Tuesday, February 5, 2008

WILLIAM BILLINGS:THE CONTINENTAL HARMONIST

WILLIAM BILLINGS: THE CONTINENTAL HARMONIST

The recording The Continental Harmonist, consists of nineteen short a cappella vocal pieces by the composer William Billings grouped together thematically in sets of two or three. The pieces are in English, and are scored for soprano, alto, tenor and bass and performed by the Gregg Smith Singers. The texts range from patriotic, to Biblical, to secular. Individual pieces tend to be short, lasting about three minutes on average.
Billings (1746-1800) was one of several composers to take the Calvinist chorale-writing tradition to the American Colonies and was also the first North-American composer to publish a collection of psalms with his New England Psalm-Singer. While the pieces on this recording definitely show a chorale influence, I also found many other stylistic features that likely took inspiration from a wide variety of sources.
One of the things I found interesting about these pieces was their variety of styles, moods, textures, and structures. Moods of the pieces ranged from light-hearted to somber, texture was either contrapuntal or simple, and style sometimes reflected Handel, Bach, and Martin Luther, and at other times reflected folk-songs, the Beggars Opera, and even Renaissance madrigals. “Chester” is probably the most famous piece on the recording. This well-known tune patriotically proclaims “New England’s God forever reigns.” In this and several other pieces, I could clearly hear the influence of Reformation chorales. Since these chorales had become so well established in Protestant churches, they probably had an influence on Billings. Some pieces make dramatic use of text-painting. For instance, in the humorous piece “Consonance,” the basses are given a low descending line with the text: “Down sings the bass with grave majestic air.” In the piece “Jargon,” the dissonance of the chords matches the text: “Let hearty jargon split the air,” and “Let hateful discord greet the ear . . .” Most humorous was the piece “Modern Music,” in which the lyrics are clever to a degree almost worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan:
We are met for a concert of modern invention, to tickle the ear is our present intention. The audience are seated, expecting to be treated with a piece of the best, with a piece of the best, and since we all agree, to set the tune on E, the author’s darling key he prefers to the rest.

Billings employs what would have been considered basic conventional harmonies in most of these pieces. As might be expected, he tends to use major keys for lighter lyrics and minor keys for more serious subjects. Although some of these pieces employ a large amount of imitation and fugal techniques, others use melodies so simple that they sound like folk-tunes. One example of this is the piece “A Virgin Unspotted” which has a lilting simple melody in compound time. The fact that Billings composed simple, short pieces set in English with folksong-like melodies perhaps owes something to the influence of The Beggar’s Opera, which had gained enormous popularity in England 1728. Although Billings was composing in the later part of the century, he had likely heard of the fame and success of the Beggar’s Opera. The piece “When Jesus Wept” has a beautiful haunting melody, reminiscent of an English folk tune. The voices enter one by one in a fugue. Text painting appears in this piece with the words “falling tears” being set to a descending figure.
I was intrigued by the way Billings used tempo, meter and texture to achieve unique results. There are tempo changes halfway through some of the pieces, most notably in “Swift as an Indian Arrow Flies” and “Shepherd’s Carol.” Billings also uses call and response and antiphonal devices, especially in “The Lord is Risen.” This full and triumphant piece calls to mind the oratorios of Handel, whose music Billings was probably familiar with. Also interesting about this piece is the fact that not only does the text deal with Christ’s resurrection, but it also speaks of “humanity triumphant”—clearly an Enlightenment idea which would have been especially well received in the newly-formed United States. Numerous pieces have small fugues in them, and some were even labeled in parenthesis as “fuging tunes.” I had never heard a chorale that made use of a fugue before, so Billings must have been influenced by some of the more ornate instrumental music of the late Baroque, or perhaps by some of the more elaborate vocal writing of Handel. Although Billings’ pieces employ techniques that wouldn’t normally be expected in simple chorales, they could have easily been sung by amateurs in singing schools as a means of recreation.
I found some of these pieces intriguing, and others tiring and flat. The pieces that grabbed my attention made use of unusual and unexpected compositional techniques, and were beautiful and satisfying to listen to. I enjoyed “Swift as an Indian Arrow Flies” because it opens in a somber minor key and then unexpectedly changes to a tempo that lives up to the swiftness of the title. I also enjoyed several of the dark minor pieces such as “David’s Lamentation” and “Morpheus” which were simple and powerful and reminiscent of Renaissance English madrigals. Several pieces I found a little less original were “Hopkinton,” “A Virgin Unspotted,” and “Boston”, mainly because their melodies quickly became repetitive and didn’t contain much contrast. Overall, these pieces are worth listening to because they hold a unique place in music history as well as possessing some artistic merit. While I can see how they have been eclipsed by other pieces and deprived a place in the canon, they deserve to be known and appreciated by modern audiences.

4 comments:

Tom Marks said...

I think Billings is an interesting character. On one hand, he seems like doesn't really have a style of his own because of his somewhat archaic style of writing (using fugues and polyphonic voice leading, etc.) but at the same time I admire him for starting an interest music in the New World. I liked your essay. It helped me better understand the complex character that is Mr. Billings.

Marcus said...

Hey Katie thanks for the good comments. After you posted that I think that you are right about the Harmonist thing. I figured that CD was the actual recording of the Harmonist. Oh well live and learn.

DMJ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DMJ said...

Until I read your post, I hadn't made the connection between Billings and William Schuman's New England Triptych. Schuman took three of Billings's chorales (two were mentioned in your post) and wrote a 3-movement orchestral piece based on those themes. It gives interesting insight into a composer's mind when you can reach back in time and find what inspired them. Its also great to listen to each chorale and then Schuman's use of each in his piece.