Quite right. I am sure if Billings could have secured trained singers, he would have welcomed them with open arms. With Sacred Harp, the Music and The Event are very different things. The music is just what the printed page says it is, and you may do with it what you will. However a Singing is an event which is a vital and energetic expression of folk culture.... and yes, programmers and nuclear engineers are folk too.
A small fraction of Billings' output found it's way into the Sacred Harp, notably Africa and a couple of anthems "I am the Rose of Sharon" and "An Anthem for Easter ". BTW "Sacred Harp" means different things to different folks. An early Schism led to two completely separate publications of that name, now known as the Denson (Red Book) and Cooper(Blue Book) revisions, which are now significantly different. Incidently, the Scale degree names used would have been home territory for Dowland and his peers. The major scale : Fa-Sol-La-Fa-Sol-La-Mi is achieved by switching from one hexachord to another in mid scale. Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction, if memory serves, has an explanation which is a shining example of unclarity. Howard Posner wrote: >Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Billings ever saw a shape note in >his life, which ended in 1800, 43 years before the Sacred Harp was first >published. So perhaps it's the fasola community that misses the point. > > > -- //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Marcus Merrin PhD. // EmptyAir Consulting // /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
