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William Billings
Born 7 October 1746, Boston. Bizarre of appearance (one-eyed, one-legged, and unkempt) and colorful of career (by turns as tanner, teacher, and civil servant), Billings was America's first major composer. The New-England Psalm-Singer, a collection of 120 vocal works (with frontispiece engraved by Paul Revere), was the first published edition of American music; The Singing Master's Assistant enjoyed immense circulation, in part, owing to its politically inflammatory lyrics. "Chester," Billings's famous and stirring Revolutionary hymn, might well be compared in function and effect to Martin Luther's Ein' feste Burg. Self-taught in composition, Billings drew on British models to develop a stark, primitive style of vocal composition appropriate to the stern New England church. The harmonies are simple and open; the setting of texts (his own, and those of Isaac Watts and others) scrupulous and sometimes pictorial. Often there is sharp metric and textural contrast—the latter notable in the fuging-tunes, where the middle section is in imitative counterpoint. The introductions to his tune books, designed for use in the New England singing-schools, summarize his musical philosophy. Billings was dubbed, wrongly, "the rival of Handel" and, rightly, "the father of our New England music." Works
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