Introduction 1
VOLUME III of The Complete Works of William Billings is devoted chiefly to music that Billings published in The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement (1781) and The Suffolk Harmony (1786). It also contains three appendices. The first prints music by Billings published by other compilers but not by Billings himself; the second contains pieces by Billings that went unpublished in his own time; and the third carries the arrangements of ten British psalm-tunes that Billings published in his Music in Miniature (1779).
The early years of the 1780s appear to have been a time of considerable financial and musical success for Billings. In 1780 he bought a house on Newbury Street in Boston for £6000. Allowing for war-time inflation of currency values, this purchase suggests that his activities as a composer, singing master, and tanner provided Billings and his family a comfortable living. In 1781 he published his “long-promised”
In addition to the two collections, Billings brought out several shorter publications during the 1780s and 1790s, which include five anthems, two fuging-tunes, and two psalm-tunes.
During his lifetime and for a few years thereafter, Billings’s music often appeared in the tunebooks of other compilers. The pieces of his that circulated most widely were usually selected from among a dozen or so of his most popular tunes, chosen from publications unprotected by copyright.
As well as being printed in many tunebooks, Billings’s pieces seem to have circulated widely in manuscript. Billings himself indicated that some of the music in The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778) had been copied by hand before the work ever saw print.
MANY of my Musical friends in the Country, have taken Copies from this work, and perhaps with some variation; therefore, I should esteem it a pecul[i]ar mark of their favour, if they would kindly submit all former copies to this Publication, which has been corrected and amended by their sincere friend and well wisher, The AUTHOR
With this statement and other evidence in mind,
Appendix III contains Billings’s only known arrangements of other composers’ music. When he published Music in Miniature (1779), a supplement of textless tunes to be bound at the end of metrical psalters, he included ten British psalm-tunes, presumably because they were among the tunes to which congregations most often sang the Psalms.
Volume III of The Complete Works of William Billings shows the composer at the height of his creative powers, producing works that were not only craftsmanly and met the musical needs of the church, singing school, and musical society of his day, but which sometimes seem to transcend those needs into an intensity of expression seldom matched in psalmody. Billings was, perhaps, the only American psalmodist of his time who had both the technical ability and the intellectual capacity to attempt to infuse the utilitarian character of psalmody with an artistic spirit more common to the parlor or theater.
THE PSALM-SINGER’S AMUSEMENT
On November 15, 1781, the following advertisement appeared in the Boston Independent Chronicle:
Music. Just Published, and to be sold by the Author a number of Fuges and Anthems, intitled, the Psalm-Singers Amusement; composed by William Billings (Author of the Singing-Master’s Assistant). The above mentioned Pieces were never before published.
In slightly more than three years, Billings had brought out three tunebooks, each containing a substantial quantity of new pieces. The Singing Master’s Assistant had offered the public thirty-eight new works; Music in Miniature added thirty more psalm-tunes to this number; and now, in The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement, Billings presented an additional thirteen tunes,
In his two previous collections, Billings had provided music for the singing school and for use in public worship. The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement appears to address yet another group of singers: the musical society. Musical societies were groups of more or less accomplished singers who met to sing psalmody for recreation. They may have met in a church, a town hall, or at the homes of members. Occasionally, they announced a concert, but most musical societies seem to have existed chiefly for the enjoyment and edification of their members, leading a shadowy existence that left few marks on the public record. Nevertheless, by the 1780s the musical society was firmly enough established as an institution to attract the attention of composers, compilers, and publishers.
The title page of The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement emphasizes its extra-ecclesiastical intent. Gone are the Biblical verses illustrating music’s sacred use and sanction. The very choice of title, as McKay and Crawford point out, is “calculated to conjure up the atmosphere of psalm-singing as pleasurable entertainment, rather than a sober obligation to God.”
Although the tunebook was engraved by John Norman, it was apparently printed by Billings himself.
Billings’s plates themselves appear to have been reused from those employed in the 1760s by Daniel Bayley and Thomas Johnston for some of their musical publications. A number of the pages in The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement contain faint impressions of notes, flats, staves, and page borders, which apparently remained on the plates when the earlier notation was hammered out.
Following the title page is a short “Advertisement,” in which Billings warned the neophyte looking for a singing-school tunebook that The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement would not meet that need. He further emphasized this point by omitting any discussion of the rudiments of music and by directing the learners to The Singing Master’s Assistant, a book better suited for instruction.
In number of compositions, The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement is Billings’s smallest tunebook, containing only twenty-four pieces. However, nearly half of the works are long, relatively complex anthems and set-pieces, so that in physical size it compares favorably with Billings’s The Singing Master’s Assistant and other tunebooks of the day. Its 104 pages include eight anthems, three set-pieces, seven fuging-tunes, five tunes with extension, and only one plain tune. Although two or three similar pieces are occasionally grouped together, the various types of pieces are spread rather evenly throughout the tunebook.
