One of the ironies of life is that the flow of time will wash memories away. Even key people and advances can be thoroughly scrubbed from the collective consciousness.
Such is the case with singing schools, the most important development in music education in American history. Shape notes brought the mechanics of music to practically every rural Southern family of the nineteenth century. The schools should never be forgotten, and yet, they nearly became extinct.
In this series of articles, we are tracing the major historical events which caused the music of the American South to become the world’s root-stock of popular music. Shape note (fa-sol-la) singing, the form of singing school so common in the antebellum South, is this edition’s musical subject.

Background on Singing Schools
As noted here before, between 1600 and 1750, most Protestant Churches allowed the singing of psalters (Biblical texts), but not hymns (human poetry about divine subjects). A deacon would “line out” a psalter (psalm), meaning that he would sing a line, and the congregation would repeat it. Thus, written music was not needed.
The Bay Psalm Book (ninth edition in 1698) was the first to use musical notes. It also introduced fa-sol-las, though as letters beneath the notes. Still, congregations needed instruction. Thus was born the New England singing school, aimed at “educating youth through music.”

Impact of Singing Schools
The singing school transformed the place of music. Psalm-singing had been conducted only in church. Singing schools, however, were conducted outside of church in order to improve singing skills, which then could be used in church. Once outside the sanctuary, the restrictions on music were unleashed.
The singing school also transformed the type of music. Singing schools started as a Bostonian, Congregationalist enterprise to assist Psalm-singing. As their popularity grew away from Boston and into other denominations, the schools slowly began to move from psalms to hymns by such English composers as Isaac Watts.
The singing school transformed the target of instruction. Psalm-singing was an adult effort. Singing schools brought musical education to all ages, but particularly to youth. The schools thus arose along with the public school concept.
Finally, the singing school arose along with the first native composers. The hallmark event was William Billings’s 1770 New-England Psalm Singer, which set off a rage for fuguing tunes, the lilting contrapuntal tunes of three- or four-part singing.

1800: A Time of Change
As we’ve noted before, many changes took place around 1800 that affected music:
(1) The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 revived slavery.
(2) People settled new Southern lands for cotton farms and plantations, causing a population shift to the south and west.
(3) Religion kept up by sending out hymns with its Second Great Awakening. This connection of hymns with the Awakening was made by Lyman Beecher, as encouraged by Lowell Mason.
(4) If the 17th and 18th centuries can be characterized by their resistance to hymnody, the 19th was all about hymns. Likewise, slaves, who were indifferent to psalm-singing, responded directly to the personal messages of salvation they heard in hymns. By 1800, slave conversion to Christianity had exploded in size and scope.
(5) By 1800 also, singing schools were out of fashion in Boston, the original city to promote the schools. The center for singing schools shifted to Cincinnati, Ohio, the tunebook publishing capital.

Shape Notes After 1800
The appearance in 1802, then, of The Easy Instructor by Little and Smith, with its shaped noteheads (called “patent notes”), nicely dove-tailed with the needs of outlying populations across the Southern frontier. Singing schools and patent notes were established with ease in the South.
Within a decade, though, there arose a conservative protest in favor of European teaching methods, Lowell Mason being a major proponent. Singing schools quite suddenly became a Southern and rural—-and neither an urban nor a New England—-phenomenon. Cincinnati remained a music center, but trade in shape-note tunebooks plummeted. Rather, Cincinnati became a round-note center.


Reform 1834-1844
This change took place because reformers criticized singing schools for allowing people who were neither religious nor musically trained to teach the schools. A Presbyterian newspaper, The Cincinnati Journal, led the attack on shape notes.

The proposed solutions for churches: (1) no more singing schools; (2) compose better music; (3) start up choirs; and, (4) hire real music teachers. These reforms were quickly adopted in the North and in the urban South.

The number of new shape-note tunebooks dropped dramatically. It is thus an irony that the best tunebook of the whole patent-note movement should be published in the midst of this precipitous decline.

The Sacred Harp (1844)
This great tunebook was The Sacred Harp (1844) by B.F. White and E.J. King. White lived in Hamilton, Georgia, while King lived at Talbotton. The youthful King died within weeks of the publishing. White, on the other hand, at age 44, was an experienced tune writer and singing school leader. Upon his arrival from South Carolina in 1840, he served variously as the mayor of Hamilton and clerk of the inferior court. Then, in 1852, he was the superintendent for Harris County’s first newspaper, The Organ.
Till its demise in 1857, The Organ served as a voice for The Sacred Harp. In it, White deflected the Northern criticism of patent notes. The Organ drew much support from the Southern Music Convention, another pro-Sacred-Harp organization nurtured by White.
The Sacred Harp was very popular. Through it and its many revisions—-including The Original Sacred Harp (1971)—- Sacred Harp singing spread through the South. Its importance can hardly be overstated, for it was largely responsible for the cultural continuity of America’s earliest musical traditions. In fact, these traditions survive today in both black and white practice.

Conclusion
Singing Schools molded the Southern taste for worship through group singing. One tunebook in particular, The Sacred Harp, is a major contributor to the musical traditions of the South. It is one of west Georgia’s greatest accomplishments.
For most of the world, patent notes faded from memory by the Civil War. Unbeknownst to the world, Sacred Harp would continue to inform and shape rural Southerners for the next sixty years. The notes and music would re-emerge in the 1920s when they were identified with the folk movement. We will discuss that in more detail in a later edition.
The next edition of this newsletter will feature slave songs.