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Shape notes are a musical notation designed to facilitate congregational and Sing-along. The notation became a popular teaching device in American singing schools during the 19th century. Shapes were added to the in written music to help singers find pitches within major scale and without the use of more complex information found in on the staff.
Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of music traditions, mostly sacred music but also secular, originating in New England, practiced primarily in the Southern United States for many years, and since 2013 experiencing a renaissance in other locations as well.
A skilled singer experienced in a shape note tradition has developed a fluent triple mental association, which links a note of the scale, a shape, and a syllable. This association can be used to help in reading the music. When a song is first sung by a shape note group, they normally sing the syllables (reading them from the shapes) to solidify their command over the notes. Next, they sing the same notes to the words of the music.
The syllables and notes of a shape note system are relative rather than absolute; they depend on the key of the piece. The first note of a major key always has the triangular Fa note, followed (ascending) by Sol, La, etc. The first note of a minor key is always La, followed by Mi, Fa, etc.
The first three notes of any major scale – fa, sol, la – are each a tone apart. The fourth to sixth notes are also a tone apart and are also fa, sol, la. The seventh and eighth notes, being separated by a semitone, are indicated mi-fa. This means that just four shapenotes can adequately reflect the "feeling" of the whole scale.
The four syllable variation of Guido's original system was prominent in 17th century England, and entered the US in the 18th century. mistakenly attributes the invention of the syllables to Thomas Morley, who described a four-syllable system in his Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597). Shortly afterward, shapes were invented to represent the syllables. (see below). The other important systems are seven-shape systems, which give a different shape and syllable to every note of the scale. Such systems use as their syllables the note names "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do" (familiar to most people due to the song "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music). A few books (e.g., "The Good Old Songs" by C. H. Cayce) present the older seven-note syllabification of "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si, do". In the seven-shape system invented by Jesse B. Aikin, the notes of a C major scale would be notated and sung as follows:
There are other seven-shape systems..
Justin Morgan's "Judgment Anthem", which first appeared in shapes in Little and Smith's The Easy Instructor (1801), appears to shift keys (and key signatures) from E minor to E♭ major, then back to E minor before concluding in E♭ major. Morgan, however, may be supposed to have intended simply a shift from major to minor while maintaining the same tonic pitch. It was reprinted in many of the early shape note tunebooks, but not in the Sacred Harp (1844), in which Jeremiah Ingalls's "Christian Song" is the only song that modulates (in this case, from D minor to D major).
American forerunners to shape notes include the 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book (Boston), and An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes in a Plaine & Easy Method by Reverend John Tufts. The 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book was printed with the initials of four-note syllables (fa, sol, la, me) underneath the staff. In his book, Tufts substituted the initials of the four-note syllables on the staff in place of note heads, and indicated rhythm by punctuation marks to the right of the letters.Gates 1988
Compositions of the "Yankee tunesmiths" ("First New England School") began to appear in 1770, prior to the advent of shape notes, which first appearedThat Little and Smith were the first: in The Easy Instructor William Smith. Easy Instructor. .. Part II by William Little and William Smith in 1801 in Philadelphia. Little and Smith introduced the four-shape system shown above, intended for use in .By way of demonstrating the efficacy of the new shape notes, the "Easy" Instructor contains many difficult songs. In 1803 Andrew Law published The Musical Primer, which used slightly different shapes: a square indicated fa and a triangle la, while sol and mi were the same as in Little and Smith. Additionally, Law's invention was more radical than Little and Smith's in that he dispensed with the use of the staff altogether, letting the shapes be the sole means of expressing pitch. Little and Smith followed traditional music notation in placing the note heads on the staff, in place of the ordinary oval note heads. In the end, it was the Little/Smith system that won out, and there is no hymnbook used today that employs the Law system.
Some copies of The Easy Instructor, Part II (1803) included a statement, on the verso of the title page, in which John Connelly (whose name is given in other sources as Conly, Connolly, and Coloney) grants permission to Little and Smith to make use in their publications of the shape notes to which he claimed the rights..Dick Hulan writes, "My copy of William Smith's Easy Instructor, Part II (1803) attributes the invention of to 'J. Conly of Philadelphia'." And according to David Warren Steel, in John Wyeth and the Development of Southern Folk Hymnody: "This notation was invented by Philadelphia merchant John Connelly, who on 10 March 1798 signed over his rights to the system to Little and Smith." Little and Smith did not themselves claim credit for the invention, but said instead that the notes were invented around 1790 by John Connelly of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Andrew Law asserted that he was the inventor of shape notes.
Shape notes proved popular in America, and quickly a wide variety of hymnbooks were prepared making use of them. The shapes were eventually extirpated in the northeastern U.S. by a so-called "better music" movement, headed by Lowell Mason. But in the South, the shapes became well entrenched, and multiplied into a variety of traditions. Ananias Davisson's Kentucky Harmony (1816) is the first Southern shape-note tunebook,"the very first shape-note book produced south of the Mason-Dixon line, Ananias Davisson's Kentucky Harmony, published in Harrison, Virginia, in 1816" and was soon followed by Alexander Johnson's Tennessee Harmony (1818), Allen D. Carden's The Missouri Harmony (1820) and many others.
In addition, nondenominational community singings are also intermittently held which feature early- to mid-20th century seven-shape gospel music such as Stamps-Baxter hymnals or Heavenly Highway. In these traditions, the custom of "singing the notes" (syllables) is generally preserved only during the learning process at and singing may be to an instrumental accompaniment, typically a piano.
The seven-shape system is also still used at regular public singings of 19th-century songbooks of a similar type to the Sacred Harp, such as The Christian Harmony and the New Harp of Columbia. Such singings are common in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, and generally preserve the singing school custom of "singing the notes".
The seven-shape (Aikin) system is commonly used by the and Brethren. Numerous songbooks are printed in shaped notes for this market. They include Christian Hymnal, the Christian Hymnary, Hymns of the Church, Zion's Praises, Pilgrim's Praises, the Church Hymnal, Silver Gems in Song, the Mennonite Hymnal, and Harmonia Sacra.
Some African-American churches use the seven-shape note system.
The four-shape tradition that currently has the greatest number of participants is Sacred Harp singing. But there are many other traditions that are still active or even enjoying a resurgence of interest. Among the four-shape systems, the Southern Harmony has remained in continuous use at one singing in Benton, Kentucky, and is now experiencing a small amount of regrowth. The current reawakening of interest in shape note singing has also created new singings using other recently moribund 19th-century four-shape songbooks, such as The Missouri Harmony, as well as new books by modern composers, such as the Northern Harmony. Of a hybrid nature, in terms of reviving Ananias Davisson's Kentucky Harmony but taking the further step of incorporating songs from 70 other early tunebooks, along with new compositions, is the Shenandoah Harmony (2013). Thomas B. Malone has specialized in the revival of works by Jeremiah Ingalls, and has published a four-shape edition of Ingalls' 1805 The Christian Harmony. Malone organizes an annual mid-July singing in Newbury, Vermont, where Ingalls was a tavern-keeper and musician between 1789 and 1810.
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