History of The Southern Harmony
The Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion was compiled by William "Singin' Billy" Walker and printed in New Haven, Connecticut in 1835, with subsequent editions printed in Philadelphia. It contained 335 songs, went through several editions, and became one of the most popular southern tunebooks in the 19th century. In 1867 Walker claimed over 600,000 copies had been sold. Walker added an appendix of additional tunes in 1840 with a further enlargement in 1847. An 1854 revision deleted several tunes and added still more. The present edition is a facsimile reprint of the 1854 edition.
William Walker was born in 1809 in South Carolina, and grew up near Spartanburg. He became a Baptist song leader and shape note "singing master". Walker and Benjamin Franklin White, publisher of the Sacred Harp, married sisters. In 1866, Walker published a tunebook entitled Christian Harmony, in which he changed from four shape to seven shape notation. He incorporated over half of the contents of The Southern Harmony in the Christian Harmony. William Walker died on September 24, 1875.
Read more about this topic: Southern Harmony
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or southern:
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“... as a result of generations of betrayal, it’s nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 10 (1962)