AMS Histories
Celebrating the American Musicological Society at Seventy-Five
In 2011, the American Musicological Society published a 130-page book that would celebrate the organization’s seventy-fifth anniversary and detail the history of the Society to date. Titled Celebrating the American Musicological Society at Seventy-Five, the book features essays by Jane A. Bernstein, Lewis Lockwood, Suzanne G. Cusick, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and James Haar, and an extensive appendix listing AMS officers, editors, fellows, awardees, and honorary members during the Society’s first seventy-five years.
“The American Musicological Society 1934–1984: An Anniversary Essay” by Richard Crawford
In 1981, the AMS Board of Directors voted to commission a history of the Society to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 1984. When plans for a full-scale history hit a snag, the Society’s Publications Committee asked Richard Crawford, then AMS’s President, to write a brief essay commemorating the occasion. “The American Musicological Society 1934–1984: An Anniversary Essay” was the result. The essay and pamphlet outlines the first fifty years of the Society’s history and includes appendices listing AMS officers, editors, awardees, and honorary members during those years.
American Musicological Society, Greater New York Chapter: A Programmatic History 1935–1965
The American Musicological Society was founded in New York City in 1934. This short work by Barry S. Brook, published in 1965, summarizes the first thirty years of the AMS in New York.
Music Editions
The Complete Works of William Billings is a carefully edited and finely produced four-volume set published by the American Musicological Society together with the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (CSM). It features critical editions of most of the works of William Billings, the US’s first major choral composer and a leading member of the First New England School.
Vol. I: The New-England Psalm-Singer (1770) [1981] lxviii, 383 pp.
Vol. II: The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778), Music in Miniature (1779) [1977] xv, 362 pp.
Vol. III: The Psalm-Singer’s Amusement (1781), The Suffolk Harmony (1786), and the independent publications [1986] lii, 399 pp.
Vol. IV: The Continental Harmony (1794), [1990] lxxii, 332 pp.
Volumes I, II, and III are hard-bound, beautifully printed by Meriden-Stinehour Press; volume IV is hard-bound, reprinted in 2013 in matching style to the other three volumes. Inventories and sales of these volumes are managed the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Contact CSM to buy Billings titles.
The Complete Works of William Billings
“The Billings edition is a remarkable national achievement, the first of its kind in this country, one in which the nation can take justified pride, and one which by virtue of musical worth and meticulous execution calls for celebration.” —H. Colin Slim
“The music of Billings has a charming freshness, an innocence of urban tensions, that combines in fascinating ways with a high degree of skill and sophistication in the technical handling of combined melodic lines, and with a flair for text setting.” —Nicholas Temperley

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