Shape Note - Origin and Early History

Origin and Early History

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 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 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 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.

Shape notes themselves probably date from late 18th century America. They appeared publicly at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when two publications came out using shaped note heads – The Easy Instructor by William Little and William Smith in 1801, and The Musical Primer by Andrew Law in 1803, intended for use in singing schools. Little and Smith used the four-shape system shown above. Law's system had slightly different shapes: a square indicated fa and a triangle la, while sol and mi were the same as in Little and Smith. Law's invention was more radical than Little and Smith's in that he dispensed with the use of the staff altogether, letting 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.

Andrew Law asserted that he was the inventor of shape notes. 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. They claimed that Connelly signed over the rights of his invention to them in 1798.

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 is generally considered the first Southern shape-note tunebook.