The Exeter Sacred Harp Singing: a capella heavy metal!

Jennifer and I did something new yesterday. Or, to be more exact, we did something very old, which was new to us. We drove up into rural Pennsylvania to the Exeter Sacred Harp Singing and Dinner on the Grounds. It was so fun! We really appreciate Elizabeth and Ted Stokes and the Pennsylvania Sacred Harp singers for organizing the event.

Even though I'm originally from north Alabama, an area with a long history and an ongoing practice of Sacred harp singing, also known as a "fa-so-la" singing or "shape note" singing, and even though I had heard of it at least since college, I had never gotten around to checking it out. Last week I decided I wanted to go explore.

This all-day Sacred Harp singing in Pennsylvania was in a small white wooden church building, a Friends Meeting House built in the early 1900s. The old hardwood pews were built in a "hollow square" arrangement, so that the leader stands in the middle (near the stove that still heats the building in winter) with all the singers facing the middle. The trebles, altos, basses and tenors sit by section, on the four sides of the square. The tenor has the primary melody, but that melody is buried in a contrapuntal texture so that all the parts are more-or-less equally important melodies.

There were about 60 people there, which filled the building. Those very old a capella songs are sung with a strong beat, and everyone sings at the top of their lungs! Also, the desired sound is nasal, bright and reedy and very exciting.

Today I have been thinking about that sound, and about the visceral appeal of the music. The contrapuntal texture and intense, focused vocal projection make a wall of sound, and the practice seems to favor making the sound as loud as possible. The music has a strong beat, and many of the singers keep the beat with their arms as they sing. Leaders tend to lead the songs rather quickly, and they also take turns very quickly, so that the sound comes in bursts of just a couple of minutes, with very little pause between.

An intense wall of sound, as loud as possible, with a powerful beat--my response would be very much the same if you asked me why I enjoy certain heavy rock music. It makes me think - and this is purely conjecture - that there is something deeply pleasurable about both because that's how our mind-body works; that there is something about us that finds that kind of intensity pleasurable.

I have also been thinking about how this intense experience (and I'm sure it won't be my last Sacred Harp singing) will influence my composing. More thoughts about that later. ~ML