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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE             CONTACT: Roland Hutchinson
August 20, 1996                            (201) 509-2165
                                           rhutchin@email.njin.net

ATTENTION: ARTS EDITOR, CONCERT LISTINGS (CLASSICAL)

CELEBRATION IN SONG FOR A YANKEE GENIUS:
COMPOSER WILLIAM BILLINGS TURNS 250.
FREE PARTICIPATORY EVENT, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6.

     Patriotic songs, hymns, anthems, and fuging tunes composed by
colonial New England and early America's most celebrated musical
genius will sound across the Boston Common in four-part harmony as
singers from Boston and New England, all of North America, and Europe
meet on Sunday, Oct. 6 from 1 pm to 4 pm to observe the 250th
anniversary of the birth of Yankee tunesmith William Billings.

     Choral singers of all backgrounds and levels of experience are
invited to participate in the celebration. Music will be provided, and
no previous acquaintance with Billings' music is required.

     The event, which is free for both singers and listeners, will
take place near the entry gate to the Central Burying Ground, located
on the Common near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont Streets. A
brass plaque at the gate identifies what is traditionally believed to
be the composer's final resting place in an unmarked grave. The site
is less than one block west of Boylston station on the Green Line.

     Born in Boston, self-taught as a composer, and a tanner by trade,
William Billings (1746-1800) is best known today as the composer of
the defiant Revolutionary War hymn "Chester" and of church music
ranging from simple psalm settings to elaborate anthems. 

     Billings' style derives from the vigorous musical idiom of the
18th-century English country parish church. Sung with full voice and
unrestrained enthusiasm, bursting with melodic activity in all four
parts, his music contrasts strikingly with the genteel and
conventional music of 19th-century hymnals that later displaced it and
all but erased the memory of Billings and other early New England
composers from the American consciousness.

     Billings' music nonetheless did survive, both in printed form in
the tune books that he himself published and as a living singing
tradition in a few scattered places where the new standards of
religious and musical decorum did not prevail. In Stoughton, Mass.,
where Billings himself taught a group of singers in 1774, the Old
Stoughton Musical Society has been singing some of his compositions
for over 200 years. Elsewhere in New England, occasional "Old Folks'
Concerts" presented Billings' music as late as the 1930s.

     His most numerous adherents, however, have been Sacred Harp
singers from the rural American South, among whom the Yankee Billings
remains a favorite composer to this day. Their book of unaccompanied
three- and four-part sacred vocal music, "The Sacred Harp" (first
published in 1844 and most recently revised in 1992), prints music by
Billings side by side with more recent music that is, broadly
speaking, similar in spirit: American folk hymns, camp meeting and
early gospel songs, and modern compositions in traditional styles.

     The Sacred Harp tradition has spread since the 1970s to areas
outside the South and even outside the United States. Singers from
this tradition will meet at Wellesley College for the 21st Annual New
England Sacred Harp Singing on October 4 and 5. Many of them,
including a number of singers from the United Kingdom who are
acquainted at first-hand with Billings' musical roots in England, are
expected also to join the Billings observance.

     This celebration of Billings' 250th birthday has been organized
by the Ad Hoc Billings Birthday Committee, a distinguished group of
choral music, early music, and American music specialists, with the
cooperation and assistance of Boston Early Music News and the Boston
Parks and Recreation Department. Says New Bedford native Gina
Balestracci, one of the organizers, "with all the uproar over
anniversaries of Mozart and other European composers in the past
couple of years, it's nice to be able to celebrate one of our own
American composers for a change."

     For further information, call Ginny Ely, (508) 664-1344 or send
electronic mail to Roland Hutchinson, rhutchin@pilot.njin.net

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