Southern Episcopalian

1) This journal was published irregularly at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1854-1855, 1858-1859, and 1863. The first issue appeared on Apr. 1, 1854, and the last issue was dated Mar. 7, 1863. 2) A publication of the Southern Episcopal Church, a conservative church that was founded in 1962. Southern Harmony. This four-shape shape-note tunebook was compiled by William Walker (1809-1875). Walker was a bookstore proprietor and singing-school teacher in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Southern Harmony was first published in New Haven in 1835. Several editions were published 1835-1854. It had the widest circulation of the shape-note tunebooks of its time. More than 600,000 copies were published in Walker's lifetime. It is one of five old shape-note tunebooks still in use in shape-note singings. It contained the first printings of Restoration (The Hymnal 1982, Hymn 550) (1835 edition) and of Wondrous Love (The Hymnal 1982, Hymn 439) (1840 printing). The 1835 edition also printed one tune for the first time under the name New Britain and used it with the text “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound” (The Hymnal 1982, Hymn 671). The tune can be traced back to 1829 but under other names and in association with other texts. Seventeen of the twenty-four early American tunes in The Hymnal 1982 were in the 1854 last edition of Southern Harmony. It is a source of the arrangement of several of these, including Star in the East, used with the text “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning” (The Hymnal 1982, Hymn 118). “Southern Harmony” is sometimes used loosely as a term for this general type of early American music.