On Thursday, September 11, 2025 I posted on my blog “An example of 2025 Sacred Harp committee revising.” That post discussed the song that Linda Sides sent to the Sacred Harp Revision Committee (a committee approved by the board of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company) for consideration in the new revision of the song book. The committee severely revised the song without Linda’s permission, then sent it to her with only a week’s notice for her to sign off on for inclusion in the new 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp. Linda chose to reject their proposal. See the following file for six examples that show more of the type of editing done by the committee or some of its members. Sometimes it was done in changing the harmony parts, fuge entrances, and such like, and sometimes a nearly complete rewrite! In the examples, the first picture of a song is how it appeared before entering the 2025 edition, and the second picture of the song is how it appears in the 2025 edition. The changes are “circled” to help show where they appear, using green for treble, red for alto, yellow for tenor, and blue for bass.
At what point does the editing change from ethical to unethical? In my opinion, the editing of submitted songs reached a degree that is not normative of or proper for editing processes. Ethical editing allows for and includes minor corrections and enhancements (corrections of typos, errant notes, grammatical mistakes, for example), respect of the original content and context, clarification, proper attribution, and/or informed consent. Unethical editing involves and includes misrepresentation, removing important content and context, lack of transparency, and/or falsifying information. A distinction between ethical and unethical may often depend on whether the editorial changes mislead the audience and distort the truth.
More examples of 2025 Sacred Harp committee revising PDF
Note: I have been in communication with the Sacred Harp Publishing Company and anticipate a reply from them.
6 comments:
i mean... seeing as the committee publishes THEIR book, do they not have plenary authority over the entirety of what they chose to print? they did all the work for this revision... the least they can get in return is editing rights, since they certainly aren't getting paid at all. lol.
they aren't claiming that their revision eclipses or replaces any part of the larger shapenote tradition. (side note here - perhaps a Cooper Book 2026 revision with songs such as Ms. Sides' would be a viable option? 😍)
you imply that composers were manipulated into agreeing to the committee's edits with a tight deadline - but literally, in the example of Ms. Sides' song you have posted here, Ms. Sides turned down their suggested edits, and they respected her wishes and did not include her song.... emphasis on "respected her wishes". they did not release an edited version without her consent.
given that the committee were all working on this for years for no compensation, it makes sense that they might have been short on time during certain points - and frankly, it makes sense that they would expect composers to agree to the edits. most people who got chosen were elated, and would have said yes to a litany of edits to have a song in the book at all. as you remind us in the pdf - almost 1200 songs were submitted!!
they have talked at singing schools and the symposium about having THEIR OWN songs edited by eachother, and being surprised by some of the results.
i understand the frustration from certain composers, but the attempts to paint the 2025 revision's editing process as somehow "immoral" comes across as both ignorant and unintelligent.
you are clearly a smart person and an incredible resource to the community - your knowledge of the Cooper Book alone is awe-inspiring. i am just sad to see someone of your intellectual caliber wasting your bandwidth on topics as dumb as this one.
Dear Anonymous Shape Note singer,
I thank you for taking the time to read and comment on “More examples of 2025 Sacred Harp committee revising.” I think we (the Sacred Harp community) need conversations about this.
You say “the committee publishes THEIR book.” Not sure what you mean to stress – “their book” as opposed to whom? Their book and not mine? So, I have no right to say anything? They have the right to do whatever? The book does not belong to the committee. Legally it belongs to the Sacred Harp Publishing Company. The Sacred Harp Publishing Company belongs to the stockholders. I am a stockholder, so in some sense it is “mine” as well as “theirs.” In a heartfelt sense it also belongs to the Sacred Harp community at large. But by “their” you obviously mean “the committee” – “the committee publishes,” “they certainly aren’t getting paid,” etc. So, yes, the board representing the stockholders approved a committee to revise the 1991 Sacred Harp. Under that arrangement the committee had the ability and right to choose or not choose what songs they wanted to print. The committee members accepted their positions knowing they weren’t getting paid. They have no right to complain about that, or to expect special privileges simply on that account. That fact in itself does not automatically give them unlimited editing rights, and they should have been upfront about it if they thought it did. You perhaps missed, however, that my objection was not to editing, per se, but to behind the scenes editing having no collaboration with or warning to the composers.
