William Billings: Representative American Psalmodist?
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Title: William Billings: Representative American Psalmodist? Author(s): Nym Cooke Source: Cooke, N. (1996, Spring). William Billings: Representative American psalmodist? The Quarterly, 7(1), pp. 47-64. (Reprinted witH permission in Visions of Research in Music Education, 16(7), Autumn, 2010). Retrieved from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~vrme/ Visions of Research in Music Education is a fully refereed critical journal appearing exclusively on the Internet. Its publication is offered as a public service to the profession by tHe New Jersey Music Educators Association, tHe state affiliate of MENC: THe National Association for Music Education. THe publication of VRME is made possible througH the facilities of Westminster CHoir College of Rider University Princeton, New Jersey. Frank AbraHams is tHe senior editor. Jason D. Vodicka is editor of tHe Quarterly Historical reprint series. CHad Keilman is the production coordinator. THe Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning is reprinted witH permission of RicHard Colwell, who was senior consulting editor of the original series. Williatn Billings: Representative Atnerican Psahnodist? By Ny:lll Cooke College of the Holy Cross he Bicentennial of American indepen- trious contemporary/ Billings, the composer- dence sent scholars and musicians writer whose prose rivals his music in its charm; T scurrying to find 18th-century compos- Billings, whose all-original tunebook Tbe New- ers whose music, lives, or England Psalm-Singer personalities (preferably all (1770), with its frontispiece three) gave expression to the If a committee of engraved by Paul Revere, rep- Revolutionary struggle and resents a true musical Decla- the new nation's promise. the savviest tele- ration of Independence in These searchers found allthey vision ~Titers in the year of the Boston Massa- needed in William Billings. If cre. Billings was too good to a committee of the savviest New York had be true - yet he was true. television writers in New York ~orked overtime The rediscovery of Bill- had worked overtime to cre- ings, given scholarly sub- ate a human symbol of young to create a stance by the publication of America who was also a com- human symbol of two fine biographical stud- poser, their fiction could not ies in 1975 and 1976/ have touched Billings the fact. young America launched an impressive edi- Billings, the humble tanner 'who vva s also a tion of his complete works, who was friends with patriot sponsored by the American leader Sam Adams; Billings, composer, their Musicological Society.' This blind of one eye and lame of fiction could not in turn has increased the one leg; Billings,who cleaned presence of Billings's com- streets and corralled hogs for have touched positions in church services the city of Boston yet who Billings the fact. and concerts, and has led "spake & sung & thought as a to a splendid all-Billings man above the common abili- recording by His Majestie's ties," in the words of an illus- Clerkes under the direction of Paul Hillier, titled A Land ofPure Delight: Though his voice-leading may still seem awkward and his harmony monotonous to Nym Cooke teaches music history at the Col- ears accustomed to Orlando di Lasso or lege of the Holy Cross. His edition of the music George Frideric Handel, it seems clear that of Timothy Swan 0758-1842) will appear William Billings has been accepted by the next year as uolume 6of the series Music of the musical and musicological establishment. United States of America. Along the way, quite understandably, he has become a kind of spokesman for some 300 Volume VII, Number 1 47 ------ ----------------------- Perhaps the rriost striking aspect of [Billings's] personality, and at the same time of his talent - the fact that sets him off most distinctively frorn his oorrterrrp ora ries - is his obvious love of vvords. individuals who composed or compiled sa- extent and nature of that contact? (The mas- cred music ("psalmody") in this country be- culine pronoun is used here because Ameri- fore 1811. can tunebook composers and compilers These 300 composers and compilers are through the early 19th century were almost one indication of early American psalmody's exclusively male.) extent. There are other indications. Before Much of William Billings's life is close to the tide of fashion turned sharply away from the biographical norm for American - and homegrown musical compositions at the end probably also English - psalmodists: the of the 19th century's first decade, American modest family background and equally mod- tune books - anthologies published for the est occupation; the likely common-school use of singing schools, choirs, and musical education; the early start on composing and societies - made available almost 5,000 publishing sacred music; the teaching of American-composed plain tunes, fuging