34 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
WILLIAM BILLINGS, AMERICAN COMPOSER
In 1770 a young Boston tanner and singing master produced a tunebook
refl ecting the vitality that had begun to fl ow into New England sacred music
as Puritan restrictions fell away, music literacy spread, and secular attitudes
grew more acceptable. The New-England Psalm-Singer, or American Chorister, by
William Billings, is a true landmark. Though shorter than Urania, it came close
to matching that book’s variety, with everything from plain congregational
tunes to long anthems that would tax the skill of any American choir. In musi-
cal content, however, the originality of Billings’s book far outstripped Lyon’s.
Containing 127 compositions, all by Billings himself, The New-England Psalm-
Singer was the fi rst published collection of entirely American music and the
fi rst American tunebook devoted wholly to works by one composer. With its
appearance, the number of American sacred compositions in print increased
tenfold, and a region that had long fostered psalmody reclaimed leadership in
sacred music.
Born in Boston in 1746, Billings attended school briefl y, then learned the tan-
ner’s trade. A s a musician he seems to have been self-taught. By age twenty-three
he was teaching singing schools, an activity he pursued through much of his
life. Billings’s fi rst tunebook, The New-England Psalm-Singer, refl ects changes in
New England culture that reached beyond music. By 1770, although some Puri-
tan infl uence persisted, the region’s moral purpose had found a new focus: resis-
tance to Britain’s rule of her American colonies.
The state of mind that led in 1775 to war with England could not have been
predicted a dozen years earlier. In 1763, when the Treaty of Paris ended the
French and Indian War, many colonists shared a feeling of pride in a hard-won
Anglo-American victory. The British, too, looked for a new relationship with this
fast-growing part of their empire. But while the Americans saw the departure
of the French and Spanish as an opening of fresh opportunities, British offi cials
believed that the time had come for England to receive a higher yield on overseas
investments. The fi rst of Parliament’s money-raising measures—the Stamp Act of
1764, which increased taxes and duties on imports and exports—began a cycle of
escalating grievances. Misunderstandings multiplied. What seemed to the Brit-
ish reasonable steps to govern their colonies were received by some Americans as
unreasonable impositions of external authority. Such responses in turn brought
stronger displays of power from the British. Positions gradually hardened, and
extremists took over leadership on both sides.
Boston experienced new unrest in 1768, when customs commissioners
asked for an armed guard to protect them as they performed their duties. Brit-
ish troops arrived in April. Although an uneasy peace was maintained, some
Bostonians viewed the soldiers as an army of occupation. The Boston Massa-
cre of 1770, where British soldiers fi red into a crowd of protesters and killed
fi ve colonists, was one of several incidents that infl amed public opinion. Dur-
ing the next several years, confl ict simmered as the British troops remained.
The American public split into factions: “loyalists” who accepted England’s
right to rule her colonies as she chose, and “patriots” opposed to British rule.
In April 1775 war broke out in Massachusetts between the British soldiers and
local minutemen. W hen the smoke fi nally cleared in 1781, the colonies had won
independence.resistance to BritainRevolution172028_01_018-043_r2_mr.indd 34 23/01/13 9:50 AM