Sight Reading from Books with Old Style Notation

[tantif]

I have been gathering plenty of material with which to practice my sight reading.  I have been mainly reading from hymn books.  I have however come across older hymn books with old style notation with shapes such as triangles and squares.  I find them incredibly difficult to read and wonder why they were written in this style in the first place!

Can anyone enlighten me as to why this style was used instead of the familiar oval shapes with which we are now much more familiar and which are much clearer to read!! It seems that there have been stages and phases of development in music writing over the years. 

I would be really interested to hear from music historians etc, on this.

[brogers70]

What you are describing is "shape note singing," an idiosyncratic way of notating hymns. You can still find clubs devoted to singing this kind of music. Have a look at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note

[tantif]

Oh I see.  Thanks for that..