DO-RE-MI - A Brief History of Shape Note Singing

If you mention music to most people, the most common thought is High School Band or a music class you had in school at some point.  Many of us do not know how to read music, much less, read shape note (1) music. We have all grown up listening to music that is based on the Major Diatonic Scale (2). If you can sing at all, you can sing this scale. The tones of this scale and the syllables we use for the names of those tones are most commonly heard in "DO-RE-MI" by Rogers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music.”  In the movie, this song was used to teach the children to sing. These same syllables are still used today to teach people to sight read music.

Guido of Arezzo

The practice of singing music to syllables designating pitch goes back to about AD 1000 with the work of Guido of Arezzo (3) ; other early work in this area includes the cipher notation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (18th century), and the tonic sol-fa of John Curwen  (19th century). 

Shape notes (4) 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 (5) Kentucky Harmony is generally considered the first Southern shape-note tune book.   Singing schools became a popular thing in pre-Revolutionary days, with many English colonists bringing their knowledge to America and incorporating it in America's earliest churches, without the accompaniment of musical instruments. 

All "church music" was originally sung “a capella” or without instrumental musical

 Vitalian of Capua

accompaniment. For the first 1000 years in the history of Christianity, this was so. While it varies upon locality, generally in the 6th Century the first instrumental accompaniments began to appear in churches.  Pope Vitalian (6) is regarded to have first introduced organs into some of the churches of Western Europe around 670 A.D.; but the earliest trustworthy account is that of one sent as a present by the Greek emperor Constantine Copronymus to Pepin, King of Franks in 755 A.D (7). 

There were instruments of music of many and various kinds that were in use during the age of Jesus as well as the apostles. Their never being introduced into the worship service by Jesus, the apostles or the early Christians, either by commandment or example,  is evidence that they were were not seen as a means of expressing praise, nor did they seem to be required. Whether we wish to debate the scriptural use is another discussion. This is to simply look at the history surrounding the development of singing and "music" in the "Christian" setting. It should be noted though, that Paul states in Eph.4 and 5 the intent is to edify, teach and build the assembly. It is not to entertain, nor is it to show off. The rules of 1 Corinthians seems to apply in this instance, even if it is viewed as exercising a gift, that if it doesn't edify, teach and encourage the fellowship of the group, then it is perhaps best not done.  

Shape Notes, with the advent of standardized written music composition, was adapted as a means to educate people. The idea behind shape notes was and is that the parts of a vocal work can be learned more quickly and easily if the music is printed in shapes that match up with the syllables with which the notes of the musical scale are sung. It would enable harmony and melody. When a song is first sung this method normally employs singing 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. 

Some think it archaic, others think it is enlightening. Either way, we cannot deny that God wishes us to raise our voice in song unto the heavens and declare His praise. We cannot deny, the joyous song that leaps into our hearts when we come to know the true freedom that God has given us in His Son. We cannot deny, that even in pain, the heart can express itself in song to God. Some of the greatest songs we sing are not the compositions of masters, but the mere tunes of everyday  ordinary people, trying to express what is on their hearts to God. Because the first place that music had, was between man and God!

Jim

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Footnotes

(1) The shape-note method of singing from written music first appeared in a book called "The Easy Instructor, printed in 1801, although the teaching of it started much earlier in the United States as a means of helping the common person to read music.

(2) MAJOR DIATONIC SCALE - In music theory, a diatonic scale (from the Greek διατονικός, meaning "[progressing] through tones", also known as the heptatonia prima and set form 7-35) is a seven note musical scale comprising five whole steps and two half steps, in which the half steps are maximally separated. Thus between each of the two half steps lie either two or three whole steps, with the pattern repeating at the octave. The term diatonic originally referred to the diatonic genus, one of the three genera of the ancient Greeks.

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_of_Arezzo

(4)  There is a distinction between this and another common version of shape note singing called “Sacred Harp.” Sacred Harp style of singing stems from singing schools that were conducted in the colonial period of the US, and preserved in the rural South.

(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananias_Davisson 

(6)   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Vitalian

(7 )  The American Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, page 688