Sources of Evidence
Although none of the practices described below are notated in the music, there are several ways that scholars can gather information about them.
The most obvious is to attend singings where most of the participants are traditional singers. The disadvantage of this method is that the notes are fleeting, and repeated observation concerning musically subtle questions is not possible.
A more stable source of evidence is recordings made by traditional singers. Among these are the recordings made by Alan Lomax under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution during the 1940s; these are commercially available. The Sacred Harp Publishing Company, the publisher of The Sacred Harp, 1991 Edition, produced six albums of recordings in the years 1965-1976, which are also currently obtainable (for both sets, see References below).
More recently, recordings of Sacred Harp singings have been posted on the Web (see External Links, below). The more recent of these recordings are unlikely to be reliable as source material on traditional practice, since almost every singing today is likely to be attended by a fair number of non-traditional singers.
There are also written sources. The Rudiments sections of the currently available editions of The Sacred Harp (see Sacred Harp) include information about how the music is sung. Scholars have also offered written descriptions of the tradition; see References below.
Read more about this topic: Performance Practice Of Sacred Harp Music
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