William Billings

(1746-1800)

William Billings is probably the best known early American composer -- that is, an AMERICAN composer who was actually AMERICAN and not a European import. Although mostly self taught, Billings was a rather prolific composer and compiler of tunebooks as well as a popular singing school master in New England around the time of the American Revolutionary war. Probably an ugly man who would have been a "sight" to see, Billings was reportedly blind in one eye, had a withered arm and most probably a had club foot as well as a hunched back. He evidently had no interest in personal hygiene and was constantly using tobacco in the form of inhaled snuff. Consequently, he had a "stentorian" bass voice -- that is, a very loud voice no doubt damaged by the constant use of tobacco. The novelty of this spectacle aside, Billings made a significant contribution to early American music and some of his hymns are still in use today:

In 1770, Billings published his New England Psalm Singer which is considered the 1st book of American MUSIC published in the continental United States (The Bay Psalm Book was the 1st book, but the original edition contained no music and an later edition which did contain music included many tunes from the Ravenscroft Psalter, an altogether British volume. Tufts, Plainer and Easy Introduction to the Singing of Psalms, 1722, contained music but again, many of the tunes were from earlier British Psalm Books such as Ravenscroft). See Early American Psalmody and Church Music.

Here is a short list of some of Billings' most well known tunes and songs (links are MIDI files):

Here are some links to actual choral performances (RealPlayer). See Art of the States.

A word about the FUGING TUNE:

When the New England Singing schools began after about 1725, it was necessary for there to be very simple arrangements of the psalm tunes, for example in 3 parts. However, as the century progressed and the singing schools had their effect of producing more trained singers, there began a demand for more challenging repertory. Consequently, a type of contrapuntal arrangement was introduced which became extremely popular by the end of the century. Called "fugue-tunes" or "fuging tunes", these arrangements often began with a homophonic texture and then broke into an imitative style toward the middle of the song. Billings wrote of the fuging tune:'

Because the fuging tunes were a kind of "show-piece" for the choir, they were ENTERTAINING. Some of the texts of these tunes were more secular than religious and as Billings pointed out (see above), they were often sung without musical expression, where each part was merely belted out as loudly as possible, so to outdo the others. One negative outcome of the popularity of the trained choirs and fuging tunes was that congregational singing began to take a back seat and sung music in a worship service often was done totally by the choir.

Here are a couple examples of fuging tunes from the shapenote tradition (probably by Justin Morgan) to give you an idea of what this style of singing sounded like. These are examples from a CD entitled, "The Shapenote Album", available on amazon.com: