What is the purpose of shape notes?

Shape notes are a musical notation designed to facilitate congregational and social singing. The notation, introduced in late 18th century England, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools.

What is round note?

A round (also called a perpetual canon [canon perpetuus] or infinite canon) is a musical composition, a limited type of canon, in which a minimum of three voices sing exactly the same melody at the unison (and may continue repeating it indefinitely), but with each voice beginning at different times so that different …

What do shaped notes mean?

Shape notes are a variant system of Western musical notation whereby the note heads are printed in distinct shapes to indicate their scale degree and solmization syllable (fa, sol, la, etc.).

How do shape Notes work?

Shape-note singing, a musical practice and tradition of social singing from music books printed in shape notes. Shape notes are a variant system of Western musical notation whereby the note heads are printed in distinct shapes to indicate their scale degree and solmization syllable (fa, sol, la, etc.).

What is lining in singing?

Lining out or hymn lining, called precenting the line in Scotland, is a form of a cappella hymn-singing or hymnody in which a leader, often called the clerk or precentor, gives each line of a hymn tune as it is to be sung, usually in a chanted form giving or suggesting the tune.

What do you call singing in shape notes?

Shape-note singing, a musical practice and tradition of social singing from music books printed in shape notes.

Where did the shape note in music come from?

The shape-note method of singing from written music first appeared in a book called The Easy Instructor, printed in 1801. It used four syllables for the seven notes of the scale and gave each syllable a distinctive note head: a triangle for fa, an oval for sol, a rectangle for la, and a diamond for mi.

Why is the Sacred Harp called the shape note singing?

Technically, our style of singing is “shape note singing” because the musical notation uses note heads in 4 distinct shapes to aid in sight-reading, but it is often called “Sacred Harp” singing because the books that most singers use today are called “The Sacred Harp,” with the most prominent of these being the 1991 Denson edition.

When was the first shape note songbook published?

Before the Civil War, southern publishers sold hundreds of thousands of shapenote songbooks, the most enduring of which was The Sacred Harp, first printed in 1844.