Book Description

This is the first modern edition of the collected works of Supply Belcher, Maine's most celebrated early composer, who was known in his day as the Handel of Maine. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Maine was part of the northeastern frontier, a sparsely settled area that held to the old ways. Thus, its compilers reprinted and singers sang the music of Billings, Read, Swan, Holden, and other Yankee psalmodists long after a reform movement had swept them from the galleries of southern New-England churches. Belcher was a man much honored in the region as a musician, a public servant, and a civic leader. Following military service in the Revolutionary War, he opened Belcher's Tavern, where local musicians frequently gathered for sings. In addition to being a composer, Belcher was also a singer, a violinist, and a prominent member of the Stoughton Musical Society. He published seventy-four works between l788, when his first tune appeared in print, and 1819, when his final contributions to psalmody were issued. As this edition of his collected works reveals, his vigorous and skillful pieces show him to have been an original and creative spirit in psalmody, and even today are worthy of attention and performance.