Talk:Sacred Harp/Archives/2014

Moving a passage to the talk page (origin of name)
Hello, I've moved the following passage to this talk page:


 * But the name Sacred Harp refers to two biblical passages in which the apostle Paul commands the Ephesians and the Colossians to sing "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in the heart unto the Lord" (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16). The original Greek text of these two passages reads: "singing and plucking the strings of the heart," using the harp as a metaphor for the heart. A cappella churches have solidified their a cappella traditions by insisting that the heart is the only instrumental accompaniment permitted by God for the church to worship with.

I judge that this passage is, essentially, a violation of WP's ban on original research (WP:NOR). The author feels she has located the "true" basis of the term "Sacred Harp" in a pair of Biblical passages. But many terms in common use have multiple, competing etymologies, and the author has not documented that this particular etymology is valid in the context of Sacred Harp singing, which I think is the context that matters. Such documentation might in principle be possible. For instance, one might show from old letters of B. F. White that he had these biblical passages in mind when he gave his tunebook its title. Or one might find quotations from leading Sacred Harp scholars such as George Pullen Jackson, Buell Cobb, or David Warren Steele that these passages really are known to traditional singers as the basis of the name. Failing this, I don't think we should be endorsing this particular etymology in the WP article. Opus33 (talk) 15:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It would be worth getting a copy of the cited book to see if there's any discussion of Sacred Harp present. If so, the passage could be restored, but with due weight given to other possibilities. If not, then the passage ought to be moved to A cappella. Ibadibam (talk) 20:06, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Music vs Book vs Notation
One of the most confusing thing for readers and writers about Sacred Harp music is that the terms "Sacred Harp" and "shape note" refer to several different, overlapping things:
 * The style of notation
 * The book, The Sacred Harp
 * That special kind of music associated with both of the above (and the living tradition in which it is situated)

The two main articles on the topics, Sacred Harp and Shape Note, have a lot of overlap: more than I can resolve right now and more than probably should be resolved unilaterally. The existing first sentences of the articles, though (which for the reader are going to define what subjects of the articles are, whatever we think), do set out two clear and distinct, if overlapping, focuses:


 * Shape note: "Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing."
 * Sacred Harp: "Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music … "

Wareh suggested years ago on the Shape note article that the logic of the article-naming and subject-dividing leave something to be desired, but until someone figures out a better solution, I've revised the beginning of Sacred Harp to make the de facto division clear, and I'm cross-referencing the articles to each other.

Liberalartist (talk) 19:00, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree; I had been thinking the same thing. "The Sacred Harp" actually refers to the book, but in common usage, a "Sacred Harp singer" can be singing out of a number of books, and the phrase is used as the name of a genre. This can be synonymous with "shape-note singer", but as one can write just about any style of music in shape-notes, that leaves the problem of labeling just what kind of music they are singing. One could always think up a whole new word to describe the genre, or we could just settle on calling it "Sacred Harp singing" regardless of what specific book it originates in..45Colt 04:23, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Changes to first paragraph
In altering the first paragraph, I was hoping to fix three things.

Opus33 (talk) 17:07, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
 * First, the parenthetical expression "(also "Shape-note singing" or, of the repertory, "Shape-note hymnody")" in the older version wrongly implied, I think, that Sacred Harp music and shape note music are the same thing.
 * The use of the past tense "flourished" implies that the tradition has died out; obviously, the opposite is true.
 * I removed what struck me as a circular definition (defining The Sacred Harp as a book of Sacred Harp music).


