Yankee tunesmiths

Yankee tunesmiths (also called the First New England School) were self-taught composers active in New England from 1770 until about 1810. Their music was largely forgotten when the Better Music Movement turned musical tastes towards Europe, as in Thomas Hastings's 1822 Dissertation on Musical Taste and other works. The principal tunesmiths were William Billings, Supply Belcher, Daniel Read, Oliver Holden, Justin Morgan, Lewis Edson, Andrew Law, Timothy Swan, Jacob Kimball Jr., and Jeremiah Ingalls.^[1] They composed primarily psalm tunes and fuging tunes (which differ enough from European fugues to warrant the spelling "fuge"), many of which have entered into the Sacred Harp singing tradition.