Sacred Harp

"186 (Sherburne)" from the Sacred Harp

Performed by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers

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Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music which developed and was perpetuated in the American South. The name is derived from The Sacred Harp, a historically important shape-note tunebook printed in 1844; multiple subsequent revisions of the tunebook have remained in use since. Sacred Harp singing has roots in the singing schools that developed over the period 1770 to 1820 in and around New England, related development under the influence of "revival" services around the 1840s. This music was included in, and became profoundly associated with, books using the shape note style of notation popular in America in the 18th and early 19th centuries.^[1]

Sacred Harp music is sung a cappella (voice only, without instruments) and originated as Protestant music. The contemporary Sacred Harp tradition includes singers and events in the American South (the historic locus of Sacred Harp singing) but also across the United States as well as several other countries, particularly the UK and Germany.