Northern Harmony (1980)
Northern Harmony stands at a pivotal point in the history of four-shape tunebook publishing—bridging the end of a Revival era and the emergence of the Contemporary era where new tunebooks and old flourished within a growing community of singers. Conceived in 1979 as a project at Marlboro College, the first edition was strictly a revival tunebooklet, reprinting early New England compositions in four-shape notation. But with the release of its second edition in 1990, Northern Harmony became the first truly contemporary tunebook, introducing new music written by active singers and composers in the Northeast. Through subsequent editions, it evolved into a living document of the modern shape-note community, combining historical recovery with creative contribution.
Northern Harmony: From Revival Roots to Contemporary Voice
Northern Harmony stands at a pivotal point in the history of four-shape tunebook publishing. What began as a small, revival-era booklet devoted to early New England repertory evolved into one of the first fully realized contemporary shape-note tunebooks. It did not merely recover historic music; it preserved and encouraged new composition within a living singing community.
Conceived in 1979 as a college project, the book’s development over subsequent editions marks the transition from the Revival period of four-shape singing into our Contemporary era—a period defined by a flourishing mix of new compositions, historical reprints, and interconnected regional singing communities.
Origins: A Student Project in Vermont (1979–1980)
The first edition of Northern Harmony was born as a January-term project at Marlboro College in Windham County, Vermont. Carole Moody (later Carole Crompton), then a student, led the effort to compile a collection of early New England hymns that had largely disappeared from modern practice. Her work was guided by Dr. Tony Barrand, a British-born folklorist and professor at Boston University, whose interest in Anglo-American folk traditions provided the project with academic structure and musical depth.
At its core, the 1980 first edition was a modest revival tunebooklet. Carole transcribed the tunes from standard notation and illustrated the pages herself, while Beth Spicer and David Gordon contributed research assistance. Supported by the Marlboro College Alumni Council, the booklet quietly entered the world of American folk music scholarship and community singing, reflecting the first stirrings of renewed interest in New England’s shape-note heritage.
Scholarship and Foundations: Barrand and Crompton
Tony Barrand—celebrated for his work in the folk duo Roberts and Barrand and as an authority on traditional English dance and song—brought a rigorous historical perspective to the project. He edited composer biographies, contributed editorial insight, and later solved early computer shape-note typesetting challenges by crafting individual noteheads pixel by pixel.
Carole Crompton’s foundational work shaped the format, notation, visual identity, and historical frame of Northern Harmony. Alongside fellow folklorist Nym Cooke, she brought renewed attention to many forgotten figures of early American hymnody. Even as the book expanded beyond its original revivalist purpose, Crompton’s early editorial and visual structure remained bedrock.
The 1980s: From Revival Booklet to Living Repertoire
The first edition of Northern Harmony did not yet present itself as a platform for newly composed music. It was, rather, a carefully curated recovery booklet. However, the 1980s served as a crucial incubation period where the book’s historical foundation met an active, overlapping community of singers, teachers, composers, and touring ensembles.
New England Sacred Harp singers, Norumbega Harmony, Village Harmony participants, Bread and Puppet musicians, and local Northampton singers were not only recovering old repertory but experimenting with a new idiom. Because this creative shift was already forming in the 1980s, the 1990 second edition should be understood as the bibliographical consolidation of a movement already well underway.
Several strands converged during this decade:
- Larry Gordon’s Projects: Gordon was developing related educational and performing initiatives, including the Bayley-Hazen Singers, Village Harmony, and the Northern Harmony touring ensemble. Village Harmony, in particular, gave young singers sustained time to arrange, compose, tour, and absorb traditional music, raising a generation of future workshop leaders and organizers.
- A Shifting Regional Scene: Local singing communities were establishing distinct practices, while composers such as Neely Bruce, Glen Wright, Bruce Randall, and Ron Kelley were writing new tunes. Some stayed close to historic models; others pushed boundaries with modern phrase lengths, harmonies, and vocal ranges.
By the close of the decade, Northern Harmony was no longer simply preserving a lost New England repertory; it was actively documenting a living one.
A New Direction: Larry Gordon and the Second Edition
In 1987, Larry Gordon joined the project with a transformative vision: the tunebook should become a living document featuring contemporary shape-note composers active in New England and beyond. A 1988 preview tunebooklet printed for the Northern Harmony Singing Convention in Woodstock, Vermont, shows that the project was already moving toward a substantial publication well before the final text was ready.
The second edition, released in 1990, marked a watershed moment. Northern Harmony became the first major contemporary tunebook of the shape-note revival. For much of the twentieth century, four-shape publishing had been dominated by preservation and direct reprinting. With this edition, a new model came into view: a tunebook could carry historic New England tunes, newly recovered pieces, and fresh compositions by members of the singing community within the same covers.
