The Missouri Harmony was the most popular of all frontier tunebooks, with a history going back to 1820, when singing master Allen Carden introduced it into his St. Louis school. The 185 selections in The Missouri Harmony, compiled from earlier tunebooks, were old favorites used in churches and singing schools which sometimes convened in taverns. Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart, Ann Rutledge, are said to have sung from The Missouri Harmony at her father's tavern in New Salem, Illinois. Shirley Bean points out in her introduction the importance of tunebooks and frontier singing schools in teaching Americans to read music. The Missouri Harmony, continuing the European tradition of shaped notes, contained the largest collection of compositions for congregations and choirs. Carden included thirty-seven fuguing tunes, among them "Lenox" and "Sherburne." The Supplement, added in the seventh edition in 1835, contains twenty-three hymn tunes, four choral numbers, a sacred song, and a duet; Isaac Watts was the author of most of the texts. This Bison Book edition duplicates the 1846 reprint of the popular ninth edition, which first came out in 1840. Shirley Bean's introduction provides a historical framework that will be welcomed not only by scholars but also by the modern shape-note singing community.
With a history dating back to 1820, The Missouri Harmony was the most popular of all frontier shape-note tune books. The 185 songs in the collection were favorites used in Protestant churches and singing schools, and many were already deeply rooted in American culture by the time of its first publication. The story of the book is the story of a burgeoning nation, with its origins in a St. Louis school (where it was introduced by singing master Allen Carden) and its spread along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. It's said that even Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart Ann Rutledge sang from The Missouri Harmony at her father's tavern in Illinois. Compilations such as The Missouri Harmony not only helped teach midwesterners to read music but also carried a uniquely American heritage of shaped notes, a system of musical notation that grew out of the singing school movement in eighteenth-century New England. Furthermore, this heritage would be, according to composer Virgil Thomson, "the musical basis of almost everything we make, of Negro spirituals, of cowboy songs, of popular ballads, of blues, of hymns, of doggerel ditties, and all our operas and symphonies." Yet, despite its significance, the tune book was until now unavailable to contemporary choral and church music groups, including the thriving community of shape-note folksingers. This updated and expanded version of Allen D. Carden's 1820 volume now contains more than 300 pages of original and traditional music compositions collected by the St. Louis Shape Note Singers. An introductory text explains and illuminates the shape-note tradition and the history of the book. With this compilation, published nearly two hundred years after its inception, the heritage of a very different, yet ever influential, America thrives, and its songs, rich with our country's history, live on.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
The tunebook and the singing school emerged as two of the most important developments in early-American music. Allen D. Carden's, The Missouri Harmony, was one of the outstanding shape-note collections from the first half of the nineteenth century and the first tunebook from Missouri. Carden traveled west in the year 1820 to establish a singing school in St. Louis, and subsequently compiled the tunebook for use in his own classes. At that time, however, St. Louis did not possess a font of type of setting shaped-notation and the actual printing took place in Cincinnati. Between 1820 and 1858, there appeared nine editions and twenty-one issues of Carden's book. Editions were repeatedly designated at "Reviesd and Improved," "Latest Improved Edition," or "New Edition, Revised, Enlarged and Corrected." A note-by-note comparison of all editions was made to establish the authenticity of these repeated claims of editorial revision. It was found that the first eight editions were characterized by simply a resetting of type but contained no changes in the musical aspects of the tunes or their settings. The revisions were in the form of correcting printing and notational errors (e.g., incorrect shapes, inaccurate placement of a note on the staff, notes inadvertently placed in the press upside down, and so forth). In 1835, a Supplement specifying "By An Amateur," was added to The Missouri Harmony. Effort was made to determine the identity of this "Amateur." Although insufficient existing records prevented positive identification, Timothy Flint has been advanced in this paper as a possible candidate. The Prefaces of Flint's tunebook and that of Carden contain identical statements and similar objectives. Flint had numerous occasions to become acquainted with both Carden and his tunebook, and was active in Cincinnati in 1834, just prior to the publishing of the 1835 edition of Carden's book. The Supplement contains "a Number of Admired Tunes of the Various Metres and Several Choice Pieces, Seleced from Some of the Most Approved Collections o Sacred Music." In contrast to the other sections of The Missouri Harmony, the voice parts are designated in each selection and the treble voice is assigned the tune. The revising of the ninth edition in 1850, was undertaken by Charles Warren at the request of the publishers. Warren was a noted Professor of Music in Cincinnati at the time and described as a "scientific musician." While Warren retained the tunes and general format of Carden's book (including the complete theoretical introduction), the settings were found to be quite different. The Missouri Harmony, a southern tunebook, had become "northernized" through the refinements made by Warren. Gone were the parallelisms, unprepared and unresolved dissonances, incomplete and ambiguous sonorities, retrogressive patterns, and lack of coincidence between strong textual and metric accents. The settings were polished and refined. An examination of the changes taking place in the musical and academic life of the period revealed the necessity for Warren's revisins. His refinements clearly represented the efforts of a northern, "scientific musician" to retain the popularity of Carden's four-shape collection while confronted with the rising competition from seven-shape collections, the progressive improvements espoused by the academic musical practices (forged originally by Timothy and Lowell Mason), and the growing refinement of taste on the part of the public by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Writing Home is the critically annotated correspondence of Emma Alderson, an 1840s immigrant from England to Ohio, mingling details of daily life with observations on slavery, American customs, religious communities, the impending war with Mexico, and more. Ending with Alderson's death in 1847, the letters formed the basis for Mary Howitt's popular children's book Our Cousins in Ohio (1849).
