Tuesday, February 5, 2008

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.

2 comments:

Katie said...

Marcus,

I enjoyed your Billings post. I posted a paper on him as well. I appreciated all the background information in your first paragraph. You did a good job putting things in their historical context. One thing that I ran up against when I was writing my paper: Is there an actual collection called "The Continental Harmonist"? I know he published a collection called "Continental Harmony". I think "The Continental Harmonist" might have just been the title of that CD as a spin off of "Continental Harmony". The reason I think this is because I've seen the dates on several of the pieces that appear on the recording, and they vary.I believe some of the pieces were published in different collections of his such as the "New England Psalm Singer".
I find some of his pieces very original and also enjoyed "When Jesus Wept". However, I'm glad to see that someone else agrees with me that some of his pieces are redundant. Good job on your post!

Katie Kalinowski

Mike "Monkey Boy" Herrera said...

Marcus,

I enjoyed your Billings review. I also listened to works by Billings. I can tell you did some research. My favorite part of the paper was when you said, “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.” I totally agree with every word of that statement. I can see how after listening to the third or fourth piece, that the music can fatigue the ear. To my ear I find Billings works to be more of a meditation. It was made more for a spiritual moment.
Each piece was supposed to help reflect on god or a time in America’s past. Overall great paper and great insights on Billings and his works, I can tell a lot of time was put into it. Keep up the good work.

Best-
The Monkeyboy