Download Brief Biography of Samuel Holyoke Samuel Adams Holyoke (1762

Brief Biography of Samuel Holyoke Samuel Adams Holyoke (1762 -­‐ 1820) was an American composer and teacher in the Yankee tunesmith tradition. Born in Boxford, Massachusetts, to a Congregational minister and a minister's daughter, he started composing before graduating from Harvard College, where his music was performed. Evidently America's first professional composer and the most prolific of his time, Holyoke produced several compilations of psalm tunes and other pieces (his own and others') between 1791 and 1807. The most important was The Columbian Repository of Sacred Harmony in 1803, the largest collection of music then published in the New World and for years the most diverse in style. Holyoke helped found Groton Academy, serving as its first headmaster, and later taught music at Phillips Academy. A resident of Boston, he died in Concord, New Hampshire, after a brief illness. His tune "Arnheim," paired with the text "assembled at thy great command," continued in American hymnals until the 1890s. C.J. Hoh, 2014