singing schools; the large family; the mem- tunes, set pieces, and anthems by some 260 bership in a singing society; the handful of composers, in 545 tunebook editions pre- musical acquaintances. But Billings's story, pared by 143 compilers (almost 100 compil- and the man himself, diverge from the ers also composed).' This is the American norms for his tradition in several crucial re- part of an Anglo-American tradition that Bill- spects, and it is because of these diver- ings, and usually Billings alone, represents in gences that he cannot be considered an "av- our late-20th-century concert halls, churches, erage practitioner" in the early American and classrooms. It is a creative tradition that, psalmody tradition. on this side of the Atlantic, extended over Billings the man has received ample atten- half a century, and from Winthrop, Maine to tion in recent decades, and will not get much Charleston, South Carolina; a tradition that more of it here. Perhaps the most striking embraced a wide variety of musical styles. aspect of his personality, and at the same The general public badly needs human time of his talent - the fact that sets him off symbols - icons - to represent artistic most distinctively from his contemporaries - movements and traditions. For early Ameri- is his obvious love of words. Billings, like can psalmody, William Billings fills the bill. Ives and Cowell and Cage, was a writer. His But the scholar needs something else: a fuging tunes and anthems come to us, as do sense of what the average practitioner within Ives's "Concord" piano sonata and Cage's a tradition was like. What were his family chance-derived compositions, in a context of background and education? Where did he explanatory prose - personally introduced live? How did he support himself? How did (as it were) by the composer, in the profuse creative activity figure in his life? When in introductions to such tunebooks as Tbe New- the course of his tradition's growth, flourish- England Psalm-Singer (1770) and Tbe Conti- ing, and decline was he active? What was nental Harmony (794). But tunebook intro- the nature and the extent of his artistic con- ductions were by no means the full extent of tribution? How were his creative productions Billings's writing. It is well known that he received in his day? Whom among his fellow authored the texts of several of his musical artists was he in contact with? What was the compositions, and he was probably person- 48 The Quarterlyfournal of Music Teaching and Learning In much of Billings's 'wrrtrng a lively, likeable personality is displayed: chatty, ebullient, confiding, humorous; at times attractively self-deprecatory, at times quite carried away with the sounds and rhythms of words. Some of these same qualities infect Billings's rrrusic., ... William Billings stands before us today as a human being in a way that no other early American psalmodist does, ... ally responsible for some of the prose pieces Discharge your deep mouth'd canon, full in the single issue of the Boston Magazine fraught with Diapasons; 6 that he edited in 1783 In much of Billings'S May you with Maestoso, rush on to writing a lively, likeable personality is dis- Chora-Grando, played: chatty, ebullient, confiding, humor- And then with Vigoroso, let fly your ous; at times attractively self-deprecatory, at Diapentes times quite carried away with the sounds and About our nervous system. rhythms of words. Some of these same When one sets this passage side by side with qualities infect Billings's music, and parallels one of Billings's more vigorous fuging tunes can be striking. Here, for example, is the (see Example 1, the concluding section of composer's encomium on the fuging tune, CREATION from The Continental Harmony), from a footnote to the introduction of his one finds him accomplishing in his prose and Continental Harmony poetry what he accomplishes in his music - a It is an old maxim, and I think a very just dizzying multiplicity of entrances and exits, one, viz. that variety is always pleasing, and it starts and stops, brought to a halt at last by a is well known that there is more variety in relatively formal gathering or coming-together one piece of fuging music, than in twenty of the various forces - a four-line poem at the pieces of plain song, for while the tones do close of the encomium, four measures of ho- most sweetly coincide and agree, the words mophony at the end of the fuging tune.' are seemingly engaged in a musical warfare; None of Billings's contemporaries - even and excuse the paradox if I further add, that each part seems determined by dint of har- those whose prose writings appeared in print mony and strength of accent, to drawn his or have survived in manuscript, like Daniel competitor in an ocean of harmony, and Read and Andrew Law- revealed their per- while each part is thus mutually striving for sonalities in words with the charm and color mastery, and sweetly contending for victory, of Billings.