Stoically, a crouching figure shuffled along, shivering through the shadows of another familiar moment in solemn silence. Glittering through the thin, icy rays of a street lamp, soft snowflakes whirled against the black abyss of night. Almost beyond hearing, a church bell on high clamored brightly from the isolation of the Old Otterbein Church steeple. Now consumed by fear and loneliness, this rejected, shame-filled soul hopelessly continued on through the darkness as before, negotiating life, choosing to escape the struggles of life, simply oblivious to the joyful sound resonating hope in the distance through the foggy murk.
Buried within all of us is a desire to know the meaning of life. In the process of navigating through life’s maze, it is easy to lose our way. The pressure of being human and living life, including all the demands that are placed on us, keeps us from a truth which transcends time and space: “The meaning of life and submission to God are one in the same.” Sometimes, the meaning of a life like the one William Billings lived may not make sense for more than 200 years. Billings’ life reveals a signature theme about human history. Over and over again, we cannot get a perspective of isolated historical moments without a heavenly perspective.
Pondering his life, William Billings had never really understood how to cope with the messes and stresses that life had dealt him. Billings was hopelessly addicted to tobacco—constantly inhaling handfuls of snuff. He walked the streets of Baltimore while failure encircled him. As a weary child of God waiting on a way of escape or rescue, he had resolved to depend on biblical truths of provision and protection. Nevertheless, he and his family found themselves destitute, losing everything.
Williams Billings is considered by many to be the foremost representative of early American music. Billings, a tanner by trade, was born in Boston on Oct. 7, 1746. Largely a self-trained musician, biographers call him a gargoyle—blind in one eye with a short leg and a withered arm.
In his day, William Billings’ spirited patriotic song “Chester” rivaled “Yankee Doodle” in popularity, becoming an anthem of the American Revolution.
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.
Among his many contemporaries were Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Paul Revere engraved the front piece of Billings’ first volume, The New England Psalm Singer. The New England Psalm Singer was the first published collection of original American music. This began a grass-roots choral movement that was an attempt to standardize choral singing in churches as well as other public performances in early America.
“The essential genius of America, and of William Billings, was recognizing that full independence of Europe would eventually be gained only after we’d formed our own cultural roots,” John H. Lienhard states in an article about Billings,
At 24, after publishing The New England Psalm Singer, Billings published five more volumes and several additional pieces of sheet music. Billings was a remarkable man with a strong personality, commanding lively performances with his tremendous bass voice. He developed a new way of setting hymns and anthems in church music called the “fugue style,” a type of singing built on the repetition and overlapping of two of more vocal lines. It became extremely popular primarily because of its liveliness, invigorating what were then rather doleful sounding and ritualistic hymns. This resulted in choirs and singing schools forming all across the American colonies.
In addition, with such poetic freedom in his original church music styles, some even refer to Billings as the “Father of American Church Music.” He introduced the violoncello into New England, which foreshadowed the large-scale use of the church organ still to come.
Mostly sung a cappella, Billings’ music was forceful and stirring, celebratory and jarring, sounding more like music of the 20th century than that of the 18th century. Billings’ work was very popular in its heyday, but his career was hampered by the primitive state of copyright law in America at the time. By the time the copyright laws had been strengthened, it was too late for Billings. The favorites among his tunes had already been widely reprinted in other people’s hymnals, permanently copyright-free.
As the public’s musical tastes changed after the American Revolution, Billings’ fortunes declined. His last tune-book, The Continental Harmony, was published as a project of his friends, in an effort to help support the revered but no longer popular composer. His temporary employment as a Boston street sweeper was probably a project of a similar nature. Finally, after years of tobacco abuse, he died at 53 years old on Sept. 26, 1800, leaving a widow and six children.
For a considerable time after his death, his music was almost completely neglected in the American musical mainstream. However, his compositions remained popular for a time in the rural areas of New England, whose citizens resisted the newer trends in sacred music. Moreover, through the circuit riders during the “Second Great Awakening,” a few of Billings’ songs were carried southward and westward through America, as a result of their appearance in shape note hymnals. Even into the 20th century, they ultimately resided in the rural South, as part of the Sacred Harp singing tradition.
In the latter part of the 20th century a Billings revival occurred, and a sumptuous complete scholarly edition of his works was compiled. Works by Billings are commonly sung by American choral groups today, particularly performers of early music. In addition, the recent spread of Sacred Harp music has acquainted many more people with Billings’ music.
Shape note and Sacred Harp singing were designed to facilitate congregational and community singing in the “better singing” movement for church singing even here in Middle Tennessee. Murfreesboro was a primary location for organized singing schools throughout the South well into the 1950s. Today, there seems to be a renaissance of this method in Southern traditions and in other locales as well.
Shape note and Sacred Harp singing played a significant role in the development of American “folk” musical traditions, which ultimately would influence popular singing and music in America. There may not be a direct link to the work of William Billings, but definitely his Shape note and Sacred Harp singing methods can be traced to America’s mainstream popular songs, even in the 20th and 21st century.
