The Hesperian Harp, Dr. William Hauser, 1848

Welcome to my web site which contains links to all the music from The Hesperian Harp, the largest, and arguably the best, of the shape-note tune books of the Nineteenth Century. The Hesperian Harp contains music mostly in the idiom of the most widely used contemporary four-shape tune book, "The Sacred Harp", which appears in three different editions, or in any of several other in print four or seven-shape books containing similar music. Here are Hauser's own title page and preface: [Title Page] [Preface]

I had started with a somewhat dog-eared fragmentary copy of the book kindly furnished by Richard Hulan, and with that copy and some further copies sent me by Charles Wells, originally had about two-thirds of the book posted. Later I aquired photocopies of the entire book from the most thoughtful John Bayer, and now all the music pages are available on this site. Please feel free to offer criticisms and suggestions for improvement. You can contact me at Berkley Moore.

In the following Table of Contents, unless stated otherwise, comparison tunes are from "The Sacred Harp", missing or incorrect composer attributions are provided in parentheses, and. reference to other commonly used tune names refer to those in various Nineteenth Century tune books. An asterisk* indicates that a title is NOT the title having exactly the same name in The Sacred Harp 1991.

Hauser's Indices: first page [One], second page [Two], third page [Three]