Yankee tunesmiths
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Yankee tunesmiths (also called the First New England School) were self-taught composers active in New England from 1770 until about 1810. Their music was largely forgotten when the Better Music Movement turned musical tastes towards Europe, as in Thomas Hastings's 1822 ''Dissertation on Musical Taste'' and other works. The principal tunesmiths were
William Billings William Billings (October 7, 1746 – September 26, 1800) is regarded as the first American choral composer and leading member of the First New England School. Life William Billings was born in Boston, Massachusetts. At the age of 14, t ...
,
Supply Belcher Supply Belcher (March 29, 1751 – June 9, 1836) was an American composer, singer, and compiler of tune books. He was one of the so-called Yankee tunesmiths or First New England School, a group of mostly self-taught composers who created sacred vo ...
,
Daniel Read Daniel Read (November 16, 1757 – December 4, 1836) was an American composer of the First New England School, and one of the primary figures in early American classical music. Life and work Read, along with his contemporaries William Billin ...
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Oliver Holden Oliver Holden (September 18, 1765 – September 4, 1844) was an American composer and compiler of hymns. Biography He was born in Shirley, Massachusetts. During the American Revolutionary War, he was a marine for a year (1782–1783) on the US ...
,
Justin Morgan Justin Morgan (February 28, 1747 – March 22, 1798) was a U.S. horse breeder and composer. He was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and by 1788 had settled in Vermont. In addition to being a horse breeder and farmer, he was a teacher of ...
,
Lewis Edson Lewis Edson (22 January 1748 – 1820 in Woodstock, New York) was one of the first American composers. He began working as blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from ...
, Andrew Law,
Timothy Swan Timothy Swan (1758–1842) was a Yankee tunesmith and hatmaker born in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. The son of goldsmith William Swan, Swan lived in small towns along the Connecticut River in Connecticut and Massachusetts for most of his li ...
, Jacob Kimball Jr., and
Jeremiah Ingalls Jeremiah Ingalls (March 1, 1764 – April 6, 1838) was an early North- American composer, considered a part of the First New England School. Biography Jeremiah Ingalls was born in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1764. When he was thirteen, his fathe ...
. They composed primarily psalm tunes and fuging tunes, which differ enough from European fugues to warrant the spelling "fuge".


"Yankee tunesmiths" or "First New England School"

Shape note singers who have kept this music alive to the present day sometimes use the term "Yankee tunesmiths", as did academic musicologists such as H. Wiley Hitchcock (1966). Other scholars working from a classical music perspective worked backwards, beginning with research into the Boston Classicists ( "Boston Six") of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, who were first defined as a "school" in 1966, then Hitchcock explicitly defined as this group as the " Second New England School" in 1969, generating the term "First New England School" as a by-product. The Yankee tunesmiths were definitely not a "school": all were self taught, scattered across New England, and did not share common publishers or affiliations. All were craftsmen who worked part-time as itinerant singing school teachers, which gave them opportunities to sell their self-published tune books. Anglo-Celtic heritage, and love of metric psalmody and the
hymn A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hy ...
s of
Isaac Watts Isaac Watts (17 July 1674 – 25 November 1748) was an English Congregational minister, hymn writer, theologian, and logician. He was a prolific and popular hymn writer and is credited with some 750 hymns. His works include "When I Survey the ...
are other common characteristics.


Antecedents in West Gallery Music

The self-taught Yankee tunesmiths learned composition from composers of
West gallery music __NOTOC__ West gallery music, also known as Georgian psalmody, refers to the sacred music (metrical psalms, with a few hymns and anthems) sung and played in English parish churches, as well as nonconformist chapels, from 1700 to around 1850. In ...
such as William Tans'ur's ''A New Musical Grammar' (1746) and Aaron Williams. Their books were issued by Daniel Bayley in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1769, 1771, 1773 and 1774 under the title ''The American Harmony, or Universal Psalmodist'' 1769, 1771, 1773 and 1774).
For 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 (1706-1783) and Aaron Williams (1731-1776), who were themselves somewhat outside the mainstream of European sacred music. Many of the traits that may be thought unique to American psalmodists in fact characterize the compositions of their British cousins too.


William Billings

The first influential tunesmith was
William Billings William Billings (October 7, 1746 – September 26, 1800) is regarded as the first American choral composer and leading member of the First New England School. Life William Billings was born in Boston, Massachusetts. At the age of 14, t ...
(1746–1800), a native of Boston, who was a self-taught amateur musician and a tanner. William Billings was part of the colonial working class. At the age of twenty-three Billings had already composed more than one hundred original pieces of sacred music, and in 1770 he published his a tunebook, ''The New England Psalm Singer'', the first book in which all the compositions were by an American. He advertised the work as “never before published” and stressed that it was composed by “a native of Boston”—made in America by an American. Published by Benjamin Edes and John Gill, who also published ''The Boston Gazette and Country Journal'', a major Patriot newspaper, and including an engraving by Paul Revere. Here we find the defiant, " Chester", sometimes called "America's First National Anthem", for which Billings composed both the lyrics and the tune:
''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 for ever reigns.''
The ''New England Psalm-Singer'' (1770) was followed by a second and more popular collection, the ''Singing Master's Assistant'' (1778). It includes a paraphrase of
Psalm 137 Psalm 137 is the 137th psalm of the Book of Psalms in the Tanakh. In English it is generally known as "By the rivers of Babylon", which is how its first words are translated in the King James Version of the Bible. Its Latin title is "Super flum ...
("By the rivers of Babylon") that refers to the British occupation of Boston in 1775–1776. These selections captured the mood of confident defiance with which New England patriots entered the new era.


Rediscovery

The works of the early New England composers were rediscovered in the 1950s, with compositions such as
William Schuman William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. ...
's use of Billings' tune " Chester" in his '' New England Triptych'' (1956), which he later expanded into the ''Chester Overture''.


Further reading

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References

{{Authority control American music history American male composers American composers Composition schools Music of New England History of Boston Music of Massachusetts Shape note