Sweet Seraphic Fire

The word "Norumbega" is an interesting one, said to be a Native American noun derived from a scrambling of "Norvega," taken to mean the land from which the Vikings came. Norumbega Harmony is a singing group founded at Wellesley College in 1976 by Stephen Marini that has conducted a weekly meeting for the past 30 years to explore the vast repertoire of New England and Southern Singing School music both new and old. While New World's Sweet Seraphic Fire is the third recording made by Norumbega Harmony, it is the first to receive any distribution outside the immediate parlance of Norumbega Harmony themselves. Drawn from the group's 2003 published collection The Norumbega Harmony, Sweet Seraphic Fire contains a staggering 35 pieces mostly concentrated in the "golden age" of the American singing school, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, it also includes some pieces from the slightly later Sacred Harp tradition and a few pieces written within this style in the 1990s. For those used to hearing New England hymn tunes done by professional or semi-professional choruses, the sound of Norumbega Harmony may come as a bit of a surprise. A semi-professional chorus can make this ultra-tonal kind of music sound silvery and pure, which is certainly not the way it was performed in Colonial America, pleasant as it is to current-day ears; these hymn tunes were generally sung loudly by untrained voices. Norumbega Harmony is more in the latter vein, and its sound might remind some of an especially good congregational choir or a group of carolers at Christmastime. Historically accurate as it is, it may not prove pleasing to some, and sometimes the center of pitch within the chorus tends to drift around. The scholarly component to Sweet Seraphic Fire is excellent. Stephen Marini divides the material regionally so we can distinguish between the type of tunes originating, for example, in Vermont versus those from Boston. As accords the ear, there isn't a radical difference between the two, but in terms of historical context, the music becomes easier to grasp. As such, Sweet Seraphic Fire will prove extremely useful for teaching in a field that is rapidly growing in popularity, both among community singers and listeners.