About the On-line Southern Harmony

"William Walker's The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion is a remarkable book by virtually any measure. During the nineteenth century, when advertising was mainly by word of mouth . . . Southern Harmony sold about six hundred thousand copies. It is perhaps the most popular tunebook ever printed. Its longevity is also remarkable: it is still being used and sung from with loving care over one hundred and fifty years after its first edition. It is virtually unparalleled as a repository of the musical idioms current in the early nineteenth century, as well as of earlier idioms that were already becoming rare at the time of its publication. And it is one of the prime resources for succeeding generations of tunebooks. . . . this must be considered a publication of remarkable import." -- From the introduction to the University Press of Kentucky edition

This on-line CCEL edition of Southern Harmony is an experiment with on-line hymnals. How may they be put together? Are they useful? How are they used? If you have found this edition valuable or if you have suggestions, send your feedback to @Harry.Plantinga@wheaton.edu.

This edition is based on an Informix database and LiveWire programs running in conjunction with a Netscape Enterprise server. The hymns and bibliographic information reside in the database and the pages are generated on demand. The pages generated by the database program (except for search results) were then all copied to disk using a Perl program.

All of the midi files, hymn texts, and page scans are in the public domain and may be used for any purpose.

Hints

Credits

Peter Irvine, AOJN is recording the midi files.
Vic Johanson typed in the texts.
Harry Plantinga set up the database and programs and scanned page images.

Help Wanted

Several tasks might make this hymnal more useful. These include:

If interested, email me at Harry.Plantinga@wheaton.edu


This document (last modified June 08, 1998) from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library server, at @Wheaton College