William Billings: Early Colonial Composer of Hymns and Fugues

Now shall my inward joy arise,
And burst into a song;
Almighty Love inspires my heart;
and Pleasure tunes my tongue. (Africa - William Billings)

I'm enjoying a wonderful collection of hymns and fugues from Colonial American William Billings (1746-1800). An excerpt from his famous a capella Africa .

Billings was an unconventional character (we confess a soft spot for these...), but his gift of music making is unquestionable. He blends medieval harmonies with complicated fugues, and an personal irascibility that caused no small upheaval among singing believers. From a New England magazine in the 1800's: "He spurned the rules of art, such as there were, and sung out of the abundance of his heart..."

More about the life of William Billings

"He was poor and uneducated -- he supported himself much of the time as a tanner. But he also took up music when he was young and was teaching choral singing by the age of 22.

Biographers call him a gargoyle. He was blind in one eye with a short leg and a withered arm. But that's only the beginning. He practiced what a contemporary called "an uncommon negligence of person," and he was hopelessly addicted to tobacco -- constantly inhaling handfuls of snuff. That may explain why he only lived to the age of 54. He had a stentorian, tobacco-damaged bass voice and he seemed uninterested in any easy beauty of sound."

History of Music: Rounds and Canons

The oldest known found is Sumer is icumen in (Summer has come in) from the mid-13th century. The manuscript is written in Middle English and Latin (red ink), too, and it was written for several voices. One singer would begin, then the second singer would start when the first singer had reached the red cross (see below).



Here in the United States, children learn rounds through Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Frere Jacque, or Dona Nobis Pachem (Give Us Peace). Rounds are a great way to introduce singing in harmony to children. Here's a nice collection of rounds lyrics from Swarthmore. A shorter listing of rounds with short sound clips can be found here.

Rounds and canons both have repeating sequences of melody, but in canons, the repetitions can be complex, with backwards or upside down imitations, variations in the durations of sounds, and changes in pitch. In Pachelbel's Canon in D, repeated sequences are shown in different colors to make the pattern easier to see.



To listen to a brief excerpt, click here: Johann Pachelbel – Canon

Pachelbel's Canon has a remarkable history in recent history. It burst on the musical scene in the 1970's in relative obscurity, and then was played in countless versions and arrangements, and still enjoys a great deal of popularity among all age groups and musical traditions. One of the top ten watched videos at Youtube.com was of an apparently young baseball cap-wearing electrical guitarist playing a pretty incredible Canon in D variation here. It has been been viewed over 21 million times.

Round (music) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Canons and Rounds