Pitching Sacred Harp Music - History

History

Historical evidence can sometimes be brought to bear on two questions concerning pitching: first, whether it was considered desirable for singers to select their own key, and second whether it was advisable to use a tuning fork or pitch pipe as an aid.

The earliest roots of Sacred Harp singing are found in the singing schools and composers of 18th-century New England. An early allusion to the task of pitching appears in the 1698 edition of the Bay Psalm Book:

Some few directions for ordering the Voice in Setting these following Tunes of the Psalms.

First observe of how many Notes compass the Tune is. Next, the place of your first Note; and how many Notes above & below that: so as you may begin the Tune of your first Note as the rest may be sung in the compass of your and the peoples voices, without Squeaking above, or Grumbling below.

Later on in the New England tradition, it appears there may have been move to emphasize the desirability of singing to the printed pitch. This was the recommendation of the leading composer of the period, William Billings, who wrote the following in the introduction to his book The Continental Harmony:

Every letter has its own peculiar air, which air is very much hurt if the tune is not rightly pitched; for instance, if a tune is set on A natural, and in pitching the tune, you set it a tone too low, you transpose the key into G, which is perhaps quite different from the intention of the author, and oftentimes very destructive to the harmony, for there is a certain pitch for every tune where it will go smoother and pleasanter than it would on any other letter whatsoever....The best general rule I know of, is, to set the tune on the letter the author has set it, unless he has given directions to the contrary.

Elsewhere, Billings makes the same recommendation, though somewhat less firmly, and suggests a pitch pipe as the best means to match the composer's pitch:

Great Care should also be taken to Pitch a Tune on or near the Letter it is set, though sometimes it will bear to be set a little above and sometimes a little below the Key, according to the Discretion of the Performer; but I would recommend a Pitch Pipe, which will give the Sound even to the nicety of a half a Tone

The use of a pitch pipe by the New England singers can be noted in early fiction portraying the period: in James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826), the singing master character David Gamut carries (and frequently uses) a pitch pipe.

The 19th century singing master William Walker, whose Southern Harmony was an immediate ancestor to The Sacred Harp, evidently used a tuning fork. This is known because his fork was handed down through later generations. The Sacred Harp scholar George Pullen Jackson was shown the fork when he attended the Southern Harmony-based Big Singing in Benton, Kentucky in 1931. Walker addresses issues of pitching in the Rudiments section of The Southern Harmony. His discussion is not transparent, but he mentions the use of a pitch pipe, and apparently also endorses choosing a key for the occasion rather than necessarily adhering to the composer's key.

Around the time that The Sacred Harp was first prepared, it appears that pitchers sometimes used a pitch pipe, sometimes not. In 1849, five years after the initial appearance of The Sacred Harp, the singing master Lazarus J. Jones published a competing volume, The Southern Minstrel. An evaluative preface written by George McCormick praised Jones for including a method for pitching without the use of a pitch pipe:

The rules, as laid down by most authors, are so vague and indefinite, as to render it almost impossible to arrive at a correct conclusion on the subject. Their rule requires us, in keying tunes, to depend entirely upon the pitchpipe, which is not only uncertain, but often impracticable, on account of its absence. The author of the work now before us, for this purpose, has given us rules entirely independent of any instrumental aid. His directions are of the greatest utility among students in vocal music, when without a pitchpipe.

David Warren Steel summarizes the pitching method taught by Jones as follows:

Jones's solution was to count up from the low G of the average male voice:

Q. But how shall we get the sound of the natural keys?

A. The lower line of the bass stave is considered the first degree, or lowest sound in the general scale of music; no tune should be keyed so low, but that a note on the lower line of the bass could be distinctly sounded by a medium voice. You will therefore ascend the degrees of sound in regular succession, either by the order of the notes, or by numbers, one, two, three, &c., from the lower line of the bass, or first degree, to the second or fourth, the places of the natural sharp and flat keys.

Although Jones's directions are somewhat obscure and do not account for the possibility of transposition to accommodate varying vocal ranges, their mere presence appears to be unique in a Southern tunebook.

B. F. White, who (with E. J. King) was the originator of The Sacred Harp, evidently judged that it was appropriate to pitch a song for the occasion. In his preface to the 1860 edition, he wrote:

Care should be taken that all the parts (when singing together) begin upon the proper pitch. If they are too high, difficulty, and perhaps discords, will be the consequence; if too low, dulness and languor. If the parts are not united by their corresponding degrees, the whole piece may be run into confusion and jargon before it ends; and perhaps the whole occasioned by an error of only one semitone in the pitch of one or more of the parts.

He includes a definition of "pitch pipe" in his musical glossary, but makes no recommendation concerning whether or not a pitcher should employ one.

The history of the abandonment of pitch pipes and tuning forks by Sacred Harp singers is unknown to the editors of this encyclopedia. Cobb asserts only that "Probably in a few areas pitch pipes were once used in Sacred Harp singings, but they are never seen today".