Editing Shape note (section)

== Origin and early history ==
{{See also|List of shape-note tunebooks}}

As noted above, the syllables of shape-note systems greatly antedate the shapes.  The practice of singing music to syllables designating pitch goes back to about AD 1000 with the work of [[Guido of Arezzo]]. Other early work in this area includes the [[Numbered musical notation#History and usage|cipher notation]] of [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] (18th century), and the [[solfège#Tonic sol-fa|tonic sol-fa]] of [[Sarah Anna Glover]] and [[John Curwen]] (19th century).

American forerunners to shape notes include the 9th edition of the [[Bay Psalm Book]] (Boston), and ''An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes in a Plaine & Easy Method'' by Reverend [[John Tufts (music educator)|John Tufts]].  The 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book was printed with the initials of four-note syllables (fa, sol, la, me) underneath the staff. In his book, Tufts substituted the initials of the four-note syllables on the staff in place of note heads, and indicated rhythm by punctuation marks to the right of the letters.<ref>Gates 1988</ref>

Compositions of the "[[Yankee tunesmiths]]" ("First New England School") began to appear in 1770, prior to the advent of shape notes, which first appeared<ref>That Little and Smith were the first: {{cite book |author = Crawford, Richard |isbn = 0-393-04810-1 |publisher = W. W. Norton & Company |title = America's Musical Life: A History |page= 129| url = https://archive.org/details/americasmusicall0000craw |url-access = registration |year = 2001 }}</ref> in ''The Easy Instructor''<ref>[https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/1/13/IMSLP299557-SIBLEY1802.27855.4022-M2116.S664_E1_1803z.pdf William Smith. Easy Instructor. .. Part II]</ref> by William Little and William Smith in 1801 in [[Philadelphia]].<ref>{{cite book|title=New Grove Dictionary of Music|chapter=Education|pages=11–21|first=Richard|last=Colwell |author2=James W. Pruett |author3=Pamela Bristah}}</ref> Little and Smith introduced the four-shape system shown above, intended for use in [[singing school]]s.<ref>By way of demonstrating the efficacy of the new shape notes, the ''"Easy" Instructor'' contains many difficult songs.</ref> In 1803 Andrew Law published ''The Musical Primer'', which used slightly different shapes:  a square indicated ''fa'' and a triangle ''la'', while ''sol'' and ''mi'' were the same as in Little and Smith. Additionally, Law's invention was more radical than Little and Smith's in that he dispensed with the use of the staff altogether, letting the shapes be the sole means of expressing pitch. Little and Smith followed traditional music notation in placing the note heads on the staff, in place of the ordinary oval note heads. In the end, it was the Little/Smith system that won out, and there is no hymnbook used today that employs the Law system.

[[File:Connelly shapenotes.jpg|thumb|right|A licence found on the verso of the title page of some copies of Little and Smith's ''The Easy Instructor, Part II'' (1803)]]
Some copies of ''The Easy Instructor, Part II'' (1803) included a statement, on the verso of the title page, in which John Connelly (whose name is given in other sources as Conly, Connolly, and Coloney) grants permission to Little and Smith to make use in their publications of the shape notes to which he claimed the rights.<ref>{{Citation | first = Kiri | last = Miller | title = Traveling Home | publisher = Univ. of Illinois Press | year = 2008 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-JB2iuBPxfsC&pg=PA209 | page = 209 n. 4| isbn = 9780252032141 }}.</ref><ref>Dick Hulan writes, "My copy of William Smith's ''Easy Instructor, Part II'' (1803) attributes the invention [of shape notes] to 'J. Conly of Philadelphia'."  And according to David Warren Steel, in ''[[John Wyeth]] and the Development of Southern Folk Hymnody'': "This notation was invented by Philadelphia merchant John Connelly, who on 10 March 1798 signed over his rights to the system to Little and Smith."</ref> Little and Smith did not themselves claim credit for the invention, but said instead that the notes were invented around 1790 by John Connelly of [[Philadelphia]], Pennsylvania. Andrew Law asserted that he was the inventor of shape notes.

Shape notes proved popular in America, and quickly a wide variety of hymnbooks were prepared making use of them.  The shapes were eventually extirpated in the northeastern U.S. by a so-called "better music" movement, headed by [[Lowell Mason]].{{Sfn | Lowens | Britton | 1953 |p=32 | ps =. "Had this pedagogical tool been accepted by 'the father of singing among the children', Lowell Mason, and others who shaped the patterns of American music education, we might have been more successful in developing skilled music readers and enthusiastic amateur choral singers in the public schools."}}  But in the South, the shapes became well entrenched, and multiplied into a variety of traditions. [[Ananias Davisson]]'s [[Kentucky Harmony]] (1816) is the first Southern shape-note tunebook,<ref>"the very first shape-note book produced south of the Mason-Dixon line, Ananias Davisson's ''Kentucky Harmony'', published in Harrison, Virginia, in 1816" {{cite book |last=Hatchett |first=Marion J. |year=2003 |title=A companion to the New harp of Columbia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=anvss1Vyi58C&pg=PA34 |publisher=Univ. of Tennessee Press |page=34 |isbn=978-1572332034}}</ref> and was soon followed by Alexander Johnson's ''Tennessee Harmony'' (1818), Allen D. Carden's The Missouri Harmony (1820) and many others.