The 19th Century was a time of musical experimentation around the globe. Musicians in the United States innovated music systems during this time. Around 1790, the association of four shapes, namely a triangle, oval, square, and diamond were added to the fa, sol, la, mi system. This new system was invented by either John Connelly or Andrew Law and was published in a book called The Easy Instructor by William Little and William Smith in 1801. In 1816 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Ananias Davisson and Joseph Funk printed their own tune books in the four shape-note system in English and German, the first printers to use shape-notes in tune-books in the south.
After Davisson and Funk published their tune-books in 1816, from 1817 to 1860 as many as twenty-nine other people compiled tune-books in the southern United States. As the century progressed the four shape-note system fell out of popularity and new seven note systems were developed. Jesse Bowman Aikin (1808–1900) was the first to have this new system published in 1846. Joseph Funk created his own seven shape-note system for use in the Harmonia Sacra published in 1851.
Shape-note traditions were spread through printing and selling songbooks, teaching shape-note music classes, and magazines featuring shape-notes. Shape-note music traditions were distributed through a network of music teachers that grew over time as they learned how to read music through reading shape-notes. The magazines which musical companies produced, such as the Ruebush-Kieffer company with their Musical Million magazine, extended the reach of shape-notes to new people throughout the United States. The culture surrounding shape-note music also spread with the magazines and music teachers from small communities to a community at large.
People from shape-note singing clubs from communities around the country wrote testimonials which were published in musical magazines. This network of shape-note singers is shown through a web of music publishers, traveling singing masters, and Normal Singing Schools, which distributed shape-note traditions to the communities and churches that they served. One tradition which is seen in hymn books is the writing of names in the front or back of the song book.
People often inscribed their names, and sometimes there are multiple names and dates written. Written in some of the songbooks contained in the archives at Rocktown History and from other collections such as Bridgewater College and Augusta County Historical Society, are the names of the owners of the books. These names sometimes relate back to the minister who used them which can be traced to the congregations which sang from those books. Shape-note song books were used not only in the Mennonite and Brethren congregations but in Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and other religious congregations.
Families, churches, communities, and schools used shape-note music publications to instill moral values in the rising generation. Apart from religious songs, songs about patriotism and temperance (abstaining from alcohol) were included in song books which were part of the curriculum of both Sunday schools and public schools.
The first two decades of the twentieth century brought change to how music, both religious and secular, was enjoyed. As public schools taught music as part of the curriculum and communities looked for new forms of engagement with music, the lines between the two became more blurry. In 1912, The Ruebush-Kieffer Company produced a shape-note book called Choir and Concert, A Choice Collection of Easy Anthems, Choruses, Glees and Quartets for General Choir, Concert and Singing School Use.
New forms of entertainment such as movies and later radio drew younger audiences away from the more traditional singing conventions of the past. The introduction of the radio in the 1920s further changed the way that families and communities interacted with music.
As the Ruebush-Kieffer Company phased out of publishing their own shape-note music books in the 1930s, they still printed shape-note music books for other companies and for the local Mennonite and United Brethren churches. Other companies, founded by those who got their start in music in Dayton at Shenandoah Institute, also took on the role of publishing shape-note music books, thus bringing forward another generation of shape-note music publishers. One of these was located only 3 miles away from Dayton, in Bridgewater, another 32 miles away in Waynesboro, the Hildebrand-Burnette music publishing firm.
During the 1930s historian George Pullen Jackson went about collecting information from various groups of people about their music traditions and in 1933 he wrote White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and “Buckwheat Notes”.
Shape-note singing traditions continued throughout the 20th century and continue today with the Harmonia Sacra Society in the Shenandoah Valley and the Shenandoah Harmony group and others.