![billings pro sign in billings pro sign in](https://signpro.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/multi-wraps.jpg)
![billings pro sign in billings pro sign in](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50046943338_7e63367143_b.jpg)
Another hymn, which reappeared with new words, "Methinks I hear a heav'nly host," runs as a theme song through all his work. Eight years later Billings published a much improved version, The Singing Master's Assistant, in which he added a text beginning "Let tyrants shake their iron rod" to his earlier tune "Chester." This hymn, of unexpected delicacy as well as lustiness, was very popular during the Revolutionary War. Paul Revere engraved Billings's first hymnbook, The New England Psalm-Singer (1770). The Brattle Street and Old South churches engaged Billings to teach hymns and anthems, as did many other Congregational churches in Massachusetts and Episcopal King's Chapel.īillings was 22 when he wrote a remarkable round, "Jesus Wept," for four voices, although he did not compose fuguing tunes, or contrapuntal part-songs, for another decade. The Revolutionary patriot Samuel Adams enjoyed singing in Billings's viol-accompanied choir. He scoffed at the rules, proclaiming "Nature is the best dictator." He taught himself composition from hymnbooks, especially William Tans'ur's Royal Melody Compleat, or The New Harmony of Zion (London, 1755 reprinted in seven Boston editions, 1767-1774), which had a pedagogical preface on "the grounds of musick." He chalked his notes on the tannery walls and hides and once declared there was nothing connected with the science of music that he had not mastered. Billings enthusiastically joined the two-generations-old singing-school movement of the Congregational churches. At an early age he went into his father's business. The son of a Boston tanner, William Billings evidently received a common-school education.