A Shape Note Lament
By Debbonnaire Kovacs, posted Aug. 5, 2015
Shape Note music is an ancient method of music teaching, created for people who couldn’t read music on paper. Something like the Do-Re-Mi style popularized in the movie, “The Sound of Music,” the octave is designated by sounds. Then each note on the regular music staff has a shape that represents one of those sounds.
I am a member of the Shape Note singing group here in Berea, KY. This week, to go along with the devotion, I thought you might like to hear a shape note group (not ours!) sing a popular and heartrending tune, “David’s Lamentation.” You will first hear the group reading and singing the shapes of the notes in each one’s parts. Then they sing the lyrics, which are fairly clear in the recording, but in case you can’t hear it, the words are below.
David the king was grieved and moved
He went to his chamber, his chamber, and wept;
And as he went he wept, and said,
“Oh my son! Oh my son!
Would to God I had died, would to God I had died, would to God I had died
For thee, Oh Absalom, my son, my son, my son.”
There are lots of SDAs involved in singing shapenote music today, mostly from the tunebook called The Sacred Harp. Seek us out and discover lots of our Millerite heritage songs preserved in this book! We love to sing “How Cheering Is The Christian’s Hope” as found in the Sacred Harp tunebook page 171 (different words there but the “How Cheering…” words are always echoing in my head as I sing). Or we sing “The Midnight Cry”, or “Babylon Is Fallen”, or the old minor version of “The Promised Land”. Look us up. Wherever you live you are likely to find a nearby shapenote singing group. The national website (the one given above is for the Pacific NW) is http://fasola.org
Yes, and in fact, the early Millerites sang many of the songs in the Sacred Harp. Some of the hymns in the SDA hymnal were originally shape note tunes.
Looks like URL for the Pacific NW didn’t come through: http://PNWSHS.org Contact me through there if you live in the PNW and I will personally welcome you at one of our many singings.
I’m not sure I understand the concept. I recently bought a disk of music composed by Sr. Hildegard back in the 15th century. This medieval music is beautiful done by a women’s choir and soloist.
Are you talking about something like a chant?
No, it’s sung music, not chanted. In fact, many of the songs are now very familiar hymns, like What Wondrous Love is This and I’m Just a-going Over Jordan. It’s just that the notes on the staff have different shapes so that people who can’t read music know what note to sing by the sound. It’s hard to describe without demonstrating, but you can hear it in action if you look up shape notes on YouTube.