Supply Belcher

Supply Belcher (29 March 1751 – 9 June 1836) was an American composer, singer, and compiler of tune books. He was one of the members of the so-called First New England School, a group of mostly self-taught composers who created sacred vocal music for local choirs. He was active first in Lexington, Massachusetts, then eventually moved to Farmington, Maine. Like most of his colleagues, Belcher could not make music his main occupation, and worked as tax assessor, schoolmaster, town clerk, and so on; nevertheless he was considerably well known for his musical activities, and even dubbed 'the Handell [sic] of Maine' by a local newspaper. Most of his works survive in The Harmony of Maine, a collection Belcher published himself in Boston in 1794.

Life

Belcher was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts. In the early 1770s he moved to Boston to embark on a merchant's career, but returned to Stoughton just a few years later. He was a private during the Revolutionary War, part of the company of Stoughton Minutemen that marched to Cambridge on April 19, 1775 immediately after receiving the alarm from Lexington. Later, he was promoted to the rank of Captain under Washington. Around 1778 he bought a farm in Canton, Massachusetts and established a tavern there; he was known then as "Uncle Ply." It was at his tavern that some of the early singing meetings in the area were held, but contrary to some written accounts, Belcher never joined the Stoughton Musical Society. Also, he was not a pupil at the Stoughton singingschool, where William Billings taught in 1774.

Apartment

An apartment (in American and Canadian English) or a flat (in British English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies only part of a building, correctly, on a single level without a stair. Such a building may be called an apartment building, apartment complex (in American English), apartment house (in American English), block of flats, tower block, high-rise or, occasionally mansion block (in British English), especially if it consists of many apartments for rent. In Scotland it is called a block of flats or, if it's a traditional sandstone building, a tenement, which has a pejorative connotation elsewhere. Apartments may be owned by an owner/occupier, by leasehold tenure or rented by tenants (two types of housing tenure).

Terminology

The term apartment is favoured in North America (although flat is used in the case of a unit which is part of a house containing two or three units, typically one to a floor) and also is the preferred term in Ireland. In the UK, the term apartment is