 * Not sure just what phrase you refer to, but "flourished" in the past tense doesn't imply that it is no longer flourishing, only that it once did, making no mention of whether it is still doing so or not. Sacred Harp music once flourished in the US. Then it died out, almost went extinct. Now it is flourishing again. Next, "shape-note" is often used synonymously with "Sacred Harp", but one can write almost any kind of music in shape-notes. Thus it is hardly specific enough. Then, saying that "The Sacred Harp" contains Sacred Harp music is a way of illustrating that there is a certain difference between "Sacred Harp singing" and "The Sacred Harp", the book. Certainly there could be less clumsy ways to do this, but it is an important fact..45Colt 04:33, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Other books
I think that it should be made clearer that the tradition of "Sacred Harp singing" is larger than just the original book itself, and refers to a whole style or genre of singing. There should at least be some mention of other tune-books that are alternatives or companions to the actual "Sacred Harp" itself. I spent thre days in Maine singing last week; the first night from the Cooper book, the next all-day from the Denson, that night from "The Shenandoah Harmony", and the next day all day from an obscure reprint of "The American Vocalist" by D.H. Mansfield. Yet I would generally describe that as "three days of Sacred Harp singing", as they are all related. Yes, one could say it was "shape-note singing", but in fact "shape-note" only refers to the system of musical notation, just like "The Sacred Harp" technically refers to the most common book. Neither one is a specific word for the style of singing, not technically anyway..45Colt 04:39, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've seen interviews where traditional singers refer to themselves as "old book singers", but "Sacred Harp singing" is a more common and understandable term for the musical tradition that includes the Sacred Harp books. In Wikipedia articles the difference tends to be shown by using italics for the publications (consistent with the Wikipedia manual of style indication on the use of italics for titles of works) and plain text for the tradition. As for discussion of other books, this is present to some extent at the shape note article. It's a tricky subject, because there are traditions like the Benton Southern Harmony singing and the Mennonite singings that are distinct from "Sacred Harp singing" and do not necessarily follow the same performance practices, and then there are others, especially Christian Harmony singings, that are organized by people who are primarily Sacred Harp singers, more or less use the same practices, and can be considered "Sacred Harp singing". Ibadibam (talk) 00:21, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * We already have an article on Shape note singing; I think this is the proper venue for discussing singings that use books other than the Sacred Harp (of course, some of these traditions deserve their own article, too). Opus33 (talk) 10:04, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Right now, at least I think the Shape note article is about a system (really several related systems) of musical notation — there isn't much of anything there at all about the actual music. Specifically, I don't see any discussion of what makes "Sacred Harp" music, whether it's printed in The Sacred Harp or not, an identifiable style/genre. LiberalArtist (talk) 06:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

List formatting in "origins" section
The Origins of the music section contains a rather cumbersome list that I've attempted to clean up (see MOS:BULLETLIST for discussion of problems arising from mixed list markup, double-spaced lists, and images). It would probably be well to break it up in sub-sections and do away with the list altogether. Until then, html list markup is the only way to get it to render correctly. Ibadibam (talk) 21:07, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Mason Shape-note Book
I flagged "Amusingly, the Mason brothers' publisher brought this book out in a shape note edition, much against their wishes." as because I don't have ready access to the source, which is listed only as "Jackson (1933b, 395)." It is common knowledge that Lowell Mason published a shape-note book, but other references to it I have seen don't mention his publisher's involvement and certainly seem to imply that it was not "much against [his] wishes." For example, Grove Music Online: "On the eastern seaboard, shape notes had little currency owing to the relative dominance of European musical culture and the scorn of musical leaders such as Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings, who referred to patent notes as 'dunce notes.' Nonetheless, each published a shape-note collection in an effort to reach singers in the South and the West." (s.v. "Shape-note hymnody," by David Warren Steel).
 * Hi, . Thanks for flagging this. I removed the tag after consulting the article, which includes the following quote from Gould's "The History of Sacred Music in America" (Boston, 1853): But "such was the ignorance of any other kind of notes [than the shaped ones] west of the Alleghenies, that when the Messrs. Mason [Timothy and Lowell, his brother] published their...book...they were obliged, against their convictions of right, to suggest the publisher to make use of such notes to accommodate the wants of that region." Megs (talk) 15:26, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quotation. I've used it to find the Gould book and have added it as a reference. I don't suppose you have a link to a web version of the Jackson article, do you? Ibadibam (talk) 17:59, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'd also appreciate a full citation to the Jackson article. Also, while the article has mutated a bit in the mean time, I would point out that the quote from Gould says that Lowell Mason in fact recommended that his publisher make use of shape-note notation for commercial purposes, despite his idealogical disagreement with the shape-note camp. Thus, it would be an inaccurate characterization to say that Mason's music was published in shape-note notation "against his wishes." I've edited the corresponding section of the current article to reflect that fact. LiberalArtist (talk) 00:37, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Internal Inconsistencies and Ongoing Issues: Origin of music, scope and organization of coverage
There are a couple ongoing issues with this article I wanted to address.

