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."