William Billings hmmm Who is this guy?

William Billings: The Continental Harmonist

William Billings, born in Boston, was the first American composer to publish a work entirely composed in the Americas. Billings was largely a self-taught composer, learning most of his compositional methods studying tune books from church. What little musical training he did have came from singing in a school choir. Most of Billings’s works can be categorized into three main groups: psalms, hymn tunes, and anthems. Billings’s first attempt at formal compositional training came from Hans Gram, a Danish immigrant, and Gram gave Billings an education in methods of modulation. William Billings is one of the most important composers during the time of the colonial Americas.
The Continental Harmonist was somewhat of a charity compilation of his music. Billings was a terribly poor man and after a publisher turned down his offer, some of Billings’s friends went in together to publish The Continental Harmonist in order to give Billings some sort of income for his work, although he most likely received little money for this collection. The Continental Harmonist is crucial to the time because it was one of the only compositions that was entirely composed in America.
Billings’s works are mostly homophonic with all the parts moving together with the same rhythm. He composed primarily for four part unaccompanied choir in the traditional SATB arrangement. The fact that a good portion of Billings works are homophonic makes a good argument to describe him as an elementary composer, if we compare him to what was going on back in Europe. It would be hard to compare Billings’s music to the great choral works of Mozart or Haydn. The only reason I think that Billings is important at all is he was the beginning of composition in the Colonial Americas. Billings was the beginning of this type of composition in America, but after his first publishing many other composers begin to follow suit.
Billings is unique among of the other composers because he did not compose in the traditional European style. He invented a new set of part writing rules for himself, ones he felt would suit his needs much better than conventional part writing rules. This was also in part that he most likely did not know the formal part writing rules. He wrote on numerous occasions parallel octaves and fifths along with many open chords where he left out the thirds. In today’s eyes much of these parallel octaves and fifths would better be described as part writing mistakes.
The use of elementary compositional techniques, in my opinion, made it easy for the common people to access to this music; this is one of his great strengths and one of his great weaknesses. Because of his popularity and the lack of well established copyright laws, Billings’s music was taken and printed in other hymnals leaving him with no way to call his music his own or gain profit from it.
Billings’s music relates much more to the chorales that Martin Luther composed. Although most of Billings’s music is homophonic, Connection Consonanc and Jargon Modern music are both polyphonic with a fugal type melody between the different voices. In these works, I find Billings trying to explore other methods, perhaps because he himself became bored with his normal type of compositional homophonic technique.
Most of his works sound so much alike and I believe that they are somewhat fatiguing to the listener because of the lack of variety. Occasionally the listener will get a break when Billings will, like in the second track on the CD titled “Hopkinton When Jesus Wept,” try to add something different, and he will add a fugal melody. This is definitely a relief to the ear after listening to the constant homophony that he uses for the majority of the rest of his tunes. Therefore, despite the fatiguing nature of Billings’s work we still have to realize that he is the origin of published American music.
The first track of the CD, “Chester,” is Billings’s most famous anthem. During the time of the American Revolution, it rivaled “Yankee Doodle” as the American anthem. This anthem is composed in F major and never modulates. It is traditionally sung in five verses beginning with, “Let tyrants shake their iron rod, And Slav'ry clank her galling chains, We fear them not, we trust in God, New England’s God forever reigns.” With text like this, it is no wonder why it rivaled for the title of American anthem during the Revolution. Billings’s American patriotism is apparent through his lyrics, and it is no wonder that “Chester” rivaled the American anthem.
Billings was an innovative and patriotic composer of the time in the Americas. Despite his elementary methods and his use of homophonic part writing, Billings should be more recognized. He was first person to publish American music, and this I find to be particularly important. Most of the time I think that America follows Europe when it comes to the progress of music, but in this case Billings took what he could from his European influences and also set America’s path into the publication of music.

