Chester william billings roman numerals

Song by William Billings

"Chester" is a patriotic anthem composed by William Billings and sung during the American Revolutionary War. Billings wrote the first version of the song for his songbook The New England Psalm Singer, and made improvements for the version in his The Singing Master's Assistant ().

It is the latter version that is best known today.

The name of the tune reflects a common practice of Billings' day, in which tunes were labeled with (often arbitrarily chosen) place names. Billings' tune evidently has little more to do with any particular town named Chester than his famous hymn "Africa" has to do with Africa.

William billings

The idea behind this practice was that by labeling the tunes independently, one could sing them to different words without creating confusion (indeed, this later did happen; see below).

Tune in version of

Parts labeled "Treble, Counter, Tenor, and Bass" correspond to the modern SATB four-voice choir.

However, the melody is in