In the style and spirit of its music, The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement picks up where The Singing Master’s Assistant left off. The last third of that tunebook contained music for the accomplished singer—long anthems and complex fuging-tunes—music to which the singing-school student could aspire through study and practice in the school, church choir, and at home. Addressed even more directly to experienced singers who no longer needed beginning instruction, the music in The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement could challenge them with a variety of musical forms, keys, vocal techniques, and choral textures. The range and diversity of these musical attributes led McKay and Crawford to characterize The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement as Billings’s “most flamboyant performance.”
What is noteworthy in the music of The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement is not simply the length of its compositions but the integration of musical materials and expression into convincingly dramatic settings of the words. Billings had composed long works before—the anthem “As the Hart Panteth” in The New-England Psalm-Singer
One of Billings’s particular achievements in The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement is his skillful selection and setting of text.
“Let Ev’ry Mortal Ear Attend” is a good example of how Billings achieves contrast within his anthems while underscoring the meaning of the text. After antiphonal phrases are sung by different sections of the choir, the listener’s attention is abruptly focused on the words, “The Trumpet of the Gospel sounds,” by a short, declamatory section in block chords (mm. 15–17), which prepares for the fugal section to follow. Set to the same words, the fuge is long and contrapuntally complex. During its opening measures the word “sounds” is tossed about against the subject in detached single notes, as if imitating the tones of a trumpet. The exhortation “Hark! Hear the Invitation,” beginning in m. 50, is a bridge between major sections. Alternations between single voices and full chorus, and between exclamations and longer phrases halt the momentum here. But the invitation itself (mm. 59–106) restores it, now in A major rather than the earlier A minor. The section’s pervading contrapuntal texture is enlivened by changes: solos at m. 75 and m. 93; block chords at m. 79 and m. 97; and brief antiphonal exchanges at mm. 71–72 and mm. 85–92. The rest of the piece is declamatory. In it, like a preacher who has come to the crux of his sermon, Billings reduces his rhetoric to its unadorned essentials, repeating words frequently to insure that the point of his discourse is understood by all. Here, as elsewhere in The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement, through musical contrasts that molded certain words into shapely, lyric melody, buried others in counterpoint, and repeated others in block chords almost to the point of redundancy, Billings composed dramatically unified anthems that conveyed the moral and theological messages of his texts with force and persuasion.
THE SUFFOLK HARMONY
Almost five years passed between the publication of The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement and the appearance of Billings’s next tunebook, The Suffolk Harmony, announced as “just published” in Boston’s Independent Chronicle of June 8, 1786.
The plain title page of The Suffolk Harmony contrasts sharply with that of The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement, with its border decorations, variety of lettering styles, and general appearance of energetic gusto. The contrast may have been dictated simply by economics. A fancy engraved title page added to the cost of production. With one page of typeset matter introducing seven eight-page signatures of engraved music, The Suffolk Harmony could presumably have been produced on a tight budget. But the lack of a theoretical introduction precluded the tunebook’s use in the singing school, where the potential for sales was greatest.
Lacking a prefatory statement, The Suffolk Harmony reveals nothing about Billings’s purpose in publishing the volume or the audience to which it was addressed. The only front matter is his own Christmas poem, narrating in ten stanzas the Biblical story of the shepherds’ visit to the manger. The poem, containing typically Billingsian juxtapositions of vernacular and poetic speech, is incongruously laden with massive footnote documentation supporting the poetic allusions with Biblical citations. McKay and Crawford suggest two possible reasons for the references: an attempt to justify the celebration of Christmas, still not accepted in post-Puritan Boston, and “a calculated response to those who had demeaned his literary ability.”
The music in The Suffolk Harmony falls into two distinct sections. Billings stationed the three anthems in the tunebook near the beginning, the middle, and the end of the volume, with the middle one marking the boundary between the two parts. The music between the first anthem, Union, and the second, “Lift Up Your Eyes,” consists of twelve tunes, six of which had been published earlier.
If the first part of The Suffolk Harmony contains several older pieces, the second emphasizes new music in a new style. Between “Lift Up Your Eyes” and the concluding anthem, “Samuel the Priest,” are fifteen new pieces, of which fourteen are set to texts by James and John Relly. There are no fuging-tunes in this section. All settings are either plain tunes or tunes with extension, and several of the latter are antiphonal. As McKay and Crawford observe, the intimate tone of the Relly verses seems to have moved Billings to write music different from his settings of Watts’s hymns or Brady and Tate’s psalms.
The attention Billings focused on the hymns of one writer, James Relly, sets The Suffolk Harmony apart from his other tunebooks and invites a closer look at the poet. James Relly was a London minister credited with the founding of the Universalist Church.
Universalism came to America in 1770 through Relly’s disciple, John Murray.
We do not know when or how Billings encountered the poetry of Relly. Perhaps it was through Murray himself, for as a Bostonian involved in religious thought and practice during the time when Murray was creating a stir there, Billings would most likely have been familiar with the new doctrines. Evidence from his own works suggests that Billings welcomed such beliefs. His inquiring mind and penchant for playing freely with Scripture in his music-making may well have attracted him to Murray’s preaching. Billings certainly knew of Relly’s hymns by 1776, for he subscribed to the edition of Relly’s Christian Hymns published in Burlington, New Jersey, in that year.
