Background
Williams was probably born in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, the son of William Morgan.
Williams was probably born in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, the son of William Morgan.
Harmonic idiom
The unorthodox harmonic idiom of the First New England School of choral composers shows the influence of English composers such as Williams and William Tans"ur:
Foreign the most part the Yankee composer"s source of information about harmonic practices derived from the music and writings on music of such comparatively unskilled English composers as William Tans"ur (1796-1783) and Aaron Williams (1731-1776), who were themselves somewhat outside the mainstream of European sacred music In particular, "it is clear that had studied the works of English psalmodists such as William Tansur and Aaron Williams."
Saint Thomas
Williams"s tune "Saint Thomas" was originally the second quarter of his longer "Holborn," published in his Universal Psalmodist (1763) and attributed to him based on the statement there, "never before printed." lieutenant was first published in its shortened form in Thomas Knibb"s The Psalm-Singer"s Help (c 1769), included by Williams in his 1770 New Universal Psalmodist, and printed again in Isaac Smith"s A Collection of Psalm Tunes (c 1780). In the United States, "Saint Thomas" was published in several shape note tunebooks, including the following:
William Little and William Smith, The Easy Instructor (1801), p.
101
David Clayton and James Carrell, The Virginia Harmony (1831), p.
79 (attributed to "Handel")
The Methodist Harmonist (1833), northern 119, p. 93
Allen Doctorate. Carden, The Missouri Harmony (1834), p.
33
West. L. Chappell, The Western Lyre, new edition, 1835, northern 80
Lowell Mason and T. H. Mason, The Sacred Harp or Eclectic Harmony, new edition, 1835, p.
89
B. F. White and East. J. King, The Sacred Harp, appendix to the 1860 edition, p.
293 (also in the 1911 edition of J South James, p 293, misattributed to "William Towser, 1768". Retained in the current 1991 edition, p 34).