William Billings

Synopsis

On today's date in 2000, King's Chapel in Boston arranged for a daylong festival of music by the early American composer William Billings in honor of the 200th anniversary of his death in 1800. At a pay of twelve shillings per session, Billings had taught singing at King's Chapel "to such persons of both sexes as incline to sing psalm-tunes" (as the Chapel's records of 1786 stated). They must have liked him, since in 1790, when Billings was in financial trouble, the Chapel held a benefit concert for him with tickets selling at two shillings a head.

When Billings was born in 1746, America was still a British colony. The last record we have of him as a composer dates from 1799, when he wrote music for a memorial concert for George Washington, the first president of the United States, who died in December of that year.

Today Billings is regarded as America's first truly original native composer. His contemporaries agreed. The Reverend William Bentley of Salem was moved to write these lines in his diary: "Many who have imitated him have excelled him, but none of them had better original powers… He was a singular man, of moderate size, short of one leg, with one eye, without any address, and with an uncommon negligence of person. Still, he spake and sung and thought as a man above the common abilities."

Music Played in Today's Program

William Billings (1746 – 1800) When Jesus Wept and Methinks I see a heavenly host His Majestie's Clerkes; Paul Hillier, cond. Harmonia Mundi 90.7048

On This Day

Births

• 1898 - American pianist and composer George Gershwin in Brooklyn;

Deaths

• 1800 - Early American composer William Billings, age 53, in Boston; He died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave in Boston Common;

• 1945 - Hungarian pianist and composer Béla Bartók, age 64, in New York City;

Premieres

• 1835 - Donizetti: opera "Lucia di Lammermoor," at the Teatro San Carlos in Naples;

• 1898 - Victor Herbert: operetta, "The Fortune Teller," in Toronto;

• 1907 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 3, by the Helsinki Philharmonic, with the composer conducting;

• 1915 - Schillings: opera "Mona Lisa," in Stuttgart at the Hoftheater;

• 1938 - Kurt Weill: musical, "Knickerbocker Holiday," during trial run in Hartford, Conn.; The musical opened in New York on October 19, 1938;

• 1957 - Bernstein: musical "West Side Story," at the Winter Garden in New York City; A trial run of the musical had premiered during a trial run in Washington, D.C. at the National Theater on August 19, 1957;

• 1967 - Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2 by the Moscow Philharmonic, Kirill Kondrashin conducting, with soloist David Oistrakh;

• 1991 - Wuorinen: cantata "Genesis," in San Francisco, Herbert Blomstedt conducting;

• 1997 - Kirchner: "Of Things Exactly As They Are," with vocalists Roberta Alexander and William Stone, with the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Chorus conducted by Seiji Ozawa;

• 1998 - Philip Glass: opera "The White Raven," by the San Carlos National Theater at the World Expo in Lisbon, Portugal, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting;

Others

• 1962 - Igor Stravinsky concert by the Moscow State Symphony during the composer's first visit to Russia in 48 years; Stravinsky conducts his "Ode" and "Orpheus" Ballet, Stravinsky's assistant Robert Craft conducts "The Rite of Spring," with the composer returning to conduct his 1917 arrangement of the "Volga Boatmen's Song" as an encore.