Billings chose fourteen poems by James Relly and four by John Relly for musical setting, providing music for seventeen of the Rellys’ unusual verse patterns. None of his Relly settings include the ordinary meters of English psalmody, and he omits Hallelujah Meter and three verse patterns having only one poem each.
Several aspects of Relly’s verse must have attracted Billings. Foremost perhaps were the unusual meters. Although he had set Particular Meter texts in his earlier tunebooks, the poetry of Watts and Brady and Tate, which predominates in these volumes, offers few verses outside the standard meters of English psalmody.
Billings must also have been attracted to the poetic language of Relly’s verse. Relly’s Christocentric poetry, with its strong images of Christ’s passion, death, resurrection, and ensuing grace to mankind, seems to have struck a responsive chord in Billings. Not only did he set these texts with uncommon attention to prosody and the spirit of the words, he also drew musical gestures directly from their imagery. In Conquest (p. 198), for example, Billings matches the sturdy, march-like quality of the verse with a similar quality in the music. In Glocester (p. 206), after setting the first two lines of text in parallel phrases, he emphasizes the acclamation, “Hail! holy Lamb,” with a phrase in which the musical motion temporarily seems to stop. After two more parallel phrases, Billings shifts the time to 6/4 and the declamation from half-notes to quarters, adding a sense of fervent motion to the cadence, dramatizing the urgency of the words. Billings sometimes attempts to word-paint the text in the music, as in Phylanthropy (p. 186), where the tessitura and direction of the melody reflect the meaning of the words, falling and rising as the text suggests and reaching its lowest range with the words “the lower Parts of Earth.” As McKay and Crawford point out, although in his musical settings of Relly’s verse, Billings
may not have succeeded in every case, the attempt shows again his sensitivity to words. Once drawn to the poetry, perhaps by its intimate, vernacular tone as well as its unusual forms, he gave it a musical treatment that preserves its unusual features.
Unlike Billings’s previous three tunebooks, which provided them with many tunes to reprint, compilers tended to bypass the music in The Suffolk Harmony. One reason may be that, after a decade-and-a-half of trying, Billings finally succeeded in having some of his music protected by copyright, albeit only in Massachusetts.
Billings’s stylistic breakthrough in The Suffolk Harmony seems to have attracted few, if any, imitators. Other American psalmodists failed to respond to his compositional lead, preferring either to continue writing in styles of the past, or to yield to the influence of the solo-style psalmody found especially in the Englishman Martin Madan’s “Lock Hospital Collection.”
Most surviving copies of The Suffolk Harmony have one or more extra pieces bound in at the back. These separately paged items were independently published.
INDEPENDENT PUBLICATIONS
Billings published at least nine compositions as parts of independently published pamphlets during the last two decades of the eighteenth century. His earliest composition to appear in this format is the anthem Peace, apparently composed to celebrate the end of the Revolutionary War. The only extant copy bears the inscription, “Ladd’s. Newport. August, 1783,” suggesting that a performance took place in Newport, Rhode Island.
As noted earlier, psalmodists used the pamphlet format to publish music for particular occasions quickly and inexpensively. On April 4, 1787, Billings advertised the availability of “An Anthem, composed for Easter Sunday, and a Hymn set to Music, for Good Friday”;
Peace is one of Billings’s most substantial and unusual compositions. While Billings’s music was typically composed for unaccompanied choir, Peace, almost alone among his works, contains sections set for instruments without voices.
The text for Peace is a collage—Biblical verses, stanzas of a hymn by Watts, and original lines—that only Billings could have assembled.
An Anthem for Easter, published in 1787 along with the fuging-tune Crucifiction for Good Friday and the hymn-tune Resurrection for Easter, stands as one of Billings’s most enduringly popular pieces. From its first publication to the present day, it seems never to have gone out of print.
The words of the Easter Anthem reveal how far Billings was willing to range in his search for texts. In Anglo-American psalmody most anthem texts are Biblical. The Easter Anthem, however, is based chiefly on Edward Young’s The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, a long philosophical poem that won considerable popularity during the eighteenth century.
The Easter Anthem is a straightforward, uncomplicated piece, built from contrasting statements by reduced chorus and full chorus, and never straying from the key of A. Its text and music proved precisely the right combination for American singers, who quickly made it by far the favorite anthem in the entire eighteenth-century Anglo-American repertory.
Thomas and Holden, have published the piece in their Collections, without the addition, and I am credibly informed, that their Collections did not sell the worse for it, and as I own the Vineyard and have done all the labor in it myself—I beg the Community to grease the Rollers of the Press, so as to enable me to eat some of the Fruit thereof, viz.
Be so kind as to buy a large Number of ANTHEMS, and give me 1s6 each, and in so doing, you will much oblige the real Owner.
W. BILLINGS
Billings’s revision of 1795 adds a section between the third and fourth sections of the original version. The new text also came from Young’s “Night Thoughts,” immediately preceding the words of the fourth section. While Billings’s advertisement gives a financial reason for the anthem’s revision, he may also have judged that the progression of ideas in the first version, from Christ’s Resurrection in the third section to man’s resurrection in the fourth, was too abrupt. The added lines provide a smoother transition of thought and a more convincing sequence of events. The new text also allowed Billings to add a contrasting texture to the anthem; the new section introduces a long fugato, with melismatic word-painting on the words “whose Nature then took Wing.”
