By Stephen Ray Miller, Professor & Chair, Department of Music
Six students and I got in a University van at 5 a.m., Saturday morning (9/13), and drove to Atlanta. This inconveniently early travel indicates our determination to participate in 120th session of the United Convention of Sacred Harp singers. We are beyond grateful that the Center for Teaching made this possible for us.
Although an annual event, the United Convention this year was unique in that it doubled as the “launch” for the new edition (2025) of the Sacred Harp. This song book was first published in 1844 and last (prior to this year) in 1991. Excitement among Sacred Harp singers worldwide ran high for the new edition, and the seven of us joined about 700 other singers at the Atlanta site (The Foundry at Puritan Mill, near downtown), including visitors from as far away as Australia and Germany.
Those of us from Sewanee are all involved to some extent or another in MUSC254, a class in the Music Department, and the Atlanta experience provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness some of our composer heroes in action and to recognize the worldwide impact of this southern style of music making.
The photos below depict:
a) Judy Hauff, one of the first non-southern singer/composers in the Sacred Harp idiom (she’s from Chicago), leading a song of her own composition
b) two of the Sewanee students showing off their new copies of the tunebook and fashionable masks,
c) another Sewanee student less concerned about aerosols, displaying both his new tunebook and his “singer” ribbon, and
d) most of the Sewanee contingent enjoying the “dinner on the grounds” that the organizers of the event had provided.
