Sacred Harp Singings
I'll be going to the huge, glorious Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention this Saturday, and I'm also planning to attend the Vermont singing at the end of the month, at which we'll sing out of the Northern Harmony book (oh, goody!) as well as the 1991 Sacred Harp. Since my family starting singing Sacred Harp music regularly, 11 years ago, I have become more and more devoted to the style. The tunes I like best tend to be the early New England fuguing tunes from the decades around 1800, and the recent songs written by living composers, also often fugal--but I have favorites from the whole 200-plus-year span of the tradition. What do the joyous jubilees of Lenox (written in 1782), the thundering judgment of Idumea (1816), the poignant consolation of All Is Well (1844), the balance of earth and heaven in Soar Away (1935), and the redemptive joy of Natick (1989) have to do with each other, and why do I like them? Well, others can probably give you technical information about the modes and so on, but I just know that I like the sounds of the harmonies--those open fifths and octaves, reminiscent of medieval music--and the full-throated, whole-hearted singing of the people who gather in hollow squares--in tin-ceilinged New England churches, barrel-vaulted halls, stone meeting houses, and other reverberant sites all over the country--to carry on the living tradition of this music.
At these Sacred Harp singings I have seen Christians of many denominations, Jews, atheists, and agnostics all enthusiastically sing the religious texts, often loose translations of the psalms (usually by Isaac Watts), but frequently personal pleas for salvation. Everybody seems to like singing the texts even if they do not find them personally relevant--but I do wonder how much the religious texts may be working insidiously to infect the most non-religious singer with a consciousness of Final Things.
At these Sacred Harp singings I have seen Christians of many denominations, Jews, atheists, and agnostics all enthusiastically sing the religious texts, often loose translations of the psalms (usually by Isaac Watts), but frequently personal pleas for salvation. Everybody seems to like singing the texts even if they do not find them personally relevant--but I do wonder how much the religious texts may be working insidiously to infect the most non-religious singer with a consciousness of Final Things.