White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes" — University of North Carolina Press

Claims

1. sacred-harp-harmony
   Jackson describes the harmony of Sacred Harp singing as striking listeners with urban musical backgrounds as discordant. He attributes this mainly to the distribution of parts, with the melody sung mainly by men and a high middle part (the treble) sung by women. Others pointed to successive fifths, and the Sacred Harp composer Whit Denson to the songs' reliance on tonic and dominant chords and neglect of the subdominant and nearly all others. Many of the songs have pentatonic melodies or are in minor keys.

   "The person of standardized urban-musical background who hears casually his first Sacred Harp music is apt to judge it harshly. He will be impressed unfavorably ... by the harmonic effects (he will call them “discords”) that are strangely different from those to which his ear has been accustomed ... And it is, I am convinced, this same unique distribution of parts—men “sopranos” and women “tenors”—that is largely at the root of what strikes the novice-listener as “peculiar harmonic effects.” ... My attention has been called also to the “successive fifths” in Sacred Harp songs as a factor in their harmonic character. Whit Denson, a Sacred Harp composer, doubts the importance of the “successive fifths” feature and calls attention to the frugality in the use of different chords. He points out that the Sacred Harp songs tend to specialize on the tonic and dominant chords and to neglect the subdominant and practically all others. ... many of them show pentatonic melodies, that very many of the songs are in minor keys"

   Locator: page: 122-124 · Quote language: en
2. shape-note-lineage
   Thirty-eight books in four-shape (fasola) notation appeared between 1798 and 1855; the introduction of seven-shape notation in the 1840s soon ended the making of new four-shape collections, though the 1844 Sacred Harp remained in wide use. After the Civil War a gospel-hymn-tinged sacred music in shape notation developed in the rural South, shaped by Sunday-school gospel hymns, secular popular song, the glee club manner and jazz, and above all by the seven-shape notation.

   "thirty-eight different books of song appeared in the four-shape notation between the years 1798 and 1855. ... One of them, the 1844 Sacred Harp, is enjoying a wide use today. It was the introduction of seven-shape notation practices in the 1840's that put an end in a short time to the making of new collections in the four-shape manner ... With the close of the Civil War a new era dawned in the singing practices of the rural South, an era that might be termed that of the gospel-hymn-tinged religious music in shape notation. ... It is the old sacred music of the country-South, which has grown and metamorphosed. And one of the early factors in the metamorphosis was the Sunday-school-gospel-hymn epidemic. Later factors were the secular popular songs, the glee club manner, and jazz. But the most important factor from the start in the development of this song as an independent type was doubtless the soon-to-become-practically-universal seven-shape notation"

   Locator: page: 24; 344-346 · Quote language: en