The First Digital Tunebook? A note on the inside cover of the second edition states that all the music was also made available on 3.5-inch floppy disks for Apple Macintosh computers, in both Professional Composer and MIDI formats. This likely makes Northern Harmony the first publicly distributed digital edition of a complete shape-note tunebook, moving the culture into the digital age just as it entered its current period of expansion.
Growth and Maturity: Third to Fifth Editions
The subsequent editions expanded this trajectory, mapping both community growth and technological evolution:
- The Third Edition (1996): This volume incorporated more original works and upgraded to Finale software, using a shape-note font adapted by Keith Willard and refined by John Roberts. It famously played a central role alongside The Sacred Harp at the 1st UK Shape Note Convention in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in September 1996.
- The Fourth Edition (1998): This printing brought visual addition via illustrations by English singer and artist Tom Bower. While Carole Crompton’s name no longer appeared on the front cover, her structural vision persisted as the contributor pool grew more geographically diverse.
- The Fifth Edition (Early 2010s): The most ambitious to date, it contained 160 songs—including 81 by living composers. Larry Gordon typeset the edition using Sibelius software, adjusting the fonts for clarity, and compiled the final print layout via Adobe Acrobat. Visual contributions came from Tom Bower and Vermont woodcut artist Mary Azarian, while Tony Barrand remained deeply involved editing biographies and compiling indexes.
Legacy and Loss: A Bridge Between Eras
The passing of Larry Gordon in 2021 and Tony Barrand in 2022 marked the end of an era for the shape-note movement. Gordon’s boundless energy nurtured generations of young singers and composers, while Barrand’s scholarship grounded the project in historical continuity. Together, they ensured that Northern Harmony was not merely a book, but a community artifact.
Viewed in the grander context of tunebook history, Northern Harmony successfully bridged the Revival and Contemporary periods of four-shape publishing. By preserving neglected early New England repertory, encouraging new composition, circulating among active educators, and pioneering digital distribution, it opened the door for later contemporary tunebooks and fundamentally shaped the culture of modern shape-note singing.
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Mona Lewandoski, Porter Loo, Neely Bruce, and others for their direct contributions, corrections, recollections, and suggestions, all of which have helped clarify the history and significance of Northern Harmony.
Northern Harmony Edition Timeline
1980, First Edition, 56pp
The tunes in this first effort were:
Amanda – 26
Appletree, The – 6
Begone Unbelief – 5
Bristol – 42
Chester – 4
Chocksett – 45
Crostic – 8
Despair – 23
Emmanuel – 2
Election Hymn – 11
Evening Hymn – 14
Greenfield – 1
Harvest Hymn – 16
Huntington – 30
Lisbon – 34
Love Divine – 18
Marlborough – 46
Montgomery – 24
Pittsford – 38
Pleasant Valley – 28
Poland – 44
Sounding Joy – 32
Spring – 35
Swanton – 40
Wedding Hymn – 15
Weeping Mary – 22
Winter – 35
Young Convert, The – 20
1985 Revised Tunebooklet
(I have not been able to examine a copy of this, but the 1990 edition notes that the 1980 booklet was “re-issued with revisions in 1985.)
1988 Preview Tunebooklet
The tunes contained in it were as follows:
Carol – Supply Belcher
Evening Hymn – Jeremiah Ingalls
Farewell Hymn – Jeremiah Ingalls
Free Grace – Jeremiah Ingalls
Greenfield – Lewis Edson, Sr.
Hampton – Eliakim Doolittle
Honor to the Hills – Jeremiah Ingalls
Immensity – Eliakim Doolittle
Harvest Hymn – Jeremiah Ingalls
Jerusalem Anthem – Elisha West
Marlborough – Abraham Wood
Newbury – Ebenezer Child
Pleasant Valley – Justin Morgan
Reflection – Supply Belcher
Roslin Castle – Elisha West
Swanton – Hezekiah Moors
Tribunal – Eliakim Doolittle
Windsor – Elisha West
Wedding Hymn – Jeremiah Ingalls
1990 Second Edition, 142pp
1992 [Second Printing, Second Edition?] 142pp
199(2?) Second Edition, Digital
A note on the inside cover of the Northern Harmony, 2nd edition (1990):
Computer Disk Files: All of the music included in the 2nd edition of Northern Harmony is available in Apple Macintosh computer format on 3-1/2″ disks as “Professional Composer” files(® Mark of the Unicom version 2.3 or
2.3M) or as MIDI files which can be read by other music transcription programs.
1995, Third Edition, 262pp
1998, Fourth Edition, 269pp
2012, Fifth Edition, 320pp