Good old Mozart

Mozart Flute and harp Concerto

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was in Paris in 1778, and had already delighted audiences with his composition the “Paris” symphony K. 297. By this time in his life he had very much settled in to the Classical genre or composition with much of the balance and carefulness of the era coming into his music. On the down side, this was also a sad time for Mozart with his mother, who had accompanied him to Paris, catching a disease and dying from the illness soon after they arrived. This was the time when Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp K. 299 was commissioned by the Duc Adrien-Louis de Guines and his daughter who where both accomplished musicians of their time. The Concerto for Flute and Harp, which was written during a tragic time in his life, was one of the most simplistic and non-innovative compositions that Mozart had composed and therefore did not allow this work to make it into the Mozartian Cannon that we know today.

The Concerto for Flute and Harp is no different from many of his other compositions he composed during this time in his life. This work has some occasional dissonance and some chromatic moments, but for the most part, it is a balanced work with not much attempt at being innovative. I find that, much like his contemporaneous piano sonatas, throughout this work it sounds like there is clear balance in the tonal structure and in the way that the expression is used. For example in the second movement of this work titled Andantino, the flute and harp seem to be holding a call and answer dialogue. The accompaniment however, I find to be chordal and therefore not active. Mozart often uses this type of accompaniment in his works, he composed the accompaniment in the Galant style with somewhat of an Alberti Bass theme throughout the first and third movements. The overall theme in this work is stated right at the beginning of the piece in the first two measures. It is a downward arpeggiation of the C major tonic chord. This main motive is both in the development and the recapitulation of the first movements, and it is stated both throughout the first and third movements in both the flute and the harp resulting in a simplistic and completely Mozart like style.

This could have been because at this time in Mozart’s life his father had been repeatedly been writing to him trying to get him to write more audience pleasing works. His father did not feel that Mozart’s music was directed toward his audiences. His father believed that Mozart was writing music that was over sophisticated for his audiences. This was obviously not the case considering that at the time when this piece was performed people did enjoy it and applauded repeatedly through out his works. Mozart did however sometimes over complicate his music the point that it was to much for the listener during the time to handle.

I however, find this work to be easy to listen to with modern ears. For the most part, it does little out of the ordinary and is quite pleasant. By little, I mean it is over thirty minutes long though. One of the things makes this piece listenable is how well the piece is driven by the phrases, which was a common trait of Mozart. It gives the listener something to grab onto, and he does this extremely well with the flute and harp constantly speaking back and forth to each. This not only gives the listener accessibility while listening to it but it also gives somewhat of a driving motion to the work.

In the second movement, Mozart takes away the oboe and the horn that were playing in the first movement. This gives the second movement much more of a sweet quality to the texture. This movement does not have as warm of a sound without both of those instruments. Mozart not only takes away the horn and oboe, but also takes away almost all of the movement from the accompaniment and gives it chordal movement instead without even so much as an arpeggiation in the strings. This gives the harp and flute a bass line to sing over with the very tranquil melody that he uses. This movement is set in the key of F major, and with the Andantino sets the mood to be very light and easygoing and I think he accomplishes the mood well during this movement.

The third and final movement is a rondo, and it is a traditional rondo in an ABACA form. Mozart opens it with the final and last main theme of this concerto. It, like the first movement, is in a quicker tempo and has a light feel. He does however bring back the horn and the oboe that he did take away in the second movement. The accompaniment to this movement is much more active when the harp or flute are not playing. When the harp and flute are playing the accompaniment is either not active at all or in somewhat of that Galant style of accompaniment. The simple accompaniment acts the same as it did in the second movement and gives the melody something to ride on. I feel that this movement is the best of the three. The form well defined making it easy for today’s listener to distinguish the different sections of this movement. In addition, he modulates to only relative keys when he does modulate making the tonal structure of this piece somewhat simpler to follow. I also would like to note that unlike the first movement Mozart does not use any harsh dissonance in this third movement.

For the most part Mozart is a simple composer and his simplicity is what I like about him. I come about this idea not saying that Mozart’s compositional techniques are simple but instead the way the melodies in the piece interact with the listener. He does not like to over complicate things despite what his father might have thought about his compositions. It is no wonder that Mozart is considered one of the most important composers in the Classical era. I wonder why with all of the traveling and innovative things that he had accomplished why he did not incorporate them in to the concerto. He is a genius in the way he can balance of all the characteristics of his music and this concerto is an example of this. From his tonal structure to his well awareness of his the formal structure in this concerto it is a wonder why he never got paid for this work.