SHAPE-NOTE SINGING

SHAPE-NOTE SINGING Shape-note singing refers to a method of teaching music to nonmusically literate singers, employed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by traveling singing masters. Originally in New England, and later in the South and West, these itinerant teachers came to towns, mostly at the invitation of the local church, to teach the local choir how to sing. They employed special songbooks that drew on a repertoire of well-known folk and hymn tunes that the congregation…