An idea: an introduction to the music of the SH/fasola tradition?

[Steve Nickolas]

I've been mulling over this for a while, but I've been considering doing a
little book, probably of about 50 pages or so, with music extracted from
shapenote tunebooks (perhaps with the same words and perhaps not).

Thinking more of introducing it sort-of "ease in", by providing standard
SATB arrangements of the various tunes, with the normal two-staff format,
to keep it in the comfort zone of people like me who learned to read music
that way. For people who are more comfortable with shapenote format,
there's always the genuine Sacred Harp books ;)

Obviously I'd want to include the stuff everybody would recognize, like
Amazing Grace/NEW BRITAIN and What Wondrous Love Is This/WONDROUS LOVE,
but beyond that, I'm not sure what direction I want to go. I do have a
lot of SATB-arranged stuff and a lot of sets of words I could use.

-uso.

[Stephen O'Leary]

When Mary Rose and I taught Sacred Harp in workshops at festivals, etc., we always took a familiar song (New Britain or Old Hundred) and wrote in the names of the notes beneath each part. So the solfege appears in that presentation just as lyrics, below the musical line of each part just as lyrics usually do, and anyone who can sing or sightread would have no difficulty following and singing the shapes for that song, and even those who can't read music but could sing the melody already, would find the shapes easier to tackle. That seemed to help get singers into the groove and let them feel like full participants for the singing of the shapes....making it easier to answer the question, "why do we sing the shapes" when that question was posed by people who were experienced sight readers, and who therefore were (sometimes) prone to think of singing the shapes as superfluous. It's easy to think of this part of our singing as superfluous if you already read music, and if you think of solfege as only a method of teaching people to read music. The tradition of singing the shapes makes little sense to people who think of it as conveying information only; but when it is seen as part of our ritual, as tradition valuable for its own sake  simply because it is beautiful and because it makes our practice continuous with singers of past decades and centuries, it becomes more clear more quickly. It's a way of jumpstarting singers' awareness of how and why the shapes have value. So if  I were putting together a book or pamphlet for instructional purposes, I would include at least one song, and maybe three or four or even more, where the names of the notes appeared beneath each line/part. And You can work up to that point with versions of songs that are so well-known that most everyone can sing them by heart without looking at the music at all....like "Joy to the World" and ""Happy Birthday" and "Yankee Doodle"...

I hope this makes sense. Please do let me know if you ever produce a book like this. 

Stephen O'Leary

[Mick Verrier]

When teaching complete beginners I use a double-sided sheet with Frere Jacques, in shapes, on both sides. One side has the syllables printed as words, the other does not.

Each section sings the same part, but as a four-part round... it is very simple but extremely effective.

Mick Verrier

Harwich, Essex, UK.

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the O2 network.

From: Stephen O'Leary Sent: Wednesday, 8 February 2017 12:32 To: Fasola Discussions Reply To: stephen...@gmail.com Subject: [fasola-discussions] Re: An idea: an introduction to the music of the SH/fasola tradition?

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[Steve Nickolas]

It helps to be aware of the origins of the original tunebooks as
educational material (I think sometimes you guys still use such
terminology? Like referring to songs as lessons, or something like that?
I've only done some minor research to understand Sacred Harp.)

> And You can work up to that point with versions of songs that are so
> well-known that most everyone can sing them by heart without looking at
> the music at all....like "Joy to the World" and ""Happy Birthday" and
> "Yankee Doodle"...

Well, "Joy to the World"/ANTIOCH got adopted by the tunebooks too, right?
I'm pretty sure I at least saw it in Southern Harmony. "O Come All Ye
Faithful"/ADESTE FIDELES is kindasorta there too (though not under that
name, and not with that translation).

> I hope this makes sense. Please do let me know if you ever produce a
> book like this.

I'm considering it. I did already collect a bunch of fasola stuff for a
regular hymnal project and I was thinking of doing something just with
that afterward.

-uso.