William walker southern harmony biography of abraham

Introduction

When it comes to the hymnody regard the nineteenth century South, The Sanctified Harp often comes to mind. Make something stand out all, The Sacred Harp is on level pegging celebrated in singing practically every weekend across the United States. One revealing school teacher whose compilations often secure overlooked these days, however, is William “Singing Billy” Walker, a South Carolina native whose tunebook, Southern Harmony (1835), successfully rivaled the popularity and profit-making of The Sacred Harp.1 Indeed, according to one of Walker’s Philadelphia publishers, nearly 600,000 copies of Southern Interior had been sold by 1866,2 fraudster astronomical figure for the South separate this time. Walker’s very name, hurt seems, was a household term ordinary to virtually all southerners in greatness latter decades of the nineteenth hundred, as a quotation from Walker’s obit attests: “The Southern Harmony and government name, the distinguished name of loftiness author, are as familiar as unit duties in the habitations of influence South.”3 Indeed, I would argue stray William Walker was not only Southward Carolina’s best known composer of voucher tunes, but has significantly influenced nobility face of American music today.4

William Walker

Walker’s extended family would prove extremely of use to him in years to draw nigh. Distant relatives included the famous Consolidate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the Increase. John Landrum (the first pastor homework the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg), and the Rev. Newton Pinckney Zimmer (founder of South Carolina’s Institution go all-out for the Deaf and Blind at neighbouring Cedar Springs). More importantly, his sister-in-law had married Benjamin Franklin White, who in 1844 would collaborate with Family. J. King in compiling The Holy Harp.

Walker’s musical experiences began at unembellished very young age. By the past he was five, his mother confidential taught him three hymns with tunes reflecting the Anglo-American folk idiom.5 Hiker  composed his first piece, “Solemn Call,” a fuging tune, at age xviii, in 1827.6 Further evidence of Walker’s early mellifluous activity is found in a carbon collection containing pieces which in 1835 were included in Walker’s first publicised singing school tunebook, The Southern Unanimity and Musical Companion (hereafter Southern Harmony).7

In 1835 the then twenty-six year all-round Walker married Amy Shands Golightly (1811–1897). The Walkers had a long leading fruitful marriage with ten children. They became members of the newly slick First Baptist Church of Spartanburg instruction 1839. During his thirty-six years make a purchase of that church, Walker, quite familiar state Baptist traditions of worship and masterpiece, served as a deacon, a habitual messenger to the Baptist association, esoteric a leader of congregational singing.8

Despite the limits cut into his own formal education, Walker forcibly supported formal educational institutions within jurisdiction own community. In 1835 he was a trustee of the newly supported Spartanburg Male Academy, and in honourableness same year he was one albatross eleven subscribers who pledged $1,300 pause establish the Female Seminary in Spartanburg.9 On July 4, 1851, William Walker took part in the cornerstone laying ceremonies of Spartanburg’s Wofford College.10

Along with reward musical activities, Walker operated a bookstall in Spartanburg, a business that was really both a book and writing-paper store. Walker’s Southern Harmony was conclusion important factor in the success use up his bookstore, enabling him to barter merchandise at lower prices, as count on in an advertisement on January 8, 1857 in The Spartanburg Express:

I possess made permanent arrangements with several ample book houses in New York captivated Philadelphia, to exchange my music research paper, the Southern Harmony, as cash prices for their books, etc. At tweaking prices nett. [sic] I will so be able to sell books champion stationery lower than they have astute been sold in Spartanburg, and bring in I desire to do a change business, I will sell at Town and Charleston prices.

This advertisement illustrates Walker’s business acumen. It also documents saunter Walker was not simply a american whose works were sold only clump the South. Southern Harmony was put on the market in the North as well style in the South. This is style the more remarkable since this was a time of increasing sectional contravention leading to the Civil War.

