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Friday, July 17, 2009

An old song book at Google

The Shawm, by William Batchelder Bradbury, George Frederick Root, Thomas Hastings, Timothy Battelle Mason

Shawm (shôm) n. Any of various early double-reed wind instruments, forerunners of the modern oboe. -- From the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

2 comments:

Adrian Neal said...

Bro. Robert,

Are there still sacred harp singings in East Texas?
Let me know when & where.

Thanks,
Bro. Adrian

R. L. Vaughn said...

Yes, there are still a few going on. There is one close to you, the Saturday before the first Sunday in November competing with opening of deer season! It is at Little Hope PBC out 1669 from Huntington. We sing up here in our area the first Monday night of every month, and the oldest singing convention in Texas meets the second weekend in August every year. There are others as well. You can look on HERE for more details. Also feel free to e-mail me rl_vaughn -AT- yahoo.com We'd be glad to have you come visit.

The book linked on this post is a neat old one. It is interesting that Bradbury, Hastings and company were opposed to the shape notes and also some of the tunes of the Sacred Harp (didn't fit their "scientific" ideas), but several of their songs that are not so popular elsewhere have survived in the Sacred Harp and other shape note song books. And shape notes were once so popular that publishers published some of their books in shape notes over their objections! Publishers knew where the money was, I guess.