LAST REQUEST
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For Last Request, I taught twelve people the song that I would like sung at my funeral. After hearing a recording of “Parting Hand” sung by the Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention, I was frightened and comforted. Its insistent tempo carried the gaggle of voices. Some of them strong, some of them haggard, all of them ultimately invested. Belting out lyrics like, “How oft I’ve seen your flowing tears, and heard you tell yours hopes and fears!…Ye mourning souls, lift up your eyes To glorious mansions in the skies;” The song doesn’t deny that an end is approaching, it heartily embraces it with long notes and lofty concepts at the end of each stanza. By learning the parts and singing the song over my seemingly dead body, the group will fill in the emptiness of the hollow square and “draw the cords around their hearts.”
Besides being sung on the Last Day of Magic, “Parting Hand” is the last song sung at Sacred Harp Conventions. The “sacred harp” refers to the human voice. This American style of music began over 160 years ago. It is also called shape note music. This comes from the fact that the notes appear as four different shapes (fa, sol, la, mi) Itinerant early American tune-smiths and singing masters used this four-note system to teach sight-reading to people without musical training. Before singing the words to a Sacred Harp tune , they sing the notes by singing the syllables of the shapes. The music is divided into four different parts: treble, alto, tenor, and bass. Singers sit in a hollow square with each voice part taking one of the four sides and facing the center. The song leader stands in the center beating out the rhythm. In Sacred Harp singing, volume is more important than harmony. This is partly because of the music’s origin as folk music sung by ordinary people, and partly because loud singing provides more catharsis, more instant gratification, and more visceral pleasure than controlled singing. There is no audience in a Sacred Harp Convention. The music is not performed, it is sung as an end in itself. -Text adapted from A Beginner’s Guide to Shape-Note Singing, 3rd edition, Lisa Grayson 2001
Besides being sung on the Last Day of Magic, “Parting Hand” is the last song sung at Sacred Harp Conventions. The “sacred harp” refers to the human voice. This American style of music began over 160 years ago. It is also called shape note music. This comes from the fact that the notes appear as four different shapes (fa, sol, la, mi) Itinerant early American tune-smiths and singing masters used this four-note system to teach sight-reading to people without musical training. Before singing the words to a Sacred Harp tune , they sing the notes by singing the syllables of the shapes. The music is divided into four different parts: treble, alto, tenor, and bass. Singers sit in a hollow square with each voice part taking one of the four sides and facing the center. The song leader stands in the center beating out the rhythm. In Sacred Harp singing, volume is more important than harmony. This is partly because of the music’s origin as folk music sung by ordinary people, and partly because loud singing provides more catharsis, more instant gratification, and more visceral pleasure than controlled singing. There is no audience in a Sacred Harp Convention. The music is not performed, it is sung as an end in itself. -Text adapted from A Beginner’s Guide to Shape-Note Singing, 3rd edition, Lisa Grayson 2001
Parting Hand
Performed at 1999 Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention
Performed at 1999 Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention
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Collect twelve to form a hollow square.
Pass out pencils, pass out papers
Say sounds of shapes, write shapes of song
Fill in the square with the sound of the shapes
Fill in the square with the sound of the song
Lay in the square, under the song
Keep tempo with your arms in the air.
Pass out pencils, pass out papers
Say sounds of shapes, write shapes of song
Fill in the square with the sound of the shapes
Fill in the square with the sound of the song
Lay in the square, under the song
Keep tempo with your arms in the air.
