The Valley Pocket Harmonist 6.75×9.5″, 407 pages ISBN: 979-8-218-39203-1
The Valley Pocket Harmonist is a supplement to The Shenandoah Harmony. It is a four-shape tunebook in a smaller, hardbound format, drawing on early-nineteenth-century Valley of Virginia sources that The Shenandoah Harmony didn’t have room for, alongside arranged folk and spiritual melodies and a substantial body of contemporary compositions in the same idiom.
At the core of the book are the previously unpublished tunes of John Bayer, Jr. and the rediscovered Songs of Zion (1821) by James Carrell of the Valley of Virginia. Two further nineteenth-century tunebooks shape the collection: John Steffy’s Valley Harmonist (1836) and William Walker’s The Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist (1846), from which the new book takes its name.
Beyond these primary sources, the editors drew on the collecting work of George Pullen Jackson, Shirley Collins, Deerin Farrer, Hiram Mattison, Joseph Hillman, John Steffy, and Winston Wilkinson; arranged Shaker hymns and other folk and spiritual melodies for the hollow square; and set texts by Milton, Blake, and Dickinson. Roughly a third of the book is the work of living composers from the United States and Europe.
Compilation took nine years. The committee considered more than 450 songs, circulated drafts to a wider remote committee for commentary, and proof-sang the contents with volunteer groups across the country before final selection. The result is a mix of straightforward and demanding pieces, usable both at all-day singings and at smaller, weekly gatherings.
Valley Pocket Harmonist Music Committee
Daniel L. Hunter, Kelly Macklin, Graham F. DeZarn, John W. del Re, Leyland W. del Re, Cherilyn MacNeil, and Joshua Rush Barnett.