Journal issue: Vol. 1, No. 1
Introducing the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter
I am happy to announce the first issue of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter—a web-based publication that will feature items such as trip reports from Sacred Harp conventions and singing schools, short biographical pieces on Sacred Harp singers, other news of interest to Sacred Harp singers, and reprints of memorable articles from the old…
Sacred Harp Comes to Belfast, Northern Ireland
The evening of Friday, October 14th, 2011 marked the beginning of a weekend of Sacred Harp singing in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The singing was held at Rosemary Hall, right next to Belfast’s All Souls Church. The weekend of events had been co-organised by American expat Barton Creeth and William Duddy of the Belfast Trad society.…
German Singing Schools: Sacred Harp Comes to the Land of J.S. Bach
In October of 2011 I organized a weekend concert tour in Germany with a group of Sacred Harp tourists from the United Kingdom. Our trip itinerary included touring a medieval city and UNESCO world heritage site, looking in at an erstwhile Cistercian abbey which is now a prison, sampling local sausage in country inns in…
New Edition of the Georgian Harmony Planned
About the time The Georgian Harmony—a collection of 92 songs by Sacred Harp composer Raymond C. Hamrick of Macon, Georgia—was printed in 2008, Raymond found more of the music he had written earlier and of course I have type-set it. It had not been checked in detail as were the songs included in the first Georgian…
Bruce Springsteen’s Sacred Harp Sample
Bruce Springsteen’s new song “Death to My Hometown” samples “The Last Words of Copernicus” from the 1869 Sacred Harp, by Sarah Lancaster of Buena Vista, Georgia. The source for the sample is Alan Lomax’s recording of the 1959 United convention at Corinth Baptist Church in Fyffe, Alabama, which was reissued in 1997 by Rounder Records…