First, there are some problems with internal consistency. For instance, within the first two paragraphs, the article now states both that "Sacred Harp singing … originated in the American South of the United States." and that "The tradition stems from a distinctive American style of music … from roots in New England." So which is it? (For completeness' sake, I'll also mention that the article later talks about rural English music, but I think that is properly considered as a pre-history of the genre.)

I think New England is the right location of origin, but whatever the consensus answer, this seemingly simple issue reflects some bigger problems. The different locations given for the origin of Sacred Harp music reflect different conceptions by different editors about how to define (in the literal sense of "set boundaries") the scope of this article. This is an easy trap to fall into given the collaborative nature of editing on Wikipedia, and I think the solution has to be talking about what the strategy for coverage is on this talk page.

The second and very related issue is the scope and organization of the coverage of this subject on Wikipedia as a whole. This is related to the issues I noted about the tradition of music vs. the book The Sacred Harp vs. the style of notation. Some of the more recently added material in this article duplicates things that already exist in other articles.

There also have been some spawned articles (e.g. Leading Sacred Harp music, Pitching Sacred Harp music). On the positive side, they contain some good content and help to keep this article focused. On the other hand, even if the topics are notable enough to justify separate pages per Wikipedia's guidelines (I'm not especially knowledgable about that, so I'll just presume that people know what they're doing), from a reader's perspective, it wouldn't be immediately obvious that such an article would exist. Basically I don't know how someone would find those articles other than by reading through this one, and their existence isn't advertised at a glance even on this page.

Again, I think there needs to be a lot of talk among editors involved these articles about how to organize Wikipedia's coverage of these interrelated subjects. I'm not sure myself how best to organize the information, and any solution really needs to be the result of consensus if all the editors involved are going to apply it consistently. I'm not super familiar with it, but I think Summary style might be a good thing to consider in the long term.

Because I think this issue is compelling, I'm also trying to "be bold" and take some immediate action. I'm creating a sidebar to group these related articles together as a series and make them immediately visible to readers. (I'm calling the sidebar "Shape-note hymnody" after the Grove article to avoid taking a position on the use of "Sacred Harp" to refer to music other than that in The Sacred Harp, even though I think that's how most people use the phrase.) I'm also going to post messages on the talk pages of the other articles, encouraging editors to come here and discuss how to organize Wikipedia's coverage of the subject.

LiberalArtist (talk) 02:02, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your interest in this topic. I'd be fine with your making a navigation template, but I think the top of an article should be reserved for telling readers the basics and that this is the job of the lead paragraph.  It serves readers ill to distract attention from the article lead toward a purpose that is secondary (namely, pointing the existence of related articles).  The alternative I suggest, a navigation template, works better because it sits in less conspicuous location in the article.


 * Adopting your practice, I've "been bold" as well, removing your template from the seven or so articles in question. I think if your proposal for a "big box" at the top of the article is to be adopted, it ought to reflect consensus of experienced editors in this area.  Sincerely,  Opus33 (talk) 17:58, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * P.S. I've made an effort to fix the contradiction in the lead you noted. Opus33 (talk) 18:07, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * P.P.S. You're being really vague, I think, about what the problem is supposed to be. Surely it's not that there are satellite articles on pitching, leading, etc. Satellite articles are standard WP practice when a topic is too complicated to deal with in one article. Also, I don't see any problem for readers in locating the satellite articles -- they are mentioned, and linked, at precisely the place in the main article where these topics come up. Sincerely, Opus33 (talk) 05:00, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It's not a problem to have sub-articles, and such pages don't need to be independently notable, but the content in the articles in question runs into issues with WP:NOTHOW, and should be limited to sourced descriptions of actual practice, and not prescribed instructions. Ibadibam (talk) 20:44, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Um, can you mention some specific places where you find the article prescriptive?  The problem at hand is that the participants are themselves rather prescriptive about SH practice; there is felt to be a right way of doing things (see Rudiments, SH minutes covering Camp Fasola, books about SH). I feel that the articles would not be giving a complete picture unless it included these prescriptive beliefs as part of the overall package.  That's different, at least in principle, from wanting to write an article that tells people what to do.  Opus33 (talk) 21:20, 3 November 2014 (UTC)