James Landrum White

James Landrum White (January 22, 1847 – March 8, 1925) was a shape note singing teacher, composer, and a reviser of his father's shape note tunebook known as The Sacred Harp.

In 1844, three years before J. L. White's birth, B. F. White and Elisha J. King published The Sacred Harp, using the four-shape shape note system of notation. It was in the musical tradition established by this book that J. L. White would carry out his musical career.

This career was a curious and not entirely successful one. Although J. L. White was the most musically eminent son of the tradition's revered founder, his tastes in sacred music were quite different from his father's--and indeed, from a great number of other Sacred Harp singers. During his career J. L. White was involved in editorial work on at least four tune books, two of which can be viewed as his attempts to reshape the musical practice of the Sacred Harp singing community.

First, during his father's lifetime, J. L. was heavily involved (according to J. S. James) in the 1869–1870 (4th) edition of his father's book.

B. F. White died in 1879. In 1884, J. L. White and his brother, B. F., Jr., released the New Sacred Harp. It was a seven-shape note tune book of 192 pages (a little over 200 songs). Fewer than 20% of its songs were found in the Sacred Harp, and less than 5% of the songs were written in a minor key. Many of the old songs appeared with altered harmony. According to Gavin James Campbell (see reference below), this book was not a success:

Around 1897, White and his nephew Charles P. Byrd, responding to a demand for the older book, issued a reprint of the fourth edition of the Sacred Harp.

In 1909, J.L. White made another effort to modernize the Sacred Harp. This time, he labeled his new book as the fifth edition of The Sacred Harp. The book began with B. F. White's rudiments of music and about 300 pages of music from the fourth edition. Afterward appeared a second rudiments of music section by J. L. White and about 200 pages of new music, much of it in contemporary musical styles. The supplement also included settings of songs from the 1870 Sacred Harp with alto parts added. In the second part of the book, J. L. White undertook to correct his father's "errors in harmony," as he called them, by altering the notes in other parts as well—resulting, as Buell E. Cobb (see reference below) has maintained, in parts that were frequently monotonous and uninteresting to sing.

The 1909 edition not only failed to sell well, but was outright condemned by some Sacred Harp groups. The Cleburne County (Alabama) Sacred Harp Convention pledged that it would continue to use the old Fourth Edition. It called for a new revision, and asked that any new songs in subsequent revisions would "be of the Sacred Harmony and arranged as in the Old Book." The Mulberry River Convention, also of Alabama, asked that any new songs be "composed by Sacred Harp singers only."

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