#605: Forgive Our Sins As We Forgive

[lutheranhymns]

This is one of a couple tunes (the other is "Beach Spring," which is associated with several different texts) attributed to a book called "The Sacred Harp," first published in 1844. From poking around on Wikipedia, that was an influential resource in recording "shape note" music, a technique of harmonization/sheet music writing that is somewhat different from the classical four-part harmony, and uses different shapes for pitches in a scale (hence the name). It kind of went out of fashion in the northern US but survived longer in the south, and recently has seen a renaissance with folk groups/college groups (there are college music ensembles for a lot of niche genres), etc. No, I can't read it. The time signature looks like it's 3/2.