Sounding Spirit: Scholarly Editions of Southern Sacred Music, 1851–1911

FAIN: RQ-260871-18

Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)
Jesse P. Karlsberg (Project Director: December 2017 to present)
Allen E. Tullos (Co Project Director: January 2018 to present)

Preparation of print and digital editions of five volumes of American Protestant music from several traditions, including gospel, spirituals, lined-out hymn singing, and shape-note music. (36 months)

“Sounding Spirit: Scholarly Editions of Southern Sacred Music, 1851–1911” will make available connected open access digital editions and print volumes of five widely influential but currently inaccessible books of Protestant music, including gospel (Class, Choir, and Congregation; Soul Echoes, No. 2), spirituals (Jubilee Songs), shape-note music (Original Sacred Harp), and lined-out hymn singing (Nakcokv Esyvhiketv). The intermingling of black, white, and Native American populations in the southern United States dispersed the music presented in these songbooks across the country. In critical editions richly annotated with text and multimedia, joined with in-depth introductions, and published by the University of North Carolina Press, the “Sounding Spirit” series offers scholars of history, musicology, folklore, regional studies, and religious studies access to key texts and appeals to a general audience, including contemporary populations engaged in sacred music making.

Associated Products

Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, and Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks in Noncongregational Settings (Article)
Title: Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, and Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks in Noncongregational Settings
Author: Jesse P. Karlsberg
Author: Kaylina Madison Crawley
Author: Sara Snyder Hopkins
Abstract: Noncongregational settings were integral to hymnody in the postbellum settler colonial context of the southern United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The incorporation of hymn singing into a wide range of noncongregational settings served Black, white, and Native populations in navigating unsettled racial dynamics during this period across the US South and its diasporas. This essay features three case studies examining hymn collections intended or repurposed for a range of noncongregational uses: spiritual collections connected with the performing ensembles of black institutions, a shape-note songbook that attempted to bridge singing convention and congregational contexts, and a Cherokee-language hymnal being repurposed today for community singing facilitating language learning. Features of these music books’ bibliographic forms, and elements of their music stylistic contents, facilitated their use in communal settings. We argue that taking noncongregational contexts seriously helps to unpack hymns’ connections to race and place, reveal relationships between hymnbooks’ music genre affiliations and formats and their musical-religious functions, and illuminate latent pedagogical and research opportunities. Our case studies expand the temporality associated with noncongregational hymn singing and highlight the value of bibliography as a methodological approach to assessing hymn singing’s diverse contexts.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1237
Primary URL Description: DOI
Secondary URL: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol9/iss1/8/
Secondary URL Description: EliScholar URL
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Yale Journal of Music and Religion
Publisher: Yale Institute of Sacred Music

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