folk holidays

NIGHT CONCERT WITH WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

 

CHOIRMASTER OF SACRED CHANTING ACCORDING TO CIRCLES, OVALS AND TRIANGLES

It is said, with exaggeration, that if a British folk musician wants to hear early versions of songs and ballads from the English countryside, he has to go to the former colonies in the United States, where, although they have often changed a great deal during domestication, they still retain their origins, which have gradually been forgotten. And if you want to be absolutely sure, you need to visit Tim Eriksen, the preacher of the oldest American music, in New England.
But the singer with the mesmerizing voice, multi-instrumentalist, pioneer of post-punk American folk music, composer, author of excellent albums, co-creator of film soundtracks, and trained ethnomusicologist doesn't just recall the past; he also brings it back to life in often radical versions, making the dead walk again, poetically speaking. We remember the star of the music we call Americana from Folk: as a soloist or in a duo with British folk singer Eliza Carthy. We know him from his recordings with the hardcore band Cordelia's Dad, from his own albums and from his collaborations with Rhiannon Giddens and Abigail Washburn, and his songs have been sung by the likes of Alison Krauss and Joan Baez.

But Tim Eriksen's greatest claim to fame is his significant contribution to the renaissance of Sacred Harp choral singing, essentially another star of the film Return to Cold Mountain, which has made religious music from American prehistory unprecedentedly popular.
Producer T-Bone Burnett, who wrote the legendary soundtrack for the film "Little Brother, Where Art Thou?" with director Anthony Minghella at Tim Eriksen, initially thought of the fiddler's role because T-Bone Burnett knew of his passion for old American music. "I discovered a passage in the script: there was a strange, exuberant choral singing coming from the church. There was no doubt it was Sacred Harp and the song Idumea. Anthony and the producer had no idea about the music, but they were immediately excited by the idea of using the Sacred Harp choir. When they first heard it, they were blown away. They realised they had found the right music for their film," Eriksen explained how it came about that people didn't leave the cinema entranced by Nicole Kidman, Jude Law or Jack White, but couldn't get Idumea out of their heads. And so it gradually came to pass that even music previously unknown in the States is now sung with amateur enthusiasm all over the world, and Tim Eriksen has a diary full of offers to teach choirs.

Those who remember the midnight meeting with Tim Eriksen in the church of St. John the Baptist in náměstí know that it is an unforgettable experience and, paradoxically, you don't need to know how to sing. The basic principle of one of the most iconic choral forms lies in the spontaneous desire to join a community which, without requiring faith in God, endows itself with singing, the magic of which, according to Tim Eriksen, you will only discover when you join in. "This is religious music, but the social dimension is also key. The songs are sung in community, and for some people this element may be even more important than the spiritual lyrics," he said in an interview with Radio Proglas.

Sacred Harp
A capella choral singing Sacred Harp is one of the earliest musical traditions in the United States, in fact, one could say it is as old as America itself.
The name - Sacred Harp - has nothing to do with the harp or any other instrument, referring to the human voice and derived from a book of the same name published in 1844. It was a collection of five hundred selected songs from various hymnbooks printed up to that time, using so-called shape-notes, because, contrary to European practice, the notes determining the pitches of the notes in four-part harmony (fa, sol, la, mi) were replaced by symbols for simplicity: triangles, circles, diamonds and ovals. This practice is still followed out of respect for tradition and is a unique hallmark of Sacred Harp.

The communal singing of songs, however predominantly sacred, did not arise from the impulse of the church, but instead from the natural sense of belonging of emigrants from the British Isles in their new home: colonial New England, the American South and Midwest. Old English folk ballads and church hymns were soon followed by newly composed songs. Shape-note was disseminated by farmers and itinerant teachers, often as musically illiterate as their pupils. They were the ones who invented the music "cuneiform" to facilitate learning.
Sacred harp brought together the seemingly incompatible: English tradition and American innovation ignoring European norms, Christians with seculars, whites with blacks, oral form with songbooks, the enthusiasm of settlers and music professionals. It gave birth to a democratic musical form in which participation and keen taste, not perfect singing with a musical ear, was the decisive factor. Sacred Harp is all about a coming together that makes no distinction between choir and audience, for all become both in that moment to fill the body with uplifting spirituality and let it cry out in song.

Photo:Dušan Svíba