Maggie Kruesi
On March 22 & 23, CHC will present Rivers of Delight, a concert inspired by shape-note harmony. We’re lucky to be singing music that spans more than two centuries of community singing in the United States. From New England in the late 18th century up to the present, especially in the South, communities have come together to sing from hymnals with music printed in a four-shape or seven-shape note system designed to aid teaching and learning.
But shape-note singing is about far more than singing the shapes for “fa-sol-la-mi.” It also refers to the repertory of hymns gathered in the many regional shape-note hymnals—these were the singers’ favorites, culled and added to by talented singer-composers as new revisions of the hymnals were issued.
The most enduring of these traditions, drawing from The Sacred Harp songbook, preserves and embraces hymn tunes that feature “true dispersed harmony,” which refers to a number of features that strongly attract me as a singer. First, each of the individual parts has an interesting, expressive melodic line, which is interwoven with the other parts (altos love strong melodic lines!). Second, the resulting chords in the upper voices are dispersed or spread over the range of an octave and a third or fourth, with much crossing of voices in the tenor and treble lines. The full open sound of these hymns, the energy one puts into singing them, and the beautiful texts written by Isaac Watts, William Billings, Samuel Stennett, Jezaniah Sumner, and others, are still inspiring new singers from around the world to take up shape-note singing.
And as we’ll experience in this concert, contemporary composers continue to be inspired by these tunes and harmonies. Alan Lomax called America’s sacred harp singing the match or equal of any traditional polyphonic singing in the world—you will hear why in this concert!
Read program notes from Artistic Director Fred Binkholder or listen to us rehearse Soar Away.