Shape note
Encyclopedia

Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. The notation, introduced in 1801, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools. Shapes were added to the note heads in written music to help singers find pitches within major and minor scales without the use of more complex information found in key signatures on the staff.

Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of music traditions, mostly sacred but also secular, originating in New England, practiced primarily in the Southern region of the United States for many years, and now experiencing a renaissance in other locations as well.

Shape notes

The idea behind shape notes is that the parts of a vocal work can be learned more quickly and easily if the music is printed in shapes that match up with the solfege
Solfege
In music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...

 syllables with which the notes of the musical scale are sung. For instance, in the four-shape tradition used in the Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...

 and elsewhere, the notes of a C major scale are notated and sung as follows:

A skilled singer experienced in a shape note tradition has developed a fluent triple mental association, which links a note of the scale, a shape, and a syllable. This association can be used to help in reading the music.
When a song is first sung by a shape note group, they normally sing the syllables (reading them from the shapes) to solidify their command over the notes. Next, they sing the same notes to the words of the music.

The syllables and notes of a shape note system are relative rather than absolute; they depend on the key of the piece. The first note of a major key always has the triangular Fa note, followed (ascending) by Sol, La, etc. The first note of a minor key is always La, followed by Mi, Fa, etc.

The first three notes of (any) major scale - fa, sol, la - are each a tone apart. The fourth to sixth notes are also a tone apart and are also fa, sol, la. The seventh and eighth notes, being separated by a semitone, are indicated mi-fa. This means that just four shapenotes can adequately reflect the "feel" of the whole scale.

Some refer to this as a moveable "do" system.

Four-shape vs. seven-shape systems

The system illustrated above is a four-shape system; six of the notes of the scale are grouped in pairs assigned to one syllable/shape combination. The syllables of this system date back to Elizabethan times in England, although the shapes are younger (see below). The other important systems are seven-shape systems, which give a different shape and syllable to every note of the scale. Such systems use as their syllables the note names "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do" familiar to most people. A few books (e.g. "The Good Old Songs" by C. H. Cayce) present the older seven-note syllabization of "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si, do". In the seven-shape system invented by Jesse B. Aikin
Jesse B. Aikin
Jesse Bowman Aikin was a shape note "singing master", and compiler of the shape note tunebook The Christian Minstrel. Aikin was the first to produce a song book with a seven-shape note system. He vigorously defended his "invention" and his patent, which included the elimination of bass and treble...

, the notes of a C major scale would be notated and sung as follows:

For other seven-shape systems, see http://fasola.org/introduction/note_shapes.html.

The effectiveness of shape notes

Whether or not shape notes actually facilitate learning music is disputed. Most modern participants in shape note traditions would probably argue that they do. On the other hand, newcomers to shape note singing who can already read music may feel that the shapes do not help, though the task of learning to use them might perhaps be enjoyed as a novel musical challenge.

A controlled study on the usefulness of shape notes was carried out in the 1950s by George H. Kyme with an experimental population consisting of fourth and fifth graders living in California. Kyme took care to match his experimental and control groups as closely as possible for ability, quality of teacher, and various other factors. He found that the students taught with shape notes learned to sight read significantly
Statistical significance
In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher....

 better than those taught without them. Kyme additionally found that the students taught with shape notes were also far more likely to pursue musical activities later on in their education.

Shape notes and modulation

Many forms of music employ modulation
Modulation (music)
In music, modulation is most commonly the act or process of changing from one key to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature. Modulations articulate or create the structure or form of many pieces, as well as add interest...

, that is, a change of key in mid-piece. Modulation is problematic for shape note systems, since the shapes employed for the original key of the piece no longer match the scale degrees of the new key. At least some forms of shape note music, for instance Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...

 music, generally avoid modulation.

Origin and early history

See also: List of shape-note tunebooks


As noted above, the syllables of shape note systems greatly antedate the shapes. The practice of singing music to syllables designating pitch goes back to about AD 1000 with the work of Guido of Arezzo
Guido of Arezzo
Guido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido d'Arezzo was a music theorist of the Medieval era...

; other early work in this area includes the cipher notation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

 (18th century), and the tonic sol-fa of John Curwen
John Curwen
Reverend John Curwen was an English Congregationalist minister, and founder of the Tonic sol-fa system of music education. He was educated at Wymondley College and University College London.-Tonic sol-fa:...

 (19th century).

American forerunners to shape notes include the 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book
Bay Psalm Book
The Bay Psalm Book was the first book, that is still in existence, printed in British North America.The book is a Psalter, first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Psalms in it are metrical translations into English...

 (Boston), and An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes in a Plaine & Easy Method by Reverend John Tufts
John Tufts
John Tufts may refer to:*John Q. Tufts , American politician*John Tufts , early music educator...