Some of your comments seem strangely unrelated to my essay, such as saying the committee isn’t “claiming that their revision eclipses or replaces any part of the larger shapenote tradition.” Who said it does, or that they did? Not me.
I am not trying to imply that composers were manipulated into agreeing to the committee’s edits with a tight deadline. I know that some composers actually felt that way. Certainly, some people (probably most) who got their songs chosen for the book were elated, had no problem with the timeline, and not only would but some did say yes “to a litany of edits to have a song in the book at all.” Some accepted it and complained about it, indicating they did feel pressured by the timeline. Ms. Sides has specifically addressed that she felt the only options in the time frame were to either accept or decline – in other words, no time for anything else, no time for back-and-forth conferring with the committee about what they had done and what could be done. You mention that they “respected [Ms. Sides] wishes and did not include her song.... emphasis on ‘respected her wishes.’” Right, but it is not so much about “respect” is it? They DID NOT have her consent to publish her song.
[Because of the length of my reply, I had to break it into three posts.]
You say that “it makes sense that they would expect composers to agree to the edits.” Again, notice that I did not express opposition the use of editing, but rather how it was done. Did composers expect edits to their songs? Were they told up front? Were they given any chance to discuss or push back against the edits? You mention that “they [the committee?] have talked at singing schools and the symposium about having THEIR OWN songs edited by each other, and being surprised by some of the results.” Maybe you run in these circles and may be privy to some facts not in evidence for the broader community. It is fair that all be informed equally. The session about editing was not livestreamed on the day of the symposium, and still is not available anywhere, as far as I can tell.
There is no attempt to paint the 2025 revision’s editing process as “immoral.” To fail to understand a question of ethics versus a question of morality comes across as both ignorant and unintelligent.
[Because of the length of my reply, I had to break it into three posts.]
I appreciate your nod to my being “clearly a smart person,” but I would admit to only being an average person who does a lot of research and a lot of thinking. You know who I am, but on the other hand I do not know who you are. You may be the dullest knife in the kitchen drawer or the brightest light on the front porch, for all I know. It is likely that you are a smart person, an incredible resource to the community, and one who cares about these issues (since you took the time to respond). However, your response here comes off as a somewhat dull and uninspired defense of the status quo. You mainly miss the larger question of ethics. This question is not a question of the committee as individuals, people whom most of us know and think well of. Perhaps the more important question is whether the Sacred Harp community even has an ethical standard for revising songbooks, editing songs, and such like. Most “industries” do have such ethical standards, and if we do not then we need to develop some. For example, a person who I respected and loved, who I considered a great and good person, wrote songs and attached the names of other people as the composers. No matter how much respect and affection I feel toward that person, and no matter the reason for doing so, I cannot help but believe that particular practice was unethical. I have struggled with it for years.
I hate to see someone like you wasting your response time in such a poorly argued and anonymous way. I have for many years operated my blog with a very open policy in allowing any and all anonymous comments that are not spam, indecent, or such like. However, I recently posted a warning to put on notice that shape note singers will not get a pass to hide behind anonymity to take potshots. Your comment about a 2026 Cooper revision “with songs such as Ms. Sides” sounds a good bit like a pot shot to me. Maybe that is not how you intended it. I would like to carry on honest conversations with shape note singers about these issues. They can be enlightening and educational to all of us, even (and perhaps especially) when we disagree. But please understand my predicament with the current set of anonymous posts regarding the 2025 Sacred Harp revision. You know who I am; I do not know who you (all) are. Perhaps you would be uncomfortable saying what you said if you knew I knew who you are. Perhaps I might even have addressed you differently if I knew who you are! When people post anonymously I do not know if these posts are from one anonymous person or a dozen different anonymous persons. And people can all feel quite free to say most anything anonymously that they would not want to own publicly. I am putting myself out on the limb. Are you willing to do the same? If y’all are not willing, I will need to make some adjustments to how (and if) I continue to allow anonymous posting.
