Background
William Billings was born on 7 October 1746 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of a Boston tanner. At an early age he went into his father's business.
William Billings was born on 7 October 1746 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of a Boston tanner. At an early age he went into his father's business.
William Billings evidently received a common-school education. At the age of 14, the death of his father stopped his formal schooling. In order to help support his family, young Billings trained as a tanner.
William Bilings possibly received musical instruction from John Barry, one of the choir members at the New South Church, but for the most part he was self-taught. He taught himself composition from hymnbooks, especially William Tans'ur's Royal Melody Compleat, or The New Harmony of Zion (London, 1755; reprinted in seven Boston editions, 1767-1774), which had a pedagogical preface on "the grounds of musick. "
Billings was 22 when he wrote a remarkable round, "Jesus Wept, " for four voices, although he did not compose fuguing tunes, or contrapuntal part-songs, for another decade. Paul Revere engraved Billings's first hymnbook, The New England Psalm-Singer (1770).
Eight years later Billings published a much improved version, The Singing Master's Assistant, in which he added a text beginning "Let tyrants shake their iron rod" to his earlier tune "Chester. "The contrived discords of "Jargon" may actually be satirizing Billings's own earlier primitivisms.
Billings left tanning to open a music shop, where pranksters on one occasion slung howling cats with their tails tied together over his sign.
Billings, however, urged the propagation of soft music "to refine the Ears. "
The last collections Billings published were The Suffolk Harmony (1786) and The Continental Harmony (1794).
He influenced church music in New England by introducing hymns that were more cheerful than those previously used and by inaugurating the use of accompaniments in church hymn singing.
After the Revolution his music was considered outmoded in New England, and died neglected in Boston on 26 September 1800. Although Billings's compositions sound surprisingly medieval for the age of Mozart, they reflect American Revolutionary and Federal vigor.
Harvard University Press brought out a facsimile edition of Continental Harmony with an introduction by Hans Nathan in 1961.
Billings enthusiastically joined the two-generations-old singing-school movement of the Congregational churches.
Billings had an unusual appearance and a strong addiction to snuff. He was an energetic and good-humored man, blind in one eye, with a withered arm and legs of unequal length.
Billings had a wife and six children.