William Billings, born in Boston, in 1746, was one of our first composers. He took his music seriously, was self-taught, and wrote his first music on leather with chalk, in the tannery where he worked. He was queer and was laughed at, but he was so sincere in his love of music that he won friends who encouraged him to publish (in 1770) a new psalm-book, _The New England Psalm Singer, or American Chorister_. As singing-schools had been formed to learn how to read and to sing the church music, the time was ripe for more difficult music than had been allowed by the Pilgrim Fathers. Billings, although he knew nothing about it, tried some experiments in counterpoint, and introduced some “fugue-tunes,” which really were not fugues at all, into his hymns. That he enjoyed the result may be seen from this quotation: “It has more than twenty times the power of the old slow tunes, each part straining for mastery and victory, the audience entertained and delighted, ... sometimes declaring for one part, and sometimes for another. Now the solemn bass demands their attention, next the manly tenor; now the lofty counter, now the volatile treble. Now there; now here again, O ecstatic! Rush on, you sons of harmony!” In the preface to his book we find the first American musical declaration of independence, for he states that Nature and not Knowledge must inspire thought, and that “it is best for every composer to be his own carver.” But later he showed a bigness of spirit, for he writes humbly: “Kind Reader, no doubt you remember that about ten years ago I published a book ... and truly a most masterly performance I then thought it to be. How lavish was I of encomiums (praise) on this my infant production!... I have discovered that many of the pieces were not worth my printing or your inspection.” This second book was called _Billings’ Best_ because it became very popular. Many of his tunes were sung around the camp-fires of the Revolutionary Army, and even the Continental fifers played one of his airs. He was a fiery patriot, and when Boston was occupied by the British, he paraphrased the 137th Psalm, and wrote: By the rivers of Watertown, we sat down; Yea, we wept as we remembered Boston! This was the time when the young Mozart was astonishing the courts of Europe, and the Colossus Beethoven was born! For a long time there was prejudice against instrumental music in New England, so the first concerts gave selections from Handel’s _Messiah_ and Haydn’s _Creation_, which after all were oratorios. Later William Billings’ singing class in Stoughton, Massachusetts, founded in 1774 to study and perform psalm tunes and oratorios became the Stoughton Musical Society in 1786 and was looked upon as the earliest musical organization in America. It is still in existence. But Mr. Sonneck discovered that in Charleston, South Carolina, the St. Cecilia Society was founded twenty-four years earlier.