Talk:Sacred Harp/Archives/2012

Too much on individual conventions?

I feel that with recent edits we're now going into too much detail about individual conventions. The right place to put such detail, I think, is in separate articles about these conventions. This has already been done, for instance, for the really old conventions in the South like the Chattahoochee Musical Convention or the East Texas Musical Convention. The main Sacred Harp article should not be crowded up, I feel, with individual convention detail, particularly for conventions that don't have a really long history. If we keep going this way the main content of the article will be swamped.

So, I propose the following:

• We should invite authors who are knowledgeable about the new conventions to write separate articles about them and link them from the main Sacred Harp article.
• For the present article, I think it would suffice to mention (1) which outside-the-South conventions were instrumental in spreading Sacred Harp singing outside the South; (2) which conventions (anywhere) are particularly large, and (3) which countries currently have conventions. This section could be sourced using Kiri Miller's book and the online Sacred Harp minutes.

Opus33 (talk) 03:13, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I agree with your long-term vision of what is wanted: the topic of Sacred Harp singing better broken down along logical lines into its various aspects and traditions. However, I believe the natural way towards that goal is very often precisely what we're seeing now in this article: improved coverage of important topics within the framework of an existing main article. Later editors can decide what needs to be broken off and moved into sub-articles that stand on their own, and that's a burden that falls to the community of editors at large (i.e., I wouldn't want a new editor bringing valuable content to misread your first proposal as requiring her to shoulder this burden in order to improve our coverage of the spread of Sacred Harp singing into Europe). An old, complex, and slightly messy article like this one often experiences growing pains: it's a good sign if parts of it are burgeoning out of control to the point where someone will have to create new pages, but I hope to see that happen in a creative and not limiting way.

Turning substantively to the new edits, I think the singing in Ireland and Poland is notable enough to mention. I've trimmed away some details but wouldn't want to go further. I would call attention again to the issue brought up in the section immediately above. "Sacred Harp as a living tradition of singing out of a book called The Sacred Harp" is a very notable subject, and within that subject I would consider it impossible not to mention Cork and Poland and Western Massachusetts and Chicago. However, this article is somewhat incoherently trying to address several other topics at the same time, which may lead to an exaggerated sense of what there's not room for. I humbly suggest that the really urgent work here is to offload topics such as

• four-shape notation (which came into existence before The Sacred Harp and is not at all a sub-topic of The Sacred Harp)
• everything about the history of singing music in this harmonic idiom and/or notation before 1844
• etc.

I would not say that my proposals above are the perfect way to accomplish this. In fact I'm very unsure about the best way to proceed and was really hoping for better discussion and emerging consensus in the wake of those suggestions. But I do still believe that organizing these topics better from above will be a fruitful first step and will show more readily where the main points on any given subject comfortably belong. Wareh (talk) 14:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Offloading

Hello, with all respect I'm strongly opposed to "offloading" the pre-1844 history of Sacred Harp to other articles. It is standard practice in scholarly writing about Sacred Harp to begin with this material; see the work of Jackson, Cobb, Marini, and most recently Warren Steel. These scholars are right to begin at the beginning, because the nature of Sacred Harp is far better understood with its historical background in place. I do agree that it is sometime useful to refer readers to satellite articles for peripheral information, but in Sacred Harp this is core information and should not be shunted aside. Sincerely, Opus33 (talk)

Let me just say I don't feel strongly about this particular point, so I regret tossing off the phrase "everything about" pre-1844 aspects. I'm just having difficulty figuring out where and how to draw a line between SH (the music in the book, the way it has been performed and understood over the lifetime of the book) and the related subjects that eventually deserve to fleshed out further in other articles. I can take comfort in the idea that new content on these subjects will find a way and a place somehow (I always feel the real work is producing such content, as I recognize you have done here), which is why I spoke up in defense of Sadhbh's additions.

It is proper to treat the background and context of a subject such as The Sacred Harp within the article. Of course it's so much nicer when we can do so with brevity and point, while directing readers to the fuller treatment of that background and context in other articles that deal with these issues on their own terms. The "Sacred Harp"-like music & practices of 1840 are not that different from those of 1850, and they deserve logically organized encyclopedic treatment. I am a bit concerned that this article's lead is so vague about the subject (a "tradition" possibly predating 1844, as opposed to an 1844 book that will be treated with reference to the pre-1844 history of its contents and associated practices) that it's less clear where to put fuller treatment of the larger musical and cultural context of this remarkable book.

