Southern Harmony - The Music and Its Notation

The Music and Its Notation

The roots of Southern Harmony singing, like the Sacred Harp, are found in the American colonial era. Singing schools were created to provide instruction in choral singing, especially for the use of churches. In 1801, a book called The Easy Instructor1 by William Smith and William Little was published for the use of this movement; its distinguishing feature was the use of four separate shapes that indicated the notes according to the rules of solfege. A triangle indicated fa, a circle sol, a square la and a diamond, mi. To avoid proliferating shapes excessively, each shape (and its associated syllable) except for mi was assigned to two notes of the musical scale. A major scale in the system would be noted Fa - Sol - La - Fa - Sol - La - Mi - Fa, and a minor scale would be La - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Fa - Sol - La.