William Little
Life
Born: ca. 1760
Died: ca. 1815
Biography
American composer. Lived in Hopewell, New Jersey in the early 1800's. Details of William Little's life are sparse. Four pieces in the first edition of The Easy Instructor were composed by him; two of these were titled Hopewell and Amwell, the second composed by a well-known Hopewell man. This suggests that William Little lived in Hopewell in the early 1800's. Kaufman (1981) reports two hints from around Hopewell. The first is a 1792 church record from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, that a William Little was appointed Assistant Clerk "to lead the singing." The second is a February 1802 advertisement in a Trenton, New Jersey, newspaper that "Dr. Little will again open his singing-school … on Thursday evening next."
List of choral works
No works currently available
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Publications
- Little, William, and William Smith. 1801. The Easy Instructor, Or a New Method of Teaching Sacred Harmony. Philadelphia. Further editions 1803–1844.
References
- Condit, Lester. 1946. Bibliographical Notes: Editions of Little & Smith's Easy Instructor. The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 40(3):233-236.
- Kaufman, Charles H. 1981. Music in New Jersey, 1655-1860: A Study of Musical Activity and Musicians in New Jersey from Its First Settlement to the Civil War. East Brunswick, New Jersey: Associated Universities Presses. William Smith and the "Hopewell" Easy Instructor, Part II (1803), pp. 143-147.
- Lowens, Irving, and Allen P. Britton. 1953. "The Easy Instructor" (1798-1831): A History and Bibliography of the First Shape Note Tune Book. Journal of Research in Music Education 1(1):30-55.
- Metcalf, Frank J. 1937. "The Easy Instructor": A Bibliographical Study. The Musical Quarterly 23(1):89-97.