This arrangement places the song leader in the center of the square, where the fullest sound may be heard. Altos and tenors face one another on two opposite sides of the square, while the treble and bass singers face each other on the remaining sides. Singers assemble in what is known as a “hollow square,” facing inward. The music has four parts, arranged for alto, tenor, treble, and bass. The music is performance based, meaning that it is sung for the enjoyment of the singers, not for an audience. Sacred Harp adheres to the traditions established by earlier singers. The book from which it received its name, The Sacred Harp, was first printed in 1844. Sacred Harp is perhaps the most popular four-shape system to emerge from this period. Two systems of shape-note singing were taught in Arkansas, one using four shapes and the other using seven. The individual notation methods that emerged from the publishing war spurred a variety of traditions using shape notes, some of which are still sung in Arkansas today. The Easy Instructor’s publication sparked a boom in the development of shape-note systems, and because publishers were unable to secure patents for the notations, multiple variations of these systems appeared. Four-syllable systems may also be called fasola singing. Little and Smith’s system assigns a right triangle for fa, an oval for sol, a rectangle for la, and a diamond for mi. Their book used four syllables for the seven notes on the scale. Shape notes first appeared in print in William Little and William Smith’s The Easy Instructor, published in 1801. Itinerant “singing masters” typically led classes at a local church or schoolhouse during months with less agricultural work, after which students possessed the skills necessary to sight-read vocal music. Settlers carried the tradition with them as they migrated from colonial America into other parts of the country, including the Southeast and eventually the Ozark Mountains. Shape notes were developed in order to provide an accessible way for singers with little or no literacy skills to read musical notation. Conventional shape-note singing preserves elements of earlier European music, such as basic harmony, melodies, and performance practices. Shape-note singing is largely used for religious music, although it does occasionally appear in secular music. This type of singing also had a social role in rural communities in Arkansas, which often held all-day events featuring shape-note singing. In Arkansas, shape notes are found in multiple singing traditions, including both the four- and seven-note methods. The tradition began in late eighteenth-century New England, and it is one of the earliest forms of distinctly American music. Shape-note singing is a choral tradition in which geometrical shapes and a corresponding syllable are assigned to each note in a musical scale.
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