Western Harmony

Look for the historic marker titled Western Harmony, but also keep an eye out for cars—this is a busy street! Now let me ask you a question, have you ever seen a shape note? These are musical notes that are triangles and squares in addition to circles. Click on the images above to see some examples. In the 1820s, 200 years ago, Nashville emerged as a thriving publishing center of music and religious materials. Allen D. Carden was a musician and teacher, who moved here with his family from Virginia. He had an unusual job—as he traveled from city to city to conduct “singing schools” that usually lasted 4-6 weeks. While in St. Louis, he announced he planned to publish a song book for these schools entitled The Missouri Harmony, similar to Ananias Davisson’s Kentucky Harmony. Carden returned to Tennessee after publishing his book. Then, in Nashville, he published a second anthology of hymns entitled The Western Harmony. The books were both written for “shape-note” singing, a musical notation system used by popular singing school instructors such as Carden. It was a different way to read music as the pitch of each note was identified by its shape. His hymnals also provided detailed instructions for this type of singing.

A newspaper advertisement in 1824 for Western Harmony claimed that the hymnal could be used in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Christian churches. Carden went on to publish The United States Harmony hymnal in 1829, but Western Harmony remains the first music ever published in Nashville. Today, of course, we are known around the world as “Music City.” 

American writer Carl Sandburg wrote that young Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, his first love, sang songs from Carden’s Western Harmony in the Rutledge family’s tavern in New Salem, Kentucky. As for Allen Carden? Well, he lived in Franklin, Tennessee until his death in 1859, but apparently moved away from music to other business endeavors. 

Continue walking up Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. Walk past the historic Morris Memorial Building, once home to Sunday School Publishing Board of the National Baptist Convention. Cross over Fourth Avenue North, approaching a historic marker identifying the location of Nashville’s slave market.