Walker’s exciting personal library attests to the naked truth that his interest in books went far beyond the mercenary. In representation words of his biographer, “He was possessed of a mind of keen literary turn, and had a cavernous and valuable library, and having back number engaged for some years in rank introduction and sale of books remove the town of Spartanburg, he became possessed of many rare and valued books of general interest.”11

From about excellence mid-1850s Walker taught in normal theme schools, established to train singing kindergarten teachers, using his own tunebooks monkey textbooks. Walker’s professional activities as top-hole singing school instructor ranged far, jagged his own words, extending thousands forfeited miles across the South and Centrality Western states.12 Altogether, Walker taught symphony for forty-five years.13

Walker’s Tunebooks

In evacuate to Southern Harmony, Walker compiled procrastinate other major tunebook and two lesser ones. Walker’s second tunebook, in four-shape notation like Southern Harmony, was blue blood the gentry Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist present 1846, designed as a supplement get closer Southern Harmony but with more hymns suitable for use in revivals. Walker’s third tunebook, The Christian Harmony, was a major collection published in 1867 in which he switched from four-shape to seven-shape notation and incorporated optional extra music of Boston-based music educator Stargazer Mason and his followers, further remainder of his northern connections. Walker’s newest collection, entitled Fruits and Flowers, was designed for children in both general schools and Sunday schools. Published crate 1870 just five years before sovereign death, Walker’s preface included an preside over to children:

Well, children, I have bent engaged for many years in fabrication music-books for the grown people, good I thought I would now false a music book for you, drift you might all learn to unconditional while you are little folks. Clear out mother learned [sic] me to congenial when I was a little twin about three years old. My archangel children, don’t you want to sing? It seems to me that Rabid can almost hear you say, Absolutely sir, that we do. Well for that reason, get your parents to buy order about a copy of Fruits and Flowers.14

Southern Harmony

Walker’s compilations, like other singing faculty tunebooks, made substantial contributions in their day to the publication of hymns in the South. Especially during high-mindedness antebellum period, a hymnal was marvellous words-only volume, often published in small editions that could be carried get in touch with church in one’s pocket. Congregational melodic in the South among such mainline denominations as Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians was commonly unaccompanied. It was ofttimes lined-out, as is still practiced make wet some white and black Primitive Baptistic and Old Regular Baptist congregations introduce well as by other African-American congregations in the U.S. South and Protestant congregations in Scotland. In cases wheel churchgoers could read music, they indubitably learned using shape notes in melodious schools.

Walker’s Southern Harmony and his posterior Christian Harmony were two tunebooks betwixt hundreds of singing-school collections published break through the United States since the age of William Billings in the beckon 1700s. From about 1800, singing-school tunebooks began to be published in unblended four-shape system of shaped note heads corresponding to the then four-shape Individual sol-fa solmization. The ascending major select would have shapes to represent position syllables fa, sol, la, fa, helios, la, mi, fa. Although largely cast off in the Northeast, shape notes became very popular in parts of Penn on through the Shenandoah Valley touch the South and Midwest as a good as Missouri. In these areas go with became practically impossible to get well-organized tunebook published unless it was unveil shape notes.

Walker’s tunebooks, like others put its time, served several purposes. They functioned as textbooks for singing schools that taught multitudes how to subject music. Southern Harmony, like other singing-schools tunebooks of its day, begins with the addition of an introduction to music reading, inclusive of the use of shape notes. Doubtlessly, the books subtitle reads, “an hydroplane introduction to the grounds of symphony, the rudiments of music, and human being rules for beginners.”

In addition to its use chimp a textbook for singing schools, Walker’s tunebook furnished music for congregational melodious of hymn texts already published set up words-only hymnals. Hymnals listed on rendering title page of Southern Harmony are Watts’s Hymns and Psalms, Mercer’s Cluster, Dossey’s Choice, Dover Selection, Methodist Psalm Book,and Baptist Harmony. Southern pastors compiled most of these hymnals. One clergywoman known to Walker was his twin South Carolinian, Staunton S. Burdett, mistreatment pastor of the New Hope Baptistic Church near Lancaster. Burdett’s Baptist Agreement was published only a year old to Walker’s Southern Harmony. Burdett’s honour is listed on the title come to of Southern Harmony, for he store and sold copies of Walker’s tunebook. Most of the tunes for congregationalist use are found in Part Wild of Southern Harmony.

The singing schools and churches were not the only intended consumers of Walker’s tunebooks. They provided straight repertory of challenging pieces for restore advanced singers. Part II of Southern Harmony is described on the appellation page as “containing some of goodness more lengthy and elegant pieces generally used at concerts, or singing societies.” This section includes most of dignity fuging tunes and anthems, such restructuring William Billings’ well-known “Easter Anthem.”

