil among Baptists over the modernization of worship. But they were retained in those churches which shunned the introduction of printed music or musical instruments. In the nineteenth century, hymn books began to gradually be replaced by church hymnals as the prevailing source for American Protestant worship music. The rich harmony that you hear is improvised-a consequence of the musical facility accumulated by countless years' experience singing harmonic arrangements. In listening to the performance by the group, remember that the singers are not using printed music. It is sung first by Terry and Sheila as a duet and then led by Terry at the cousins' singing. In the film we hear the text "Sweet is the day of sacred rest" to the tune "Primrose" sung from The Sacred Harp and then in the closing scene sung by Freeman to the tune "Kedron." We also hear #109 from Primitive Hymns, "O Jesus, my Saviour, I know thou art mine" sung to a tune Terry learned from his grandfather. Like many traditional fasola singers, earlier generations of Woottens learned hymn singing from Lloyd's hymn book before they were exposed to Sacred Harp. Hymn books were once widely used in churches, and it was their supposedly undisciplined sound that eighteenth century tunebook promotors sought to improve. We now think of texts and tunes as inextricably linked in hymn book singing a text may be sung to any tune that accommodates its poetic meter. With hymn books, the congregation sings tunes from memory, sometimes prompted by a song leader "lining out" each line before it is sung. Hymn books, which are collections of religious poetry presented without music, derive from an era before tunebooks, which, like The Sacred Harp, contain printed music. Lloyd's Primitive Hymns is a hymn book compiled by Benjamin Lloyd of Coosa County, Alabama, and first published in 1841 for the Primitive Baptist church. The most important revisions occurred in 1911, 1936, and 1991. Revisions can involve dramatic changes where many songs are removed or added. The book's endurance is usually attributed to the democratic convention system and to its numerous reprintings and revisions. Of hundreds of books of its kind, The Sacred Harp itself has achieved by far the lengthiest tenure of active use and the widest geographical spread. The text "Amazing Grace," for example, appears under more than one tune, one of which is the familiar "New Britain." Most of the texts are taken from the celebrated canon of eighteenth century English-language religious poetry others are from nineteenth century campmeeting songsters or are traditional folk hymns. Thus "tunebooks"-so named because they included printed tunes-used the names of the tune as the title and might include several tunes for a single text. Hymn texts at that time were commonly sung to any of a number of tunes. The book is representative of a time when tunes and texts were not inextricably linked as they are today. To these were added campmeeting songs, with their familiar refrains, as well as strophic hymns and secular songs. Its prevailing musical style, which accounts for its signature fugues and anthems, was crafted by America's first composers during the so-called "golden age" of the New England singing schools. The Sacred Harp includes many songs from a common repertory shared by other tunebooks of its era, supplemented by songs composed or arranged by singers from the book's own tradition. The Sacred Harp uses the shape note system introduced in Little and Smith's The Easy Instructor around 1800. Its roots lie in the singing school movement begun in New England during the 1720s, in which singing masters compiled books of music instruction designed to teach note reading for singing in churches. The Sacred Harp is a shape-note tunebook first published in 1844 in Hamilton, Georgia, and used for congregational singing. ![]()
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