The new section may have improved the artistic quality of the anthem, but its technical difficulties—the fugal entries, melismatic flourishes, and rhythmic complications—placed the revised version beyond the capacities of many American choristers of the day. Thus the revised version seems not to have shared in the popularity of the original. It appeared, for example, in the fifth edition of The Village Harmony (Exeter, 1800), replacing the earlier version which had been in the fourth edition (1798). But the first version returned in the sixth edition, and it was this version, not the revised one, that won such wide and enduring circulation.
Billings’s other independently published pieces failed to catch public attention. The anthems “O Clap Your Hands” and “Except the Lord Build the House,” are found only in Billings’s original issues, bound in with The Suffolk Harmony. Some copies of The Suffolk Harmony include two other works: a fuging-tune called The Bird and a hymn-tune called The Lark.
New Music. Just Published, two Pieces, intitled The Bird and the Lark. The Author supposes the Airs to be Original: Said Pieces are sold, by William Billings, the Author.
Why Billings felt it necessary to advertise the “Airs” as “Original” is unknown. McKay and Crawford suggest that “he may have recalled the melodies from aural memory and merely supplied them with harmonic dress.”
THE APPENDICES
Almost all of Billings’s music was first printed in his own tunebooks. He apparently did not respond to such general invitations as that issued by Isaiah Thomas in 1792, for “such gentlemen as wish to furnish new Tunes for [a new edition of The Worcester Collection] to leave them at I. Thomas’s Bookstore, in Worcester by the 20th of August next.”
Especially in the 1770s, when domestic unrest and war stood in the way of publication, Billings appears to have been rather free in allowing copies of his music to circulate in manuscript. The “Advertisement” in The Singing Master’s Assistant,
The pieces in Appendices I and II in this volume, all found in published or manuscript sources, were either never published by Billings or appeared in versions different from those in his own tunebooks. They resemble Billings’s other compositions in style, and many are variant versions of pieces he did publish. Most of the published pieces were issued in Billings’s own day by compilers or publishers he knew personally. It is not known whether Billings himself actually made the variant versions of his tunes that appear in print or manuscript. Although most are skillfully done, there is no way to be certain of Billings’s involvement. Nevertheless, after careful examination and consideration, the editor believes that the pieces in Appendices I and II are either by Billings
Printed Sources
Five pieces in Appendix I were neither published by Billings nor are they variant versions of his published pieces: Hatfield, Mansfield, Plymouth New, Sheffield, and Union. Mansfield and Union, however, were issued during Billings’s day by Boston publishers who had had personal contact with him,
The one tune in the group for which the attribution remains questionable is Sheffield, credited to Billings only in Jonathan Huntington’s The Apollo Harmony (Northampton, 1807). Appearances in Ebenezer Child’s The Sacred Musician (Boston, 1804) and Freeman Lewis’s The Beauties of Harmony (Pittsburgh, 1814) are anonymous, and an earlier copy in Aaron Cowling’s manuscript tune book, The American Harmony (1798), is also uncredited.
Some music by Billings was published in versions that vary, sometimes considerably, from the ones he published himself. Pieces such as Kittery, which first appeared in Oliver Brownson’s Select Harmony ([Connecticut], 1783), seem to have been published from manuscript versions that had been revised by the time Billings issued the tunes himself.
A third type of variant in the published sources begins with a known Billings tune, which, through the application of passing tones, changes in meter, key, and rhythm, and sometimes even newly composed phrases, is transformed into quite a different composition, often with a new title as well.
Two types of variants are involved here: ornamental and compositional. Ornamental variants are those that keep the basic structure of the tune, altering only details of rhythm, meter, and counterpoint, and add passing tones and other decorative figures to embellish the melody. Compositional variants, on the other hand, introduce new music: a new phase, for example, substituted for an old one, or a new section, such as a fuge, added. Compositional variants may also include changes in meter, rhythm, counterpoint, or melodic decoration, of the kind found in ornamental variants. The following example shows how the melody of Waltham, published in The Singing Master’s Assistant, was made into Bedford, found in Sacred Harmony (Boston, ca. 1788).
Except for the third phrase (bracketed in Example I), the tune of Bedford follows closely that of Waltham. However, the key of Bedford—it is set in A major—coupled with its new time signature, its new title, and changes in accompanying voices have altered it so that even a chorister who had sung Waltham might not have recognized it as Bedford.
Billings varied in the same way some of the tunes he published himself. For example, Asia from The New-England Psalm-Singer was altered to produce the first half of Cobham, published in The Continental Harmony.
Manuscript Sources for Billings’s Music
Manuscript copies of Billings’s music may be found on the covers and flyleaves of printed tunebooks, in hand-copied supplements bound with these collections, and in collections hand-copied by some chorister or singing-school student. Because Billings was a popular composer and his music was printed in many tunebooks of his day, the sources from which such copies could be made were many. Most of the music by Billings found in manuscript varies from the printed sources only in small details. Occasionally, however, more significant alterations in the melody or accompanying parts are found, or even sections absent from the printed versions.
