COLLECTION OF SACRED VOCAL MUSIC, 1807-12?

This work was not published before 1807, since it contains ELLINGTON and HARMONY, both identified as first printings in Daniel Read's The Columbian Harmonist, 3d ed. (Boston, 1807). If one assumes that the work-an anonymous, untitled, undated, and unprepossessing collection of pieces-was compiled from existing sources and included only tunes already in print, then it probably did not appear until 1812 or later. The collection contains ARVINGTON, a tune that appeared in Eli Roberts's Hartford Collection (Hartford, 1812) and has not been found earlier. Whether or not it was published during the period covered by this bibliography, all of the pieces in the collection except ARVINGTON and WESTERLY appeared in other American tunebooks before 1811. The first sixteen pages consist of textless tunes without attributions; in the last sixteen pages the tunes carry full text, and the composers of most are named. The disparity between the two sixteen-page segments suggests that they were engraved at different times.