Aaron Williams (composer) facts for kids
Aaron Williams (1731–1776) was a Welsh teacher, composer, and compiler of West Gallery music, active in Britain during the 18th century.
Life
Williams was probably born in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, the son of William Morgan. He served as clerk of the Presbyterian Scots Church, London Wall.
Influence on early American sacred music
Harmonic idiom
The unorthodox harmonic idiom of the Yankee tunesmiths (the "First New England School" of choral composers) shows the influence of English composers such as Williams and William Tans'ur:
For the most part the Yankee composer's source of information about harmonic practices derived from the music and writings on music of such comparatively unskilled English composers as William Tans'ur (1796–1783) and Aaron Williams (1731–1776), who were themselves somewhat outside the mainstream of European sacred music. Many of the traits that may be thought unique to American psalmodists in fact characterize the compositions of their British cousins too.
In particular, "it is clear that [William Billings] had studied the works of English psalmodists such as William Tansur and Aaron Williams."
St. Thomas
Williams's tune "St. Thomas" was originally the second quarter of his longer "Holborn," published in his Universal Psalmodist (1763) and attributed to him based on the statement there, "never before printed." It was first published in its shortened form in Thomas Knibb's The Psalm-Singer's Help (c. 1769), included by Williams in his 1770 New Universal Psalmodist, and printed again in Isaac Smith's A Collection of Psalm Tunes (c. 1780).
In the United States, "St. Thomas" was published in several shape note tunebooks, including the following:
- William Little and William Smith, The Easy Instructor (1801), p. 101
- David Clayton and James Carrell, The Virginia Harmony (1831), p. 79 (attributed to "Handel")
- The Methodist Harmonist (1833), no. 119, p. 93
- Allen D. Carden, The Missouri Harmony (1834), p. 33
- W. L. Chappell, The Western Lyre, new edition, 1835, no. 80
- Lowell Mason and T. H. Mason, The Sacred Harp or Eclectic Harmony, new edition, 1835, p. 89
- B. F. White and E. J. King, The Sacred Harp, appendix to the 1860 edition, p. 293 (also in the 1911 edition of J. S. James, p. 293, misattributed to "William Towser, 1768"; retained in the current 1991 edition, p. 34).