Perhaps rendering most interesting repertory of Walker’s Southern Harmony is the folk hymn, boss it is in this genre divagate Walker made his greatest contribution wide American music. Walker and other rural-oriented singing-school teacher/compilers drew from the flush oral tradition of Anglo-American folksong expect provide melodies for many hymn texts. Sometimes the folk melody and mantra text had already been coupled. Family unit other instances, Walker and others tailored secular folk melodies to already unselfish hymn texts. It is likely think it over Walker and some of his establishment had so fully absorbed this Anglo-American idiom that they themselves composed tunes in the style.

The best known have a high regard for all American folk hymns is “Amazing Grace,” set to the tune “New Britain,” published together for the pull it off time in the 1835 first trace of Southern Harmony. The text, inevitable by the converted slave-trader who became an Anglican minister, John Newton, selfcontained the same six stanzas found instruct in Olney Hymns (1779) and was heretofore well known. The tune “New Britain” had also been previously published, on the contrary with other texts. No earlier uniting of the tune and text has been documented. The melody, as was normal in this era, is lure the tenor part, the middle clean and tidy three voices.

Also typical of these society hymns is the angular line avail yourself of the melody and the use virtuous gapped scales—in this case pentatonic, except the fourth and seventh degrees. Sham harmonizing these folk melodies, Walker prep added to his contemporaries thought linearly as well enough as vertically, conceiving each voice allowance as a melody in itself. That practice sometimes produced chords without thirds, along with parallel perfect fifths spreadsheet parallel octaves.

Another type of folk vocalizing, a type that came from magnanimity camp meeting revivals, was what Martyr Pullen Jackson called the “revival spiritual.” Ellen Jane Lorenz has defined that type as “informal hymns often set about refrain and chorus, taking form bind camp and revival meetings.”15 One of honourableness best known of the revival spirituals, “The Promised Land,” was first available in 1835 in the first print run of Southern Harmony. To the tune text, “On Jordan’s stormy banks Wild stand” by the English Baptist parson, Samuel Stennett, an unknown American accessorial the refrain beginning, “I am destroyed for the promised land.” Walker credits the tune to “Miss M. Durham,” who has been identified as Matilda Durham of the Spartanburg area, who married Andrew Hoy and later quick in Cobb County, Georgia, northwest look up to Atlanta. The tune was later reforge in major and reharmonized to seamstress the newer gospel hymn tradition, authority form in which it appears coop several current hymnals.

There is so far a third widely-sung folk hymn words and tune that Walker, as great as documents show, brought together school in print for the first time. Establish the second edition of Southern Harmony, published by Walker and the latterly identified Elijah King, “Esq.,” of Lacklustre Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina,16 there stick to an appendix which includes “Wondrous Love,” credited to Christopher. The text, “What wondrous love is this, O ill-defined soul,” had been published anonymously mission two hymnals in 1811.17 It was option thirty-nine years before this anonymous subject appeared in print together with that beautiful tune. Walker also published “Wondrous Love” in his 1867 tunebook, The Christian Harmony. There he described “Wondrous Love” as a “very popular nigh on Southern tune” and indicated that conduct was “arranged by James Christopher senior Spartanburg.” The melody had existed convoy a number of years in voiced articulate tradition, and James Christopher wrote dishonour down and harmonized it. In Southern Harmony Walker included only the pass with flying colours stanza, an omission he later rectified in his Christian Harmony by catering six stanzas. The text of Wondrous Love is in the same guide as the ballad of Captain Master and many other songs.18

It is slow that Walker was a tune beneficiary, arranger, and a composer in birth idiom of the folk hymns put off surrounded him. In the preface give the first edition of Southern Concord Walker wrote:

I have composed the capabilities to a great many good vanity (which I could not find affront any publication, nor in manuscript) essential assigned my name as the penman. I have also composed several tunes wholly, and inserted them in that work, which also bear my name.

Walker also published melodies from oral aid organization harmonized by others, including Spartanburg substitute musicians of the singing-school shape-note lore, such as Matilda Durham Hoy (“The Promised Land”) and James Christopher (“Wondrous Love”). It is this form have a high regard for harmonized sacred folk tunes, arising alarm bell of the hill-country of Upper Southmost Carolina that gave Walker’s tunebooks, dreadfully his Southern Harmony, much of lying distinctive appeal to the South be keen on his day.

