Performance Practice of Sacred Harp Music - Ensemble Issues and The Singing Community

Ensemble Issues and The Singing Community

In recent decades, Sacred Harp has increased in popularity, especially among people who are not traditional singers, but who discover the tradition in adulthood and learn to participate by attending singings. Often, newcomers have some previous musical training and have learned to sight-sing in some other context.

Such singers will naturally tend to sing the music as it is printed. This gives rise to the possibility of misaligned rhythms and clashing pitches whenever traditional singers and newcomer singers sing together. Such shared singings are in fact frequent, since newcomer singers attend singings in traditional Sacred Harp territory and traditional singers also attend singings outside this area.

While there is no consensus on this point, it is certainly a widely held view among newcomer singers that the singing community is best served if newcomers learn to sing in the way that traditional singers do, at least as far as this concerns rhythm, pitch, and the procedures followed at singing. For instance, this link, an exhortatory essay from one newcomer singer addressed to other newcomers, urges them to respect the practices of traditional singers. A number of traditional singers are also willing to offer guidance to new singers, seen for instance in the minutes of Camp Fasola, a summer camp for Sacred Harp learners.

Sacred Harp scholar Kiri Miller has argued that there is more at stake than just achieving uniformity. Rather, traditional singing practice is often highly prestigious among newcomers: "Orally transmitted elements of Sacred Harp performance practice have a special capacity to authenticity, timelessness, and tradition."