UC San Diego

Since the publication of The Sacred Harp tunebook in 1844, families of the rural Deep South have cultivated a tradition of singing that blends written notation with oral traditions and frames them with performance practices and social rituals that first coalesced in colonial New England. Since the latter 20th century, a revival of their traditions has cultivated a network of singing communities spanning the country. Existing scholarship on this Sacred Harp revival has explored the complex transmissions and negotiations of oral tradition, performance practice, and social ritual from traditional Southerners to a more geographically dispersed and ideologically heterogeneous revival community. Far less attention has been given to the role of printed music in shaping this revival. Throughout the Sacred Harp tunebook’s century­and­a­half existence, singers have composed new tunes to be added through periodic revision, but the modern revival has inspired a dramatic rise in the production of tunes newly­composed in the book’s historical styles, as well as new tunebooks collecting such material. This dissertation will take as its focus this score­centered activity that has emerged from the Sacred Harp revival. Though singers and scholars alike attribute the greatest importance to immaterial dimensions of this tradition, I will argue that the score’s materiality serves to structure the community by continually reinscribing the memories of singers within the very aesthetic materials that comprise their tradition. I will examine how scores have structured, negotiated, and reinvigorated the Sacred Harp community in the 20th century, with particular attention given to the revival era. Score­based activity has also vastly outpaced the rate at which new material can be absorbed into The Sacred Harp tunebook and therefore Sacred Harp traditions. As a result, singers have organized new forums for the dissemination and compilation of this material. This activity will be explored as evidence of a new development in the Sacred Harp revival in which primarily revival singers are now using scores to structure communities and traditions standing apart from The Sacred Harp and its Deep South heritage.