Thirteenth Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention

Convention details

Friday: Evening singing at the Meetinghouse

Singing from The Sacred Harp 1991 edition.

Saturday: All-day singing with dinner on the grounds

Singing continues Saturday at the Meetinghouse, with noon potluck "dinner on the grounds." Evening social after the singing. 

Logistical details and information

Books

Copies of The Sacred Harp tunebook (1991 edition, 585 pages, hardbound) will be available for loan or for purchase.

Kids

Children are welcome and encouraged to sing! Childcare for young children may be available if there is sufficient demand; please inquire in advance.

Getting there

The meethinghouse is easily reached by highway or by public transportation from all points. For map and detailed travel directions, please see our directions page.

Housing

For questions about housing, or to inquire about housing with local singers, call 973 779-8290 or e-mail to smbjoyous@aol.com

What is Sacred Harp singing?

What do we sound like?  Here are two songs from the 1999 Garden State Sacred Harp Singing Convention that you can listen to with any MP3 player:

• Eternal Day (J. P. Reese)  
• Easter Anthem (William Billings)  

Sacred Harp singing is a uniquely American music with roots in colonial New England congregational singing and a continuous tradition preserved by both black and white churches in the rural South. Since the 1970s it has been sung in all parts of North America by people of remarkably diverse musical and religious backgrounds.

Our tunebook, The Sacred Harp (first published in 1844 and most recently revised in 1991), is written in "shape notes": standard musical notation supplemented with variously shaped noteheads that make it easier for beginners to learn the notes of the scale and to learn to read music. But you don't need to read music to join in singing with us!

We sing in the traditional way, sitting in four sections facing each other around a hollow square, beating time together, taking turns leading from the center of the square. Three- and four-part counterpoint--whether devised by largely self-taught "folk" composers or by disciples of the classical masters--is enriched and expanded to six parts by octave doublings. Some songs are lively, some sober; a strongly felt rhythmic pulse governs both. It is a sound that, despite the growing number of fine recordings that exist of this music, must be experienced in person to be truly understood.

We sing early versions of standard hymns such as Amazing Grace, Old Hundred, Wayfaring Stranger, and Wondrous Love, but much of the music in The Sacred Harp will be unfamiliar even to experienced choral singers: majestic ancient English and European psalm tunes, spirited 18th-century New England "fuging tunes," anthems, folk and gospel hymns, camp-meeting songs from the 19th-century frontier, and compositions in all of these traditional genres by the women and men who preserved The Sacred Harp and its music through all the years of the 20th century.

For more information about Sacred Harp singing and about Sacred Harp resources on the Internet, we recommend starting with Warren Steel's Sacred Harp page at the University of Mississippi. Another fine meta-resource is the fasola.org page, which includes links to recent press and media coverage, including a number of radio features that you can listen to online. The meta-resource of all meta-resources in this area is Steven Sabols's Sacred Harp Resource Guide.

Call or write us!

For more information about the convention, please call 973 779-8290 or send e-mail to gssh.singings@verizon.net

More information about Sacred Harp in New Jersey

Want to sing some more? Or get a head-start before the convention? Do you live in our area? Are you visiting? You are always welcome at our monthly Sacred Harp singings in Montclair, New Jersey.

You can also view our archive of pages for previous conventions and other past events.