William Billings: Early American Composer
... privileged, the ordinary people (Nathan, 17). Among his more than three hundred published compositions (that have survived), none of them is instrumental, and there is no indication of lost instrumental works. Billings stayed in close contact with John Barry, and Billings’s first appearance as a professional musician was with Barry as an associate in a 1769 advertisement. The advertisement read “John Barrey & William Billings Begs Leave to inform the Publick, that they propose to open a Singing School THIS NIGHT…where any person inclining to learn to Sing may be attended upon at said School…” (McKay, 36). Billings was thus enveloped in the art of teaching at singing schools. He taught as singing master in Weymouth in 1771, in Stoughton and Providence in 1774/1775, and in Boston Schools on and off from 1778 through 1786. Billings continued to teach until 1798, and was listed in the Boston city directory as “singing master.” Teaching music helped Billings foster his love for music. He had written upwards of one hundred original pieces of sacred music by years end in 1769. By the end of 1770 Billings would bring out his first publication, The New-England Psalm-Singer (herein referred to as NEPS). The collection was the first published compilation of entirely American music, as well as being the first tunebook produced by a single American composer. Billings had his compilation printed by subscription, as was common in that day. He had help convincing contributors through the help of Paul Revere, who also engraved the frontispiece for the book. The frontispiece pictured singers seated around a table in a parlor or inn, which makes an important point that psalmody was a social as well as religious function. NEPS made many local references, and the tune titles exemplify this. Some have a typical ring for Boston in the 1770’s, such as FREEDOM, LIBERTY, or UNION, others are geographic and refer specifically to Massachusetts and Connecticut, such as NANTUCKETT and SUFFOLK, or references to churches, NEW SOUTH, or OLD BLACK. This collection included one hundred psalm-tunes and several anthems of considerable length and included some harmonic and rhyhtmic clumsiness (Macdougall, 52). Most were written for four voices, with a few for five. This clumsiness can be observed in numerous errors Billings made in the tunes in the collection. One such error occurred in the tune Lebanon, which misplaced barlines, concurrently misplacing the accents (Barbour, 14). This problem of poor prosody by Billings and misusing meter to place certain words would take Billings some years to clear up. Billings’ strength was in his unerring feeling for melody, which is clear in his anthems. Billings continued his life after publishing NEPS by teaching. He met his wife, Lucy Swan of Stoughton, Mass., and married her in 1774. During his stay in Stoughton, Billings directed a singing-school. The typical performance of psalmody occurred in this fashion: 8 men and 13 women on tenor (melody), 19 women on treble, 5 men each on the counter (alto) and bass (Nathan, 26). Billings discovered that the counter (alto) part was usually thin, as well as the bass, so he added more to these parts. Little is known of Billings’ life for the next four years between 1774 and 1778, except that he fostered eight children with his wife. The next three publications that Billings released were to show an immense strengthening of his position as a composer. The publication of his next book came as the Revolutionary War was beginning to turn in favor of the patriots. Billings approached the Massachusetts legislature to request copyright protection for his new collection of sacred music. Billings feared that other musicians would “intercept and copy said composition” (Barbour, 68). Billings entitled the new collection the Singing Master’s Assistant (SMA), and published it in 1778. This book was immensely popular, as is shown by the fact that it was issued in separate numbered editions, the only one of Billings’s tunebooks to have that done. The work was patriotic, used American paper, not English, and was the first book to be published since the outbreak of the war: all of these qualities made the book popular. SMA, intended for singers of a wide talent range, contained seventy-one compositions: the majority were psalm and hymn tunes, and eight were anthems (an extended setting of prose text). There was one additional composition, a set-piece, which is a through-composed setting of several stanzas of devotional poetry. Billings did not include any canons, as he did in NEPS, in this collection. In the author’s words, they “partake of the height of the Counter, and the depth of the Bass, and unless the performers have suitable voices for every part, they cannot sing a Canon with ease, or elegance…” (McKay, 89). Demand for SMA was great enough that it was kept it in print for several years after its appearance. Billings continued to compose and publish new collections, and released his third work, Music in Miniature (MM), in 1779. This book was not like his other works, it was a tune supplement; in the words of the author, “a Collection of Psalm Tunes of various Metres” – designed to be bound in at the end of one of the metrical Psalters then circulating (McKay, 104). The book is textless, and was for use by singers on their own or, in church, with the ability to adapt text to the music. Billings printed and sold the book at his house in Boston; this is the only tunebook he published that i...