The Hesperian Harp is one of two tunebooks compiled by William Hauser (1812–1880). One of eleven children born into an east Georgia yeoman farming family, Hauser attended local singing schools, was ordained as a Methodist preacher, and ascended into the professional class where he worked as physician and professor of medicine at a local college. Hauser defied family tradition to become a slaveholder in the 1850s before fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Hauser’s Hesperian Harp combines late eighteenth-century plain and fuging tunes with newer revival choruses, folk hymns, and modern reformed tunes and includes many of Hauser’s own arrangements, especially revival choruses he encountered at Methodist camp meetings. At 556 pages, Hesperian Harp was the largest, most ambitious in its class of tunebooks and was one of the final oblong tunebooks printed in four-note notation. The tunebook’s size likely undermined its utility, as it was little used in singing schools and conventions. Hauser’s second tunebook, The Olive Leaf (1878) was a transitional text that embraced a more modern format and included contemporary Sunday school music, as well as credits to the black and white individuals who were tune sources for both texts.

—Jesse P. Karlsberg