. The 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book was printed with the initials of four-note syllables (fa, sol, la, me) underneath the staff. In his book, Tufts substituted the initials of the four-note syllables on the staff in place of note heads, and indicated rhythm by punctuation marks to the right of the letters.

Shape notes themselves probably date from late 18th century America. They appeared publicly at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when two publications came out using shaped note heads - The Easy Instructor by William Little and William Smith in 1801, and The Musical Primer by Andrew Law in 1803, intended for use in singing school
Singing school
Historically, singing schools have been strongly affiliated with Protestant Christianity. Some are held under the auspices of particular Protestant denominations that maintain a tradition of a cappella singing, such as the Church of Christ and the Primitive Baptists...

s. Little and Smith used the four-shape system shown above. Law's system had slightly different shapes: a square indicated fa and a triangle la, while sol and mi were the same as in Little and Smith. Law's invention was more radical than Little and Smith's in that he dispensed with the use of the staff altogether, letting the shapes be the sole means of expressing pitch. Little and Smith followed traditional music notation in placing the note heads on the staff, in place of the ordinary oval note heads. In the end, it was the Little/Smith system that won out, and there is no hymnbook used today that employs the Law system.

Andrew Law asserted that he was the inventor of shape notes. Little and Smith did not themselves claim credit for the invention, but said instead that the notes were invented around 1790 by John Connelly of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. They claimed that Connelly signed over the rights of his invention to them in 1798.

Shape notes proved popular in America, and quickly a wide variety of hymnbooks were prepared making use of them. The shapes were eventually extirpated in the northeastern U.S. by a so-called "better music" movement, headed by Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason was a leading figure in American church music, the composer of over 1600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His most well-known tunes include Mary Had A Little Lamb and the arrangement of Joy to the World...

. But in the South, the shapes became well entrenched, and multiplied into a variety of traditions. Ananias Davisson
Ananias Davisson
Ananias Davisson was a singing school teacher, printer and compiler of shape note tunebooks. Davisson was born February 2, 1780 in Shenandoah County, Virginia. He spent his last years living on a farm at Weyer's Cave, about 14 miles from Dayton, Virginia, and died October 21, 1857. He is buried in...

's Kentucky Harmony
Kentucky Harmony
The Kentucky Harmony is a shape note tunebook, published in 1816 by Ananias Davisson. It is generally considered the first Southern shape-note tunebook....

 is generally considered the first Southern shape-note tunebook.

The rise of seven-shape systems

By the middle of the 19th century, the "fa so la" system of four syllables had acquired a major rival, namely the seven-syllable "do re mi" system. Thus, music compilers began to add three more shapes to their books to match the extra syllables. Numerous seven-shape notations were devised. Jesse B. Aikin was the first to produce a book with a seven-shape note system, and he vigorously defended his "invention" and his patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

. The system used in Aikin's 1846 Christian Minstrel eventually became the standard. This owes much to the influential Ruebush & Kieffer Publishing Company adopting Aikin's system around 1876. Two books that have remained in continuous (though limited) use, William Walker
William Walker (composer)
William Walker was an American Baptist song leader, shape note "singing master", and compiler of four shape note tunebooks, most notable of which was The Southern Harmony.-Life:...

's Christian Harmony and M. L. Swan's New Harp of Columbia, are still available. These books use seven-shape systems devised by Walker and Swan, respectively.

Currently active shape note traditions

Although seven-shape books may not be as popular as in the past, there are still a great number of churches in the South, in particular Primitive Baptist
Primitive Baptist
Primitive Baptists, also known as Hard Shell Baptists or Anti-Mission Baptists, are conservative, Calvinist Baptists adhering to beliefs that formed out of the controversy among Baptists in the early 1800’s over the appropriateness of mission boards, bible tract societies, and temperance...

, Independent Fundamental Baptist, and Churches of Christ, as well as Conservative Mennonites
Conservative Mennonites
Conservative Mennonites include numerous groups who identify with the more conservative or traditional element among Mennonite or Anabaptist groups but not necessarily Old Order groups...

 throughout North America, that regularly use seven-shape songbooks in Sunday worship. These songbooks may contain a variety of songs from 18th century classics to 20th-century gospel music
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

. Thus today denominational songbooks printed in seven shapes probably constitute the largest branch of the shape note tradition.

In addition, nondenominational community singings are also intermittently held which feature early- to mid-20th century seven-shape gospel music such as Stamps-Baxter hymnals or Heavenly Highway. In these traditions, the custom of "singing the notes" (syllables) is generally only preserved during the learning process at singing schools and singing may be to an instrumental accompaniment, typically a piano.

The seven-shape system is also still used at regular public singings of 19th century songbooks of a similar type to the Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp
Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...