[Note: you do not have to create an account to post, you can simply post anonymously and then add your name at the bottom of what you write, as some people already do.]
Hello, anon!
I am going to go a bit further than Mr. Vaughn - who, full disclosure, is my father - on the matter of “immorality”. When a song is almost entirely rewritten by someone other than the person who it is attributed to that is tantamount to lying, which most would agree is immoral. Now, I can sympathize with the composer wanting their name in the book. I can sympathize with the composer perhaps not understanding the norms of the process, or not wanting to disagree with the “experts”. I can even sympathize with a composer being a non-confrontational person and going along even though they disagreed! Additionally, songs being rewritten and now misattributed doesn’t necessarily mean there was nefarious intent on the part of the committee - that certainly wasn’t the case with the prior misattributed songs in the 91 revision - but it is still a serious issue that warrants discussion, and that it is fair to push back on. This has broader implications including, for example, the metrics of composers being inaccurate and the accuracy of the historical record of Sacred Harp singing.
“the least they can get in return is editing rights, since they certainly aren't getting paid at all”
Editing rights are not exchanged for payment or labor. Editing rights are not taken from someone else. There are ethical standards for editing which have been previously outlined on this blog. Those standards were not followed in this case.
“you imply that composers were manipulated into agreeing to the committee's edits with a tight deadline”
More than one composer has cited the time constraint as a reason for agreeing/signing over consent. They may never say so publicly, but that is a fact of which I have personal knowledge.
“it makes sense that they would expect composers to agree to the edits”
This would make sense in no other publishing context, actually. We may not have editing rules specific to Sacred Harp but it is not normative in any editing realm to completely alter someone’s work in the name of “editing”. Something intelligent people certainly know if they have any exposure to that world.
“they have talked at singing schools and the symposium about having THEIR OWN songs edited by eachother”
The committee member’s own songs being edited is no defense given that they were aware of the process and could offer consent, unlike composers who were not a part of the process.
Your lengthy comment in the end doesn’t address most of the concerns presented including:
- What was the basis of selecting songs for the revision?
- Were there not out of 1155 songs even 100 hundred that were good enough on their own merits?
The answers to these questions matter when composers submitted their songs in good faith of a fair and honest process. It matters to the integrity of the Sacred Harp tradition.
Dear Anonymous Shape Note Singer, et al.,
There was another thing that I meant to address and missed. You write, “as you remind us in the pdf - almost 1200 songs were submitted!!”
Yes, that is something of which to be reminded. According to committee reports, in the end a total of 1155 songs were submitted to them for consideration for inclusion in the new revision. Additionally, you wrote that composers “would have said yes to a litany of edits to have a song in the book at all.” Let’s consider a few surprising things about this.
Shortly after the board approved a revision, solicitation for new songs began. In the Spring of 2020, the revision committee requested that songs be submitted by September 30, 2020. Because of covid, in July 2020 the committee extended this deadline to April 30, 2022 for contributors to submit music. They reported that they already had 559 songs submitted. In January 2023 it was reported that 765 songs had been submitted. This should theoretically have been a final number, since the deadline was in April of 2022. However, the January 2023 report said they were continuing to receive submissions. In October 2023, a new deadline for submitting songs was given as November 1, 2023. The December 2023 report indicates the “finalist” songs had been selected. (And yet there are in the new book two songs dated 2025 and one dated 2024.)
Continuing to extend the deadline after receiving over 500 songs (and then nearly 800) brings several questions to mind. Was the committee unhappy with the quality of submissions, or were they dissatisfied with something else? Seeing that this number of submissions was far far above the number of songs they would ever consider adding to the book, why did they keep seeking more submissions? And what does it say about the quality of the contributions that this number rose to 1155 songs to choose from and yet many tunes still had to have “a litany of edits” to get into the book?
Also interesting: (1) some committee members directly and specifically solicited for at least some composers to submit their songs; (2) while still actively soliciting more song submissions, the committee also requested some composers to withdraw some of their submissions.
Lots of mixed signals were sent out, but we are expected save our bandwidth on topics such as this? C’mon, man.
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