page_title: William Walker (composer)
section_title: Tunebooks
hierarchical_section_title: William Walker (composer) / Tunebooks
caption_attribution_description: What Wondrous Love Is This
context_page_description: William Walker was an American Baptist song leader, shape note "singing master", and compiler of four shape note tunebooks, most notable of which are the influential The Southern Harmony and the Christian Harmony, which has been in continuous use.
context_section_description: Walker learned shape note music in singing schools; it had been used by Baptist and Methodist preachers in the Second Great Awakening to help spread Christianity in the South. Because the music could be read and sung by amateurs, hymns in shape note annotation became the centerpiece of many revivals and camp meetings on the frontier. Walker composed his first piece of music at the age of 18. 
  In 1835, Walker published a tunebook entitled The Southern Harmony, a compilation of hymns using the four-shape shape note system of notation. This collection was revised in 1840, 1847 and 1854.  In 1846 he issued The Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist.  Intended as an appendix to the Southern Harmony, the Pocket Harmonist contains numerous camp-meeting songs and their with refrains.
  After the Civil War, Walker published a tunebook entitled Christian Harmony (1867), in which he adopted a seven-shape notation. He incorporated over half of the contents of The Southern Harmony into the Christian Harmony, adding alto parts to those pieces which had lacked them. For the additional three shapes, Walker devised his own system - an inverted key-stone for "do", a quarter-moon for "re", and an isosceles triangle for "si" (or "ti").  Walker issued an expanded edition of Christian Harmony in 1873.  In the same year, he published a collection of Sunday school songs entitled Fruits and Flowers.
caption: What Wondrous Love Is This
exif: {}