Daniel Read

Read, along with his contemporaries William Billings, Oliver Holden, Supply Belcher, and Justin Morgan, was one of the primary members of a group of American composers called the Yankee tunesmiths or the First New England School.

Once a private in the Massachusetts militia, later a comb-maker and owner of a general store in New Haven, Connecticut, Read was only the third American composer to put out a collection of his own music (after William Billings and Simeon Jocyln).

This work, The American Singing Book (1785), went through five editions in the years immediately following: unusually successful for its day, making him by number of printings the most popular composer in the nation.

Read was influenced by the practices in European music in his later years, and later repudiated the compositions in the style that he exemplified and helped define.

V 2 Deny thyself and take thy cross, Is the Redeemers great command; Nature must count her gold but dross, If she would gain this heavenly land.