I would sincerely and greatly value any direct solution you can offer to the dilemmas I posed above, specifically, to refine it a bit

1. Pre-SH history (roughly). Imagine that the first five "History" paragraphs here were multiplied by five, and tell me what article names you'd file the content under. Meanwhile I'm glad this article discusses roots, analogues, etc., (on the basis of the publications you mention, which also regard them in a limited way--insofar as they help us understand The Sacred Harp, its history, its contents, its performance traditions, etc.). But what ought the missing Main article... or For more information on this subject... topics to be called?
2. The topic rightly called "SH". Is there any value to the suggestion that we could have an article called The Sacred Harp in italics, and if so, would it lead to a new article on Sacred Harp singing or any other "Sacred Harp X" or "Sacred Harp Y" along the lines of Performance practice of Sacred Harp music, etc.?

Sorry, this is probably much too long-winded (I set out to write a couple of sentences but can't help reproducing my perplexity here). I will try to conserve my energy for actual useful additions, as my knowledge and opportunity make that possible. I do speak as an editor who'd like to plan such additions but feels a bit stumped how and where to get about it. If I were the sort of person who liked simply to rearrange other people's work in a "bold"/aggressive manner, I wouldn't be spending this time on this talk page. Wareh (talk) 15:51, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Origin/derivation of the term "Sacred Harp"?

As "Sacred Harp" is the name of this article I think that the derivation of this term would be useful to include the lead.

I have been told personally (which, of course, is not a sufficient reference) by a Sacred Harp singer that it refers to the human voice, and also at the moment Note 1 says In particular, no harps are present. The term "Sacred Harp" is sometimes taken by singers to be a metaphor for the human voice (Anon. 1940, 127).

This seems to refer to Anonymous (1940) Georgia: A guide to its towns and countryside. Compiled and written by workers of the Writers' Program of the Works Progress Administration. University of Georgia Press. under Books and scholarly articles.

I have tried checking this reference and have got a bit confused as in one place what I can find does not seem to match: see http://archive.org/stream/georgiaaguidetoi008333mbp#page/n167/mode/2up/search/127

Page 127 (also referenced as page 169 - or possibly 168 - of 523) does not seem to contain the text mentioned. Using the search facility shows not match for "sacred" or "harp", but http://archive.org/details/georgiaaguidetoi008333mbp shows the book to be entitled "Georgia A Guide To Its Towns And Countryside (1940)".

Searching further, on “Georgia A Guide To Its Towns And Countryside sacred harp” in Google, I have come across the information in Google Books

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YVvkZeXA4YC&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=Georgia+A+Guide+To+Its+Towns+And+Countryside+sacred+harp&source=bl&ots=SM5cPsfg6D&sig=yeZRMna18GRNDbx2QHUREwjwR0g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yQBdUKakEaqk0QXbj4DwAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Georgia%20A%20Guide%20To%20Its%20Towns%20And%20Countryside%20sacred%20harp&f=false

and it does show, on page 127, No instrumental accompaniment is used, the vocal cords being considered the "sacred harp".

So I seem to have found 2 versions of the same book(?)

Also, this page: http://www.his.com/~sabol/SHhistory.html , headed Sacred Harp Singing: History & Tradition by Steven Sabol of the Potomac River Sacred Harp Singers contains While "harp" is an old word for a hymnal containing music, in a broader sense, the "sacred harp" is the human voice or ensemble of voices.

On the Welcome page of http://fasola.org/ , headed Sacred Harp Singing contains The term “sacred harp” refers to the human voice — that is, the musical instrument you were given at birth.

So it seems to me that at least some present day proponents of Sacred Harp singing consider that the sacred harp is the human voice or vocal cords, even if there might not be enough evidence here that this was the actual origin of the term when first used.

I am not sure if I will be able to find the time to incorporate this into the article, or know the best way to do it. FrankSier (talk) 00:51, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I am very skeptical that a reference to the voice is the correct explanation of the original application of "Sacred Harp" to this tunebook. Yes, it's what everyone says, and there will be no problem finding references in reliable sources. However, the more obvious explanation is that, etymologically and in many languages, psaltery (harp) and psalter (book of sacred songs) are the same word. Thus we have such important musical books as the Genevan Psalter, and the general idea stuck outside of the immediate context of Calvinist worship (with its more exclusive focus on singing from the Book of Psalms in worship). Wareh (talk) 18:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)