William Averitt’s Tunebook is an energetic work based upon seven shape note tunes from The Sacred Harp, the most famous of the 19th Century source books, and combines them with contemporary harmonic practice to create a 19-minute work for woodwind quintet in seven movements. Shape note singing is a distinctively American form of music making, dating from the early 19th Century. It features a unique method for reading music and, more interestingly, a remarkable repertoire of frequently modal melodies in unconventional settings. Tunebook was written in 2004 for the Van Buren Quintet of Shenandoah University and revised in 2008.