Eight manuscripts supply the music included in Appendix II of this volume. They are listed as follows, with identifying sigla in brackets.
- 1. A manuscript entitled “Sukey Heath’s 1st July 1782 Collection from Sundry Authors” in the possession of Mrs. Dorothy Waterhouse, Boston, Massachusetts. [Waterhouse Ms]
- 2. A manuscript supplement to Billings’s The Singing Master’s Assistant in the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. [MiU-C Ms 2]
- 3. A manuscript supplement to Billings’s The New-England Psalm-Singer in the William L. Clements Library. [MiU-C Ms 1]
- 4. Musical additions to a manuscript orderly book written by Eleazer Everett at Francestown, New Hampshire (1780) in the William L. Clements Library. [MiU-C Ms 3]
- 5. A manuscript supplement to Daniel Bayley’s The American Harmony (Newburyport, 1773) in the Americana Collection, Music Division, New York Public Library. [NN Ms]
- 6. A manuscript of Billings’s music, called the “Shepard Fish” manuscript, in the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. [MHi Ms]
- 7. A manuscript supplement to Thomas Walter’s The Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained (Boston, 1746) in the Watkinson Library of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. [CtHT-W Ms]
- 8. A manuscript tunebook, entitled The Northwestern Harmony, compiled by W. C[ouch]
None of the eight manuscripts is in Billings’s hand.
Like the published tunes that never appeared in Billings’s own tunebooks, the compositions in manuscript collections may be divided into categories: those attributed to Billings, and those that, though unattributed, are variant versions of pieces he did compose. Three of the five attributed pieces are found in the Waterhouse Ms credited to “WB.”
The anthem, “Praise the Lord, O My Soul,” is ascribed to “WB” in the NN manuscript. All of the other pieces in the manuscript are by Billings—tunes that he had published earlier in The New-England Psalm-Singer or later in The Singing Master’s Assistant.
The attribution of Raleigh to Billings in The Northwestern Harmony mmtbe considered at best questionable. The manuscript was compiled at least fifteen years after Billings’s death,
Some manuscript compositions, such as Hallifax and Hadley, appear to be early versions of pieces Billings published later in revised form.
The Arrangements
The only music by other composers that Billings published are ten British psalm-tunes and Royalston by Abraham Wood, all found in Music in Miniature. This book, a tune supplement to a metrical psalter, was designed for congregational singing, and the inclusion of familiar tunes surely helped to broaden its appeal.
Music in Miniature seems to have been modelled on Daniel Bayley’s The Essex Harmony (Newburyport, 1770 and later issues). The title pages of both tune supplements have similar Chippendale borders, the same general layout, and some identical text.
In Bayley’s version, Tans’ur’s original setting was adapted by merely omitting the original treble part. Except for being transposed a whole-tone lower, Bayley’s version is identical with the counter, tenor, and bass parts of Tans’ur’s own printing in his The Royal Melody Compleat (London, 1755). Billings’s treble part differs significantly from Tans’ur’s, particularly in the latter half, which is much more florid. While Tans’ur’s setting, with its succession of trio and quartet textures, may have its own points of musical interest when contrasted with Billings’s consistent four parts, Billings’s version is better adapted for congregational singing.
In some cases, Billings altered the traditional melody by omitting ornamental tones, as seen in Isle of Wight (Example 3).
Example 3
In others, such as Portsmouth, he altered the note values (Example 4).
Example 4
In five of the ten tunes, Billings transposed the pitch higher than Bayley’s version.
BILLINGS’S THREE MUSICAL STYLES
The musical style of William Billings is based upon practices that arose and flourished in English country parish churches during the middle third of the eighteenth century. Parish-church composers, such as William Tans’ur, William Knapp, Joseph Stephenson, and Aaron Williams, created a repertory of psalm-tunes, fuging-tunes, and anthems adapted to the needs of the country church choir. Country churches had no organs or trained musicians, and the choirs sang their music unaccompanied or with the support of musicians in the parish who played “bass viol,” bassoon, violin, or clarinet along with the singers.
The tunebooks of English parish-church composers were imported into the American colonies during the 1750s and 1760s, where tunes such as Knapp’s All Saints, Tans’ur’s St. Martin’s, Stephenson’s Psalm 34, and Williams’s Putney gained great popularity and were widely reprinted in tunebooks by American compilers. They also served as models for American composers to learn the parish-church style of composition.
William Billings was a leader in this development. More, perhaps, than any other American psalmodist, Billings explored the technical and expressive possibilities of the parish-church style. Unlike most English psalmodists and many Americans, who seem to have composed generalized melodies suited to any number of texts, Billings drew inspiration from the meaning and rhythms of the words he set, fitting them closely to his music. His music has a fluency of melody and ingenuity of counterpoint greater than that of most other parish-church composers of the time.
Billings’s music falls into three stylistic groupings: the early style of The New-England Psalm-Singer; the parish-church style of The Singing Master’s Assistant, Music in Miniature, The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement, and most of The Continental Harmony; and a more lyric style of The Suffolk Harmony and a few pieces in The Continental Harmony. The early style, discussed in the “Introduction” to Volume I of this edition,
In The Continental Harmony, Billings wrote: “Although I am not confined to rules prescribed by others, yet I come as near as I possibly can to a set of rules which I have carved out for myself.”
