An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 3 | SOUTHERN AND FRONTIER DEVOTIONAL MUSIC 73

the counter (alto). Each of its fourteen measures begins with a long note, often

harmonized with an “open” sonority; many of the quicker notes that fi ll out

each measure produce the fl eeting dissonances that Ananias Davisson relished.

The combination of the tune’s simple beauty, the rugged harmonization, and a

text that stresses divine grace—God’s love embraced through contrition—makes

“Amazing Grace” a quintessential expression of Southern praise singing.

PLAIN FOLK, PRAISE, AND THE SACRED HARP

The Southern shape-note tradition bore the stamp of revivalism as embodied

in the Second Awakening. In fact, the shape-note tradition reveals the power of

revivalism, not only because it encouraged the kind of worshipful singing that

qualifi es as praise but also because it indicates a leveling of class consciousness.

Revivalism opened the medium of print to any American who had a message to

deliver.

The idea of author and book buyer (i.e., singer) as social peers is refl ected in

the two tunebooks that brought shape-note hymnody to the Deep South: Wil-

liam Walker’s The Southern Harmony (New Haven, Conn., 1835; compiled in South

Carolina), and Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King’s The Sacred Harp

(Philadelphia, 1844; compiled in Hamilton, Ga.). Both were printed in the North

for lack of music-printing facilities in the regions where their authors lived. The

Southern Harmony sold 600,000 copies by 1866. The Sacred Harp has been one of

the great successes in American publishing history. King died before the book

appeared in print; it went through three revisions and several editions under

White’s supervision, was revised further after his death, and is still in print

today, used at singings around the country. The stories that circulated about the

authors reveal The Sacred Harp as an icon of Upland Southern culture, a book “of,

for, and by the people.”

Elisha J. King, a Georgia native and Baptist singing-school master, was a tal-

ented musician who has lived in memory through his association with the book.

Benjamin Franklin W hite, the senior partner, was a native South Carolinian

who moved to Harris Country, Georgia, around 1840. The youngest of fourteen

children, White received only three months of formal schooling, yet managed to

become editor of The Organ, the offi cial newspaper of Harris County. Prominent

as a singing master and editor, White also became a civic leader despite his lack

of schooling. As he lay dying at seventy-nine, he was said to have “recounted all

the mistakes as well as the good that had followed him throughout his life. He

summed it all up in the words, ‘The end has come and I am ready,’ ” departing

K New Britain, better

known today as “Amazing

Grace,” as it was reprinted

in William Walker, The

Southern Harmony (1835);

the melody is in the middle

staff.

The Sacred Harp

(1844)

B. F. White

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