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Recent Newsletter Articles
- Introducing Vol. 6, No. 2 of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter
- Shape-Note Singing in Mississippi: A Preliminary History
- Building Community Harmony: Thirty-Three Years of Illinois State Sacred Harp Conventions
- Remembering Toney Smith: Singer, Leader, Teacher, Organizer, Reviser, and Encourager
- B. M. Smith: A Loving, Caring Spirit and Front Bench Stalwart
- In Memory of Earlis McGraw, July 27, 1935–June 8, 2016
- What I’ve Learned from My Sacred Harp Elders
- Bound Together: What Makes an Effective Pairing of Text and Tune
- The “Stacked Fourths” Chord: A Canonical Discord in The Sacred Harp
- Notes on Repairing Songbooks
Newsletter Article Categories
- Citizen of the Month (5)
- Features (4)
- Friends Who've Gone Before (10)
- Hamrick on The Sacred Harp (8)
- Harpeth Valley News (4)
- Help Me To Sing (2)
- Introduction (13)
- Just a Minute (7)
- National Newsletter (5)
- News (20)
- Number, Measure, Weight (6)
- Of Harmony and Composition (4)
- Read the Old Paths (28)
- Sacred Harp Museum (4)
- Sightings (1)
- Singing Reports (23)
- Unto the Raptured Eye (1)
Monthly Archives: December 2016
Introducing “Raymond Cooper Hamrick on The Sacred Harp,” Vol. 5, No. 2 of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter
The eleventh issue of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter features esteemed Sacred Harp singer, composer, and scholar Raymond C. Hamrick (1915–2014), a recipient of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company’s posthumous citation. The issue includes insightful essays by Hamrick himself, … Continue reading
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Raymond Cooper Hamrick, a Tribute
Editor’s Note: Raymond Hamrick taught Mary Brownlee and her sisters Rosemund Watson and Martha Harrell to sing, and for many decades Hamrick joined Brownlee and Watson to practice shape-note songs old and new at Brownlee’s home in Barnesville. Brownlee read … Continue reading
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Raymond C. Hamrick’s Contributions to Sacred Harp Singing and Scholarship
Raymond Cooper Hamrick (1915–2014), of Macon, Georgia, was a well-loved singer, composer, and scholar whose intellectual curiosity, generosity of spirit, and kindness seemed boundless. Perhaps the greatest Sacred Harp composer of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Hamrick imparted … Continue reading
The Twentieth Century Looks at William Billings
Editor’s Note: When Raymond C. Hamrick returned to Sacred Harp singing after World War II he was immediately drawn to the music of the eighteenth-century New England composer, William Billings. Billings also piqued Hamrick’s scholarly curiosity as this article—first published … Continue reading
The Curious History of Shape-Notes
Editor’s Note: In this essay, first published in The Harpeth Valley Sacred Harp News 2, no. 4 (September 20, 1965), Hamrick places shape-notes in the context of American vocal music history, from their advent in the colonial era through the twentieth … Continue reading
The Matter of Tempo in The Sacred Harp
Editor’s Note: A watch and clock repairman and jeweler by trade, Raymond C. Hamrick had an excellent sense of time. In combination with his inquisitive approach to the tradition he loved so much, it’s little surprise that “the question of … Continue reading
The Composer’s Debt to Shape-Notes
Editor’s Note: In this essay, first published in the National Sacred Harp Newsletter 2, no. 6 (November 1986), Raymond Hamrick analyzes published scholarship and an interview with Hugh McGraw to argue convincingly that shape-notes aid in composition, not just in … Continue reading
Sojourn in the South: Billings Among the Shape-Noters
Editor’s Note: Raymond C. Hamrick contributed this article to a 1996 special issue of the Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning 7, no. 1, devoted to eighteenth-century New England composer William Billings. In an April 2014 interview, Hamrick recalled … Continue reading
The “Ins” and “Outs” of Revision
Editor’s note: Raymond C. Hamrick wrote this previously unpublished article on the revision and publication of The Sacred Harp: 1991 Edition in August of 1995. He hoped that the essay—the first on the revision of any edition of The Sacred … Continue reading
Posted in Hamrick on The Sacred Harp
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“My Interest Was in the Background of the Music”:
Raymond C. Hamrick and Alan Lomax in Conversation
Editor’s Note: Alan Lomax interviewed Raymond C. Hamrick during a break in 1982 June memorial singing at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in Bremen, Georgia. An outspoken and prolific folklorist, Lomax attended the convention with a large crew to record … Continue reading