Rise, My Soul - Sacred Harp Worship Service on May 3

On Sunday, May 3, as part of the 10:45 am worship service, guests from the Front Range Sacred Harp community will be joining with the choir of First Christian Church – Boulder to present a Sunday morning worship service at First Christian filled with the music of an old American tradition, the Sacred Harp sing. After nearly a century in obscurity, Sacred Harp has experienced a revival on college campuses and was featured in Time magazine in 2008.

What is Sacred Harp? It’s an American form of music, developed in the early 1800s by singing masters in New England. The tradition survived mostly in the South, but in the last 35 years, it has again spread all across the country. The songs are (nearly) all hymns, some of which we still sing today. The songs are all sung a capella, usually pitched by an experienced singer. The harmonies are different than traditional church music, giving each song a very distinctive sound (and very different from the gospel tradition). In a traditional “sing” the chairs are arranged in a square, typically two or three rows deep, with one part on each side of the square. The only instrument used is the human voice, the “sacred harp.”

Another name for this form of music is “shapenote” singing because the early singing masters who wrote the early pieces of Sacred Harp music, including such familiar hymns as “Wondrous Love” and “Amazing Grace” developed a method of teaching music that gave shapes to the notes – triangles, circles, squares, and diamonds, corresponding to the fa, so, la, mi scale. In a traditional sing, each song is sung on the shapes once, and then on the words.

Sacred Harp is a democratic form of music – anyone in the group may chose a song and direct it. Sacred Harp sings are held monthly in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins, and are open to anyone who wants to come and sing. It’s unusual to have a public performance, perhaps because Sacred Harp may be considered a form of worship, rather than music performed for an audience.

The singing on May 3 at First Christian Church is free and open to the public. For more information, call 303-442-1861, or visit their website.

For more information about Sacred Harp, visit www.fasola.org, or for local sings, www.sacredharpcolorado.org