Tans’ur’s rules deal with basic, consonant, melodic motion between two parts, expanded in later sections to cover three, four, and eventually eight parts. They also cover the use of discords as well as canon and fuge. Except for The Royal Melody Compleat (London, 1755), from which Billings borrowed some ideas and text for his theoretical introduction to The New-England Psalm-Singer, we do not know which, if any, of Tans’ur’s other works Billings actually saw. The following are the Rules for Composition that Tans’ur gave in The Royal Melody Compleat.
Rule I. |
When one Part stands on a Sound, and another Part moves, the moving part may leap to any Sound that is Concord to the standing Part. |
Rule II. |
Two Fifths, or two Eighths, are not to be taken together neither rising nor falling, unless covered by a higher part; or one be the minor and the other the major fifth. |
Rule III. |
You may take as many Thirds, Fifths, or Eighths, as you please together standing. |
Rule IV. |
You may take as many Thirds, or Sixes, as you please, rising or falling, together, if one be the Minor, and the other the Major: but a Consecution of Majors are not in the Laws of Harmony. |
Rule V. |
When one Part ascends, and another Part descends, gradually, you must make a transition of quicker notes to bind in the Discords. |
Rule VI. |
When one Part moves upwards, and another Part moves downwards, both by Leaps, you may move to any Concord you please. |
Rule VII. |
When Discords are taken, they may take place by regular Transition, by way of Pass; or be bound in before Concords. |
Rule VIII. |
Whensoever you make a final close, or Conclusion, your Bass must always rise a Fourth, or fall a Fifth, to end in the proper Key. |
Rule IX. |
Whensoever you would form a Fuge, first prick down your Point, or Portion of Fuging-Notes, to the Part you intend and then fill up your vacant Places with such Descant as is agreeable to your Point by the Rules of Composition. |
Rule X. |
Observe, that you never begin a composition with a Sixth; and let all Parts end in full Harmony in a proper Key. |
Rules I, III, IV, and VI cover the major types of melodic motion: oblique, similar, and contrary. Rule II covers parallel fifths and octaves. It is noteworthy that they are not entirely forbidden, but allowed if covered by a higher part. Rules V and VII cover discords, both as passing tones and as suspensions (i.e., “bound in before Concords”).
Billings’s application of these rules within the system of major and minor scales of eighteenth-century tonality accounts for the unusual-sounding harmonic progressions and static harmony occasionally found in his compositions. The contrapuntal conjunction of melodic lines determines chord sequences, and such progressions as tonic to mediant and dominant to subdominant are perfectly within the rules of composition so long as the voice-leading follows the rules. Vertical sounds need not always be linked in standard harmonic “progressions” in Anglo-American psalmody, any more than they are in Renaissance choral music.
One of Billings’s compositional principles was to give each vocal part an interesting line to sing. In The Continental Harmony he wrote that “the grand difficulty in composition, is to preserve the air through each part separately, and yet cause them to harmonize with each other at the same time.”
Although based on counterpoint and apparently following Tans’ur’s rules rather closely, Billings’s harmony was by no means haphazard. Most of his chord connections are strong and purposeful, giving a sense of propulsion to his music. To be sure, he seldom observes such niceties of tonal harmony as the deceptive cadence or the I64 – V – I cadential formula. But on the whole, at least from 1778 on, Billings’s music can seldom be faulted for meandering harmonic progressions.
Most of Billings’s chords appear in root position, with first inversion used chiefly to provide a smoother vocal line in the bass. Although root movement by fourths and fifths is fairly common, root movement by seconds and thirds is more frequent than one finds in standard thoroughbass harmony. Passing seventh-chords between beats, and in root position, far outnumber seventh-chords on the beat. Except for the first chord of a work and occasional cadential chords, Billings usually used complete triads. Perhaps because his singers had trouble tuning the third, Billings frequently began a tune with open fifths, going to a full triad on the next chord. This is particularly true in the minor key, where tuning of the minor third may have been especially hard. The same is true, though to a lesser extent, for cadence chords. In the major key, cadence chords are usually complete triads, but in the minor key they often lack the third. Occasional passing chords within a phrase may also be incomplete in the interests of good voice-leading, but these are exceptional.
Modulations in Billings’s music are rare. Only four of his works contain changes of key signature that are actually changes of key center, rather than mode: the set-piece Rutland,
While the elements of Billings’s style outlined above hold for music he published in his first four tunebooks, The Suffolk Harmony points in new directions. In his earlier tunebooks, Billings had employed a contrapuntal style emphasizing the melodic and rhythmic independence of the voices.
A number of pieces in The Suffolk Harmony, however, follow more closely the functional tonal harmony of the day than the contrapuntal procedures of the Anglo-American parish style. Petersburgh, for example, begins with a four-measure phrase on the tonic followed by a parallel phrase on the dominant. The next phrase alternates tonic first-inversion and subdominant triads, and the rest of the tune follows similar tonal procedures. Other tunes showing a like-minded approach to harmony are Shiloh, Hartford, Jordan, Restoration, Moriah, West Boston, Jerusalem, Conquest, Glocester, Chelsea, Burlington, and Moravia. In line with their slower harmonic rhythm and the establishment of harmonic plateaus, these tunes also show less independence in their counterpoint. The principal melody, still in the tenor voice, retains the sweep and fluency of earlier Billings tunes, but the other voices act more as accompaniment than as independent, competing melodies. The counter and bass often repeat their pitches, while the melodic range and rhythmic independence of the treble is severely limited.