, such as the Christian Harmony
Christian Harmony
The Christian Harmony is a shape note hymn and tune book compiled by William Walker. The book was released in 1866¹. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note singing....

 and the New Harp of Columbia
New Harp of Columbia
The New Harp of Columbia is a seven-shape shape note tune book first published in 1867 in Knoxville, Tennessee by Marcus Lafayette Swan. This book was the successor to The Harp of Columbia published by W. H. and M. L. Swan in 1848....

. Such singings are common in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, and generally preserve the singing school custom of "singing the notes."

The four-shape tradition that currently has the greatest number of participants is Sacred Harp singing. But there are many other traditions that are still active or even enjoying a resurgence of interest. Among the four-shape systems, the Southern Harmony
Southern Harmony
The Southern Harmony is a shape note hymn and tune book compiled by William Walker. The book was released in 1835 under the full title of The Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note singing....

 has remained in continuous use at one singing in Benton, Kentucky
Benton, Kentucky
Benton is a city in Marshall County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 4,197 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Marshall County....

, and is now experiencing a small amount of regrowth. The current reawakening of interest in shape note singing has also created new singings using other recently moribund 19th-century four-shape songbooks, such as the Missouri Harmony
Missouri Harmony
The Missouri Harmony, first published in 1820, was the most popular of all frontier shape-note tune books during its reign. The 185 songs compiled in the collection were favorites used in Protestant churches and singing schools, and many were deeply rooted in American culture by the time of its...

, as well as new books by modern composers, such as the Northern Harmony. Thomas B. Malone has specialized in the revival of works by Jeremiah Ingalls, and has published a four-shape edition of Ingalls' 1805 "Christian Harmony". Malone organizes an annual mid-July singing in Newbury, Vermont, where Ingalls was a tavern-keeper and musician between 1789 and 1810.

The seven-shape (Aikin) system is commonly used by the Mennonite
Mennonite
The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after the Frisian Menno Simons , who, through his writings, articulated and thereby formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders...

s and Brethren
Church of the Brethren
The Church of the Brethren is a Christian denomination originating from the Schwarzenau Brethren organized in 1708 by eight persons led by Alexander Mack, in Schwarzenau, Bad Berleburg, Germany. The Brethren movement began as a melding of Radical Pietist and Anabaptist ideas during the...

. Numerous songbooks are printed in shaped notes for this market. They include the Christian Hymnal, the Christian Hymnary
Christian Hymnary
The Christian Hymnary is a hymnbook used by Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups. It was compiled by John J. Overholt, and published in 1972. Featured in this hymnbook is a compilation of classic hymns, Martyr Songs from the Ausbund, Evangelistic and Gospel Songs and tunes from the Harmonia...

, Zion's Praises, Pilgrim's Praises, the Church Hymnal, and Silver Gems in Song.

Nomenclature

Shape notes have also been called character notes and patent notes, respectfully, and buckwheat notes and dunce notes, pejoratively.

Books

  • Chase, Gilbert (n.d.) America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present.
  • Cobb, Buell E. Jr. (2001) The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music, University of Georgia Press.
  • Drummond, R. Paul (n.d.) A Portion for the Singers: A History of Music Among Primitive Baptists Since 1800.
  • Eastburn, Kathryn (n.d.) A Sacred Feast: Reflections on Sacred Harp Singing and Dinner on the Ground.
  • Eskew, Harry and Hugh T. McElrath (n.d.) Sing with Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Hymnology.
  • Horn, Dorothy (1970) Sing to Me of Heaven: A Study of Folk and Early American Materials in Three Old Harp Books. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
  • Jackson, George Pullen (n.d.) White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands
  • Marini, Stephen A. (2003) Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  • Stanislaw, Richard J. (n.d.) A Checklist of Four-Shape Shape-Note Tunebooks
  • The Missouri Harmony, or a Choice Collection of Psalm Tunes, Hymns, and Anthems. Wings of Song edition. [St. Louis:] Missouri Historical Society, 2005. Unpaginated [xxxvii, 346 pp.] ISBN 1-883982-54-5 Designed by Steve Hartman of Creativille, Inc. http://www.creativille.net

Journal articles

  • The quotation in footnote 3 is from Irving Lowens and Allen P. Britton, "The Easy Instructor (1798-1831): A history and bibliography of the first shape note tune book," Journal of Research in Music Education, I (Spring 1953), 32.
  • An article by Gavin James Campbell investigates the internal debate among shape note singers at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the twentieth. See Old Can Be Used Instead of New: Shape-Note Singing and the Crisis of Modernity in the New South, 1880-1910 in the Journal of American Folklore, Volume 110, Number 436 (Spring 1997), pages 169-188.

External links



Public-domain shape-note tunebooks

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