Sacred Harp hymnwriters and composers

The Sacred Harp is a shape note tunebook, originally compiled in 1844 by Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King in Georgia and used to this day in revised form by Sacred Harp singers throughout America and overseas. This article is a historical overview and listing of the composers and poets who wrote the songs and texts of The Sacred Harp.

Music

The music of The Sacred Harp is eclectic in origin, and can be roughly grouped into the following categories of songs (listed chronologically).

In the examples listed below, songs are identified by the page number in the two most prominent modern versions of The Sacred Harp; the so-called "Denson edition" and the "Cooper edition". Thus, "D,C 49" means "found on page 49 of both the Denson and Cooper editions".

The different historical eras used different modes of composition. While the New England composers wrote mostly in four parts (treble, alto, tenor, bass), their Southern successor in the 19th century typically wrote in just three (treble, tenor, and bass). Their work was altered around the turn of the 20th century, when alto parts were added, first in the new Cooper edition (1902) and later to what ultimately became the modern "Denson" edition; the latter were written mostly by Seaborn Denson.

Words

The words of Sacred Harp music tend to be older than the music. While some composers wrote both tune and lyrics for their songs, a very frequent practice was (and is) to rely for words on the work of earlier, mostly English, hymnodists. The composer would select hymn lyrics that metrically fit the tune. The lyrics of Isaac Watts were used for this purpose more than any other.

Chronological list of hymn writers

The following is a selected list of the hymnwriters of The Sacred Harp, arranged chronologically by date of birth.

Chronological list of composers

The following is a selected list of composers represented in The Sacred Harp, arranged chronologically by date of birth.

Notes

  1. He identifies the tune as "Samuel Hall", tracing it through various incarnations ("Captain Kidd", "Admiral Benbow", "I Had An Apple Pie,"), arriving ultimately at "Wondrous Love", which appeared first in the Southern Harmony and later in The Sacred Harp.
  2. Quotation from McCurry's own tunebook, The Social Harp; taken from Patterson 1977
  3. John and Charles Wesley
  4. Patterson (1977)
  5. From 2007 Minutes data () the four most often sung post-1900 songs are 475 "A Thankful Heart" (John T. Hocutt, 1989), 480 "Redemption" (also Hocutt, 1959), 454 "The Better Land" (1935, O. A. Parris), and 503 "Lloyd" (1980, Raymond C. Hamrick)

Books and scholarly articles

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