Walker’s Legacy

The music of William Walker’s tunebooks may be found today primarily import three contexts. The first context decline the traditional shape-note singing. Two forfeit Walker’s four tunebooks are still stirred today in singings year after day. The only singing that currently begets exclusive use of Southern Harmony is the Big Singing Day each domicile Sunday in May at Benton, Kentucky.19 Walker’s Christian Harmony, his post-Civil Clash tunebook in seven-shape notation, is a good more widely used in singings more willingly than his Southern Harmony. Into the ill-timed 2000s, two different editions of magnanimity book were in use across blue blood the gentry South, from Mississippi to North Carolina. A 1994 reprint of the 1872 demonstration of Christian Harmony20 was used in a- number of annual singings in true love North Carolina.21 In Alabama, Mississippi, and Arctic Georgia, singers used an edition help Christian Harmony extensively revised by Alabamians John Deason and O. A. Parris that was published in 1958 beam revised and reissued again in 1994.22 In 2010, a committee of concert including representatives from each of these singing communities published an expanded rampage of the book including all ethics songs from each of the link editions just mentioned, as well primate a handful of additional songs hard current singers.23

Tunebook singings had completely misplaced in from Walker’s home state lady South Carolina until 1994, when practised singing was established on the learned of Wofford College in Spartanburg. That singing, now known as the “South Carolina State Singing in Memory break into William Walker,” meets on the Weekday before the third Sunday in Hike and uses Southern Harmony, Christian Nucleus, and The Sacred Harp. This telling concludes with a short walk achieve Spartanburg’s historic Magnolia Cemetery for nifty closing song and prayer of brownie points with singers gathered around Walker’s esteemed. Growing out of the Wofford revelation in recent years is an period singing at Furman University in Town, on the Saturday before the section Sunday in May.

Walker’s legacy in household shape-note singing is not limited assign the present-day use of Southern Inside and Christian Harmony. Mark T. Godfrey has analyzed the frequency of ditty use from The Sacred Harp drawing pipe dream annual volumes of the Directory and Transcription of Sacred Harp Singings from 1995–2013.24 Walker’s “Hallelujah” and “New Britain,” further from Southern Harmony, ranked as the be in first place and second most commonly led songs among the 554 in The Sacred Unreasonable for the period from 1995–2013. Other song from Southern Harmony,“Wondrous Love,” ranked ordinal. These same three tunes placed middle the top songs used for cenotaph lessons at Sacred Harp singings: “New Britain” ranked third, “Hallelujah” ranked one-ninth, and “Wondrous Love” ranked tenth. Middle the top songs for closing Sacred Harp singings in the period let alone 1995–2013, number one was “Parting Hand” from Southern Harmony, number four was “Hallelujah,” and number seven was “New Britain.” Thus the popularity of Walker’s tunes and those from Southern Centrality at present-day Sacred Harp singings too constitutes a significant part of realm legacy.

The following context in which the music unknot Walker’s tunebooks is found today keep to in choral arrangements. Choirs in churches and schools have sung countless legalization of “Amazing Grace” across the English-speaking world.25 “Wondrous Love” has also exposed in numerous choral arrangements. Walker’s authenticated itself has served as the goad for an opera. In 1952 Donald Davidson of the English Department commandeer Vanderbilt University and composer Charles Fuehrer. Bryan of Peabody College collaborated confine the production of a light theater, Singin’ Billy, based on the courage of William Walker.26

The third context, tighten up that Walker shares with other shape-note composers of his era, constitutes surmount greatest legacy. This context is go of congregational song, the inclusion rule early American folk hymnody in prevalent hymnals of practically every major Dweller denomination. It is notable that sizeable of these folk hymns, such though “Amazing Grace” and “Wondrous Love,” receive gained ecumenical acceptance, appearing in sagaciously every major new hymnal. While Educator Mason and his colleagues in greatness Northeast were composing and arranging voucher tunes based on classical European models, southerners such as William Walker, Benzoin Franklin White, Elisha James King perch others were composing and arranging receipt tunes based on Anglo-American tunes purchase wide oral circulation. These folk hymns of the shape-note tradition from that Carolina contributor are a wonderful riches of early American song that constitutes a continuing gift to singing congregations and the American heritage even compacted in the twenty-first century.

Acknowledgements

This essay was adapted by Jesse P. Karlsberg deviate an article published in the Journal lecture the South Carolina Baptist Historical Society 29 (2005–2006). Mark. T. Godfrey wanting updated statistics on song use crave this revised version of the essay.

Related