Sinner Man

"Shaped-Note" Singing or "Fasola" Singing

During yesterday's meeting we touched briefly on music. We spoke about O Brother Where Art Thou and the influence music held over that movie. I couldn't help but be reminded of a piece I sang 3 years ago in choir entitled, "David's Lamentation" by William Billings. The piece featured a style of singing called "shape note" singing.

"Shape note" singing is a style which stems from the deep colonial south. The style is based on a way of composing music. In it, notes are given a different shape based on where they are located on the scale. Here is an example:

The style was developed as a way for music students to learn to read music more easily. Although this is often confusing for people who already know how to read music, studies have shown that the form actually does work. (McGill, Lynn D. 1968. A Study of Shape-Note Music as a Resource and as a System of Teaching Music. M.A. thesis, University of Tennessee at Knoxville.)

The piece Idumea is a traditional piece for members of the Sacred Harp Singers to participate in. I say participate, because most of the events today are not in fact performances, but what they call "singings" in which members sit in a square, and each member is invited to take a turn choosing a song and leading the choir. These singings can last anywhere from an hour to all day. In colonial times, these songs would have been sung in singing schools with the express use being to teach members of the community to read music and sing.

You may have heard Shape-Note singing before in the movie Cold Mountain.

Here is the piece shown above:

Here is another piece from the a congregation in Michigan, in which you see that the congregation has been centered around the preacher, and are all pumping their arms up and down to keep time. The piece is sung with enthusiasm and in the traditional square assembly.

For more information, please visit http://fasola.org/, hosted by the Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association.

or look for the movie which was released this year:

and to hear the piece I sang with my choir click here.

The Use of Song in Brechtian Pieces

Post Inspired by Theatre 460B and The Good Person of Szechwan

Brecht not only wrote, directed and produced plays, but created poetry as well. He wrote songs and poems for almost all of his productions, mostly in collaboration with Kurt Weill. If you are a musical theatre lover you know that music is used when words are not simply enough to express emotion or feeling. Brecht used the songs within his plays as a way of de-familiarizing the audience, when words alone would not do so. Songs spring up out of the blue as a way of making audience members pay attention to particularly important subject matter or perhaps even subject matter that is so commonplace, that the only way to think of it in a new way is to do so through song.

"For example, in Mother Courage and Her Children; the songs' content may be serious and forewarning of hardships, while the music is happy and light. It shows a lighter side to a deeply serious situation. The dichotomy and ambiguity of it ultimately shows the audience a new way to understand the subject matter and makes them question the social realities that are being presented."
The Drama Review 43.4 (1999) 77-85. Copyright © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The goal of using these songs and poems is to shed light upon the norms of social construct within theatre, which will in turn lead to audience to then see the same social framework in the world around them. In Brecht's opinion, this framework was not immovable and permanent but could instead be built by individual people, similar to the world within a play is created. Once a person can see the ever changing nature of society as a whole, they are able to see the ways in which they can change that world to make it better.

Sources:
The Drama Review 43.4 (1999) 77-85. Copyright © 1999 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
DJ Hopkins