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AMHERST, Mass.-A Sacred Harp Singing School will take place on Thursday, Oct, 24, from 7 until 10 p.m., in Seligman House on Route 9 at Amherst College. Rachel Speer, an Amherst College sophomore who is organizing the sing, will relate the history of shape-note singing and Kelly House, a member of the Amherst College Class of 1989, will teach sight-reading and pitching. The school will take place from 7 until 8:30 p.m., followed by singing until 10 p.m. No training or musical ability is necessary; experienced singers will be there to help newcomers. Snacks and books will be provided.
Anyone can sing. Sometimes called "ancient music," shape-note singing, a kind of a cappella folk music popular in the United States before the Civil War, can be traced to Reformation psalmody in rural England and to Renaissance polyphony. Itinerant music masters, traveling to rural villages, taught all comers this ancient style of singing, using symbols for the notes on the scale, to simplify sight reading. "Fa," for example, is a triangle, "la," a rectangle. This style still thrives across the U.S. and in the U.K., with strongholds in the American South and New England. The latest edition (1991) of The Sacred Harp, the shape-note songbook, includes tunes composed from the 18th century through the 1980s.
Shape-note singers use relative pitch, so no instruments or pitch pipes are needed. In a square, the trebles (sopranos), sit across from the basses, the altos opposite the tenors, each group singing their own melodies. Listeners really have to be in the square "that is, to be singing" to appreciate the rich unconventional sound that results as each voice sings their own melody. The music is derived mainly from psalms, hymns, anthems and folk songs.
Rachel Speer maintains a Website at http://www.amherst.edu/~respeer/fasola.html that contains useful information about shape-note singing, including dates and times of other local sings.
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