Choral scoring also distinguishes the music in The Suffolk Harmony from Billings’s earlier works. In nine tunes antiphony is found, with a phrase being set for fewer than four voices and answered either by the full chorus or by voices previously silent.
In Billings’s publications after The Suffolk Harmony, his third style is found only in a few pieces: the Easter Anthem and The Lark, among the independent publications, and Cross Street, Hopkinton, Lewis-Town, South-Boston, and the anthem Universal Praise in The Continental Harmony.
EDITORIAL POLICY
As stated in Volume I of this edition (pp. lviii–lix), The Complete Works of William Billings began as a personal project of Hans Nathan, who developed general editorial policy for the entire set in editing Volume II. Some flexibility has been observed in succeeding volumes to take into account the idiosyncracies of each of Billings’s tunebooks, but for general editorial criteria, the user is referred to the introduction to Volume II (reprinted in this volume on pp. xlix–lii).
For compositions published by Billings himself, his print is considered to be the authoritative version. The one exception is the fuging-tune Assurance, published in The Worcester Collection, 3d ed., (Boston, 1791), in a version slightly revised from Billings’s own printing—a version authorized in writing by Billings himself. The Worcester Collection version is printed here. Differences between the two versions and evidence that the later print incorporates Billings’s latest intentions are given in the critical commentary. Corrections and interpretations of Billings’s notation appear in the critical commentary for each work.
Compositions that Billings did not print himself have been checked against an unpublished melodic index of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American tunes and anthems compiled by Richard Crawford. Where the attribution of a work to Billings could not be disproved, and the work seemed consistent with Billings’s style, it has been included in Appendix I or II of this volume, depending upon whether the source is a print or manuscript. For a few tunes appearing in several sources, details have been compared and the clearest source has been chosen as primary. Differences from other copies are noted in the critical commentary.
Several works are included because they appear to be variant versions of known Billings works. Criteria for considering a work a variant are discussed above (see pp. xxxii–xxxiii), and while it is uncertain whether Billings himself made all the alterations, it seemed more prudent to be inclusive than exclusive when deciding the contents of Appendices I and II.
The purpose of this edition is to present the music and text for performance and study as clearly and accurately as possible, according to present-day editorial and notational standards. Billings employed some musical signs and verbal directions that have been omitted here. Most omissions are noted in the critical commentary; however, double bars at the end of each phrase of the psalm-tunes in Appendix III, used by Billings to mark the poetic meter, have not been retained. Verbal directions for the repetition of certain sections in some anthems have not been retained, and these sections have been written out in full.
Certain symbols used by Billings have lost their meaning today, and modern equivalents have been substituted. Billings indicated the repetition of a phrase or section by placing the sign :S: over the first and last notes of the part to be repeated. In this edition the standard symbol, the dotted double bar, is used. Occasionally, repeat signs have had to be repositioned and first and second endings added to correct the notation. Such alterations are noted in the critical commentary. Billings employed the alto C-clef for his counter voice. Here it has been transcribed into the treble clef. The tenor voice in Billings’s original is notated in the treble clef, but with the understanding that it should sound an octave lower. The octavating treble clef has been used throughout this edition.
In eighteenth-century psalmody, it is not uncommon to find a group of repeated notes under a slur. Billings seems to have used this notational device for two purposes: as a substitute for a tie in which the repeated notes should be sung as a continuous sound, and as a vocal ornament in which each note should be articulated. The determining factors in interpretation are the length of the note values involved and the availability of alternate notational symbols. The tie substitute usually involves half- and whole-notes with one or more bar lines intervening, or smaller note values within a longer melisma for which no single notational symbol is available (e.g., a note length of five eighth-notes). Occasionally, it is also used to correct an engraving error. The vocal ornament usually involves smaller note values, such as quarter- and eighth-notes, for which a larger note value was available had Billings wanted a continuous sound. That he did not use the alternate symbol seems to imply that he had intended each note under the slur to be articulated. This vocal ornament is often used as a motive, passing from voice to voice several times in a section. A note has been made in the critical commentary for repeated notes under a slur that are to be articulated, but ties between individual notes have been supplied without comment when the repeated notes are considered to be continuous sounds.
Ties that appear between only the upper or lower notes of diads (or choosing notes) in the individual voices are assumed to apply to the other notes as well and are supplied without comment.
By the 1780s, Billings was usually both careful and consistent in applying accidentals to his music. However, in certain places he seems to have overlooked an accidental sign, or the notational conventions of his day required none. In such cases, accidentals have been supplied editorially and are noted in the critical commentary. Occasionally, Billings supplied accidentals that are unnecessary by modern notational standards. They have been tacitly omitted from this edition. Billings sometimes used a sharp sign to raise the pitch of a note flatted by the key signature. In such cases, a natural sign has been substituted without comment. In a few instances, where Billings’s published version included an accidental not found in a printed or manuscript variant, the accidental has been included above the note in the manner of musica ficta in modern editions of Renaissance music. It may be performed or not at the performers’ discretion.
