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51-525: Shape note singers who have kept this music alive to the present day sometimes use the term "Yankee tunesmiths", as did academic musicologists such as H. Wiley Hitchcock (1966). Other scholars working from a classical music perspective worked backwards, beginning with research into the Boston Classicists ( "Boston Six") of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, who were first defined as a "school" in 1966, then Hitchcock explicitly defined as this group as

102-419: A treble clef and the lower staff has a bass clef . In this instance, middle C is centered between the two staffs, and it can be written on the first ledger line below the upper staff or the first ledger line above the lower staff. Very rarely, a centered line with a small C clef is written, and usually used to indicate that B, C, or D on the line can be played with either hand (ledger lines are not used from

153-445: A center alto as this creates confusion). When playing the piano or harp, the upper staff is normally played with the right hand and the lower staff with the left hand. In music intended for organ with pedalboard , a grand staff normally comprises three staves, one for each hand on the manuals and one for the feet on the pedalboard. Early Western medieval notation was written with neumes , which did not specify exact pitches but only

204-429: A mathematical graph of pitch with respect to time . Pitches of notes are given by their vertical position on the staff and notes are played from left to right. Unlike a graph, however, the number of semitones represented by a vertical step from a line to an adjacent space depends on the key, and the exact timing of the beginning of each note is not directly proportional to its horizontal position; rather, exact timing

255-416: 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 system illustrated above

306-482: A page, often two parallel diagonal strokes are placed on the left side of the score to separate them. Four-part SATB vocal settings, especially in hymnals , use a divisi notation on a two-staff system with soprano and alto voices sharing the upper staff and tenor and bass voices on the lower staff. Confusingly, the German System (often in the combined forms Liniensystem or Notensystem ) may refer to

357-439: A piano, organ, harp, or marimba. A bracket is an additional vertical line joining staves to show groupings of instruments that function as a unit, such as the string section of an orchestra. Sometimes a second bracket is used to show instruments grouped in pairs, such as the first and second oboes or first and second violins in an orchestra. In some cases, a brace is used for this purpose. When more than one system appears on

408-583: A popular teaching device in American singing schools during the 19th century. Shapes were added to the noteheads in written music to help singers find pitches within major and minor scales without the use of more complex information found in key signatures 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

459-516: 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). As noted above, the syllables of shape-note systems greatly antedate the shapes. The practice of singing music to syllables designating pitch goes back to about AD 1000 with

510-602: A single staff as well as to the Akkolade (from the French) or system in the English sense; the Italian term is accollatura . When music on two staves is joined by a brace , or is intended to be played at once by a single performer (usually a keyboard instrument or harp ), a grand staff ( American English ) or great stave ( British English ) is created. Typically, the upper staff uses

561-432: A variety of songs from 18th-century classics to 20th-century gospel music . Thus today denominational songbooks printed in seven shapes probably constitute the largest branch of the shape-note tradition. 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,

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612-438: Is a four-shape system; six of the notes of the scale are grouped in pairs assigned to one syllable/shape combination. The ascending scale using the fa, so, la, fa, so, la, mi, fa syllables represent a variation of the hexachord system introduced by the 11th century monk Guido of Arezzo , who originally introduced a six-note scale using the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. The four syllable variation of Guido's original system

663-401: Is encoded by the musical symbol chosen for each note in addition to the tempo . A time signature to the right of the clef indicates the relationship between timing counts and note symbols, while bar lines group notes on the staff into measures . Staff is more common than stave in both American English and British English , with the latter being, in fact, a back-formation from

714-407: Is the first Southern shape-note tunebook, and was soon followed by Alexander Johnson's Tennessee Harmony (1818), Allen D. Carden's The Missouri Harmony (1820) and many others. By the middle of the 19th century, the "fa so la" system of four syllables had acquired a major rival, namely the seven-syllable "do re mi" system. Thus, music compilers began to add three more shapes to their books to match

765-660: 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

816-472: The Southern United States for many years, and now experiencing a renaissance in other locations as well. Shape notes have also been called character notes and patent notes , respectively, and buckwheat notes and dunce notes , pejoratively. The idea behind shape notes 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

867-492: The hymns of Isaac Watts are other common characteristics. The self-taught Yankee tunesmiths learned composition from composers of West gallery music such as William Tans'ur 's A New Musical Grammar' (1746) and Aaron Williams . Their books were issued by Daniel Bayley in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1769, 1771, 1773 and 1774 under the title The American Harmony, or Universal Psalmodist 1769, 1771, 1773 and 1774). For

918-435: The key signature or accidentals on individual notes. A clefless staff may be used to represent a set of percussion sounds; each line typically represents a different instrument. A vertical line drawn to the left of multiple staves creates a system , indicating that the music on all the staves is to be played simultaneously. A brace (curly bracket) is used to join multiple staves that represent an instrument, such as

969-436: The solfège syllables with which the notes of the musical scale are sung. For instance, in the four-shape tradition used in the Sacred Harp and elsewhere, the notes of a C major scale are notated and sung as follows: 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

1020-471: The " Second New England School " in 1969, generating the term "First New England School" as a by-product. The Yankee tunesmiths were definitely not a "school": all were self taught, scattered across New England, and did not share common publishers or affiliations. All were craftsmen who worked part-time as itinerant singing school teachers, which gave them opportunities to sell their self-published tune books. Anglo-Celtic heritage, and love of metric psalmody and

1071-737: 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. Compositions of the " Yankee tunesmiths " ("First New England School") began to appear in 1770, prior to the advent of shape notes, which first appeared in The Easy Instructor by William Little and William Smith in 1801 in Philadelphia . Little and Smith introduced

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1122-402: The beginning of the staff. The clef identifies a particular line as a specific note, and all other notes are determined relative to that line. For example, the treble clef puts the G above middle C on the second line. The interval between adjacent staff positions is one step in the diatonic scale . Once fixed by a clef, the notes represented by the positions on the staff can be modified by

1173-421: The choir will also sing in the temperament of the instrument rather than the just intonation of the human voice. Modulation is sometimes said to be problematic for shape-note systems, since the shapes employed for the original key of the piece no longer match the scale degrees of the new key; but the ability to use of sharp and flat symbols along with shape notes is a matter of the range of sorts available to

1224-430: The compositions of their British cousins too. The first influential tunesmith was William Billings (1746–1800), a native of Boston, who was a self-taught amateur musician and a tanner. William Billings was part of the colonial working class. At the age of twenty-three Billings had already composed more than one hundred original pieces of sacred music, and in 1770 he published his a tunebook, The New England Psalm Singer ,

1275-666: The custom of "singing the notes" (syllables) is generally preserved only during the learning process at singing schools 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

1326-753: The extra syllables. Numerous seven-shape notations were devised. Jesse B. Aikin was the first to produce a book with a seven-shape note system, and he vigorously defended his "invention" and his patent. The system used in Aikin's 1846 Christian Minstrel eventually became the standard. This owes much to the influential Ruebush & Kieffer Publishing Company adopting Aikin's system around 1876. Two books that have remained in continuous (though limited) use, William Walker 's Christian Harmony and M. L. Swan's New Harp of Columbia , are still available. These books use seven-shape systems devised by Walker and Swan, respectively. Although seven-shape books may not be as popular as in

1377-600: The first book in which all the compositions were by an American. He advertised the work as “never before published” and stressed that it was composed by “a native of Boston”—made in America by an American. Published by Benjamin Edes and John Gill, who also published The Boston Gazette and Country Journal , a major Patriot newspaper, and including an engraving by Paul Revere. Here we find the defiant, " Chester ", sometimes called "America's First National Anthem", for which Billings composed both

1428-455: The four-shape system shown above, intended for use in singing schools . 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

1479-399: The intended effect, are placed on the staff according to their corresponding pitch or function. Musical notes are placed by pitch, percussion notes are placed by instrument, and rests and other symbols are placed by convention. The absolute pitch of each line of a non-percussive staff is indicated by the placement of a clef symbol at the appropriate vertical position on the left-hand side of

1530-635: The lyrics and the tune: Let tyrants shake their iron rod And slav'ry Clank her galling Chains We fear them not, we trust in God New England's God for ever reigns. The New England Psalm-Singer (1770) was followed by a second and more popular collection, the Singing Master's Assistant (1778). It includes a paraphrase of Psalm 137 ("By the rivers of Babylon") that refers to the British occupation of Boston in 1775–1776. These selections captured

