Three Mellow Tunes from The Sacred Harp

'Sacred Throne, 'Old Hundred' and 'The Grieved Soul.' Sacred Harp songs are perhaps not commonly described as 'mellow.' Its harmonies are often thought 'weird' and its words do not shy away from death, decay, and the anguish of the soul. But in its pages one also finds mellower songs, of which these are three.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Sacred
• Harp
• shape
• note
• singing
• Old
• Hundred
• Doxology
• Throne
• Grieved
• Soul

[rustydog1236]

Just for the record, I LIKE haveing the words subtitled in!

[PLBrayfield]

@rustydog1236 Thanks for the feedback. Most people who offer comments about the subtitles agree with you, while at least one finds the subtitles distracting. I continue to add the words to the new videos that I post. Happy viewing!

[rockdontrun]

Thanks for posting this. Mark Twain mentions this hymn in "Tom Sawyer." I guess people would have been familiar with this hymn a hundred years ago, but i'd never heard of it.

[PLBrayfield]

Which of the three on this video is mentioned in 'Tom Sawyer'?

You are right - many Sacred Harp songs are much older that 100 years! Some, in fact, go back to pre-colonial times. Shape note singing (Sacred Harp) was common on the frontier even in Lincoln's day. And for a shape note song that dates back to the revolution, check out 'Bunker Hill' on my channel.

[rockdontrun]

Dummy me didn't realize there was more than one in the video! After Tom, Huck and Joe Harper return from Tom's island, they walk into their own funeral. The townsfolk are so overjoyed that the three are not dead, they burst out into "Old Hundred."

[PLBrayfield]

Well, that would have been my guess, among the three! The words they sang, most likely, were 'the doxology' - 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow' etc.

I remember the boys walking into their own funeral, but not the detail about singing 'Old Hundred,' a tune which, according to my songbook, dates back to 1696.

[JTB1956]

Good stuff. With the first hymn I found my feet keeping time and my fingers moving from old memory. I learned the first one as a pipe tune by Hugh Wilson...(Martyrdom), often sung to the hymn " Alas and did my Savior bleed". Not a standard setting for pipes, but a good tune nonetheless.

[KE5HOB]

Just do what I do, grab your copy of The Sacred Harp off the shelf and follow along! lol

[KE5HOB]

Thank you so much for posting Sacred Throne! It is probably one of my favorites, right after 31t. This group sounds so amazing.

[dono509]

I had missed this one in my mousing about the Tube. It's nice to see the positive comments. If we could get more people singing, this old world would be in a lot better shape than it is.