Concert

Prelude

Early American Hymns

The New England Singing School Movement

Distressed by the deteriorating state of congregational hymn singing, the singing masters of Eighteenth Century New England composed a large body of vocal music.  These singing masters established singing schools to teach rudiments of vocal music, including sight reading skills.

The Travelling Singing Masters

By about 1800, the music of the New England singing masters was supplanted by the classical church music of Continental Europe.  But aided by the invention in 1800 of shaped notes to teach musical sight reading, compilers of tunebooks used the music of the singing masters, adaptations of folk songs, and, of course, some of their own compositions.  The music and the singing school tradition moved west and south.

Southern Singing

The shaped note music teaching and singing styles had almost disappeared from the North by the time of the Civil War.  The style survived mainly in rural areas in the deep South.  The singing corpus draws from the New England singing masters, from folksong and folk hymnody, from camp meeting and gospel songs, and even Lowell Mason, a Nineteenth Center Protestant music reformer who approved of neither the styles of the New England singing masters, nor the use of shaped notes in the teaching of music.

Shape Note Singing Today

In recent years, Northerners have begun to rediscover the joys of singing this particular style of music.  Singing groups started forming in Ohio in the late 1980's in Cincinnati and in Columbus.  More recently, groups have formed in Oberlin, Ada, Kent, Bowling Green and Dayton.

Postlude