1581-539: The mood of confident defiance with which New England patriots entered the new era. The works of the early New England composers were rediscovered in the 1950s, with compositions such as William Schuman 's use of Billings' tune " Chester " in his New England Triptych (1956), which he later expanded into the Chester Overture . Shape note Shape notes are a musical notation designed to facilitate congregational and social singing . The notation became

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1632-458: The most part the Yankee composer's source of information about harmonic practices derived from the music and writings on music of such comparatively unskilled English composers as William Tans'ur (1706-1783) and Aaron Williams (1731-1776), who were themselves somewhat outside the mainstream of European sacred music. Many of the traits that may be thought unique to American psalmodists in fact characterize

1683-466: 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

1734-597: The past, there are still a great number of churches in the American South, in particular Southern Baptists , Primitive Baptists , almost all of the non-instrumental Churches of Christ , some Free Methodists , Mennonite , some Amish , United Pentecostals , and United Baptists in the Appalachian regions of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, that regularly use seven-shape songbooks in Sunday worship. These songbooks may contain

1785-478: The plural staves . The plural staffs also exists for staff in both American and British English, alongside the traditional plural staves . In addition to the pronunciations expected from the spellings, both plural forms are also pronounced / s t æ v z / in American English. The vertical position of the notehead on the staff indicates which note to play: higher-pitched notes are marked higher on

1836-755: 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

1887-457: The shape of the melodies, i.e. indicating when the musical line went up or down; presumably these were intended as mnemonics for melodies which had been taught by rote. During the 9th through 11th centuries a number of systems were developed to specify pitch more precisely, including diastematic neumes whose height on the page corresponded with their absolute pitch level (Longobardian and Beneventan manuscripts from Italy show this technique around

1938-500: 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

1989-775: The singing school custom of "singing the notes". The seven-shape (Aikin) system is commonly used by the Mennonites 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

2040-406: 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. A controlled study on the usefulness of shape notes

2091-402: The staff (possibly modified by conventions for specific instruments ). For example, the treble clef , also known as the G clef, is placed on the second line (counting upward), fixing that line as the pitch first G above " middle C ". The lines and spaces are numbered from bottom to top; the bottom line is the first line and the top line is the fifth line . The musical staff is analogous to

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2142-401: The staff. The notehead can be placed with its center intersecting a line ( on a line ) or in between the lines touching the lines above and below ( in a space ). Notes outside the range of the staff are placed on or between ledger lines —lines the width of the note they need to hold—added above or below the staff. Which staff positions represent which notes is determined by a clef placed at

2193-462: The students taught with shape notes were also far more likely to pursue musical activities later on in their education. Many forms of music in the common practice period employ modulation , that is, a change of key in mid-piece. Since the 19th century, most choral music has employed modulation, and since the key change is easy for instruments but difficult for singers, the new tonality is usually established by instrumental accompaniment; accordingly,

2244-438: 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. 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

2295-554: The typographer and musical preferences. The development of musical preferences is partly documented by surviving copies of B.F. White's Organ from the 1850s. 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

2346-544: The work of Guido of Arezzo . Other early work in this area includes the cipher notation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (18th century), and the tonic sol-fa of Sarah Anna Glover and John Curwen (19th century). 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

2397-409: The year 1000). Digraphic notation, using letter names similar to modern note names in conjunction with the neumes, made a brief appearance in a few manuscripts, but a number of manuscripts used one or more horizontal lines to indicate particular pitches. The treatise Musica enchiriadis ( c.  900 ) uses Daseian notation for indicating specific pitches, but the modern use of staff lines

2448-443: Was a tavern-keeper and musician between 1789 and 1810. Staff (music) In Western musical notation , the staff ( UK also stave ; plural : staffs or staves ), also occasionally referred to as a pentagram , is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or in the case of a percussion staff , different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending on

2499-497: Was carried out in the 1950s by George H. Kyme with an experimental population consisting of fourth- and fifth-graders living in California. Kyme took care to match his experimental and control groups as closely as possible for ability, quality of teacher, and various other factors. He found that the students taught with shape notes learned to sight read significantly better than those taught without them. Kyme additionally found that

2550-448: Was prominent in 17th century England, and entered the US in the 18th century. 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

2601-472: 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)

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