| The Easy Instructor |
| The Easy Instructor; or a new method of teaching sacred harmony by William Little and William Smith first appeared around the year 1801, and represents the first example of music published with four-shape notation such as survives to the present day in books like The Sacred Harp. The edition currently circulating in shaped-note circles is a large photocopy of the 1818 Utica edition as printed by William Williams. Copies are sometimes available on the sale table at conventions, and although its $15 to $22 cost may be somewhat daunting, it does contain a number of excellent tunes not available elsewhere. Little and Smith collected some of the best American fugues and plain tunes, but also excerpted liberally from the contemporary English choral collections. Thomas Arne, Dr. Samuel Arnold, Martin Madan and Joseph Stephenson are well-represented in its pages, as are Americans like William Billings, Daniel Read, Oliver Brownson and Justin Morgan. Tunes like Plympton and Cimbeline are priceless, and should be sung! |