biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1746–1800)
|
| biography:
| Composer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He studied music on his own and became one of the earliest professional musicians in the Colonies. After publishing his first collection of church music, the New England Psalm Singer (1770), he pursued in Boston a career of composing, reforming church music, and starting musical ensembles. He founded the continent's first singing class in Stoughton, MA (1774) and the first church choir. His ‘Chester’, with its text ‘Let tyrants shake their iron rod ... New England's God forever reigns’, became a favourite of Revolutionary troops, and remains his best-known work. Despite his prominence, he was never able to make an adequate living, and died in poverty. |
|
|