In some pieces, performance directions such as “Forte,” “Vigoroso,” &c. are surrounded by parentheses; in this edition, such parentheses have been tacitly omitted.
In 6/4 time, Billings used two dotted half-notes tied together to indicate the length of a dotted whole-note. (He used the dotted whole-note, however, in 3/2 time.) In this edition the dotted whole-note has been tacitly substituted. Similarly, in 6/8 time, Billings notated the dotted half-note by employing two dotted quarter-notes tied. In such cases, the dotted half-note has been used instead.
Criteria outlined by Hans Nathan in the introduction to Volume II for the selection, spelling, and underlay of texts have been followed here. Except for the ten British psalm-tunes that he published in Music in Miniature, printed in Appendix III, Billings provided texts or text incipits for all the music in this volume that he published himself. Where tunes attributable to Billings in other printed or manuscript collections lack a text, one has been supplied here according to Nathan’s criteria. For the British psalm-tunes, an effort has been made to choose texts from earlier American printings of the tune. If there was no earlier American printing with a text, an earlier British one known to have circulated in America (such as tunes in the tunebooks of William Tans’ur and Aaron Williams) was consulted. If neither an earlier American nor British collection printed a text with the tune, the text was added from a later but still contemporaneous American collection.
In second and succeeding stanzas of text, left margins have been justified and the first letters of each line capitalized. Following eighteenth-century practice, the first letters of nouns have been capitalized. Billings’s own occasional capitalizations of the first letters of pronouns, adjectives, verbs, &c., have not been retained, except when they refer to the Deity.
Where words such as “Saviour” and “glorious” are spelled with a contraction (e.g., “Sav’our,” “glor’ous”), the missing letter has been restored and the apostrophe omitted; however, when restoration of the omitted letter would affect the pronunciation of the word, occasional contractions have been retained.
The use of the ampersand for “and” is common in Billings’s own publications. In all cases, “and” has been spelled out and the ampersand omitted without comment.
When “ye” has been used as an abbreviation for “the,” the latter has been tacitly substituted. However, when “ye” is used as a variant form of “you,” it has been retained.
In some hymns by Watts, certain stanzas are enclosed in square brackets, indicating that they could be omitted when the hymn was sung. In earlier volumes of this edition, the square brackets were replaced by hair-pin brackets, but in this volume all brackets have been omitted, and a note has been made in the critical commentary indicating which stanzas, if any, were bracketed. Also in Watts’s hymns, the notation “Pause” appears between some stanzas indicating that the singing could briefly stop at that point. These notations have not been retained in this volume, but their location is noted in the critical commentary.
Punctuation of the text generally follows that of the text source. However, here and there punctuation marks have been supplied without comment where the meaning of the text seemed to demand clarification.
In the original sources, quotation marks usually begin each line of a stanza including quoted words. In this edition, quotation marks have been applied only to the first line of each stanza and omitted from second and subsequent lines without comment. Eighteenth-century printers usually printed personal names and proper nouns in Italic type. Here these have been printed in Roman type without comment.
By the 1780s, Billings’s ability to set non-metrical prose had improved to the point where he rarely violated the natural accents of the text. Occasionally, however, one comes upon two or three measures in which the music diverges slightly from the textual accents. These occasions are both rare and momentary, and, since there is usually no gross distortion of the textual accent, it has been considered best to retain Billings’s own notation. In two unpublished works in Appendix II (Hadley and the anthem, “Praise the Lord, O My Soul”) the metrical irregularities are so pronounced that rebarring seemed necessary. These pieces have been rebarred in accordance with criteria outlined in Volume I of this edition (see pp. lxi–lxii), with the original barring indicated above the treble part.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume of The Complete Works of William Billings could not have been completed without the active encouragement and material assistance of many interested persons. Richard Crawford, Cynthia Hoover, and Hans Nathan all played crucial roles in aiding the editor’s work. Raoul Camus, Nym Cooke, Kate Van Winkle Keller, Nicholas Temperley, and William Kearns provided help and information. The hospitality and assistance received from the late Irving Lowens and from Margery Lowens was greatly appreciated. Timely encouragement from James Haar, H. Wiley Hitchcock, and Martin Picker was most welcome. To these and others unnamed, the editor extends his gratitude.
A special word of thanks goes to The American Antiquarian Society, The Special Collections Library of Brown University, The Massachusetts Historical Society, and The William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan for providing materials for the facsimiles which appear in this volume.
Much of the research for this volume was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Leverhulme Trust of London, England, for which the editor gives his thanks. He also acknowledges his debt to the University of Colorado for support and encouragement of his work.
To the librarians of the archives, historical societies, special collections, and college and public libraries the editor has visited in search of Billings’s music in manuscript, too numerous to mention individually, he expresses his appreciation.
And finally, to his wife, Marie, without whose support, encouragement, patience, and understanding none of this would have been possible, he expresses his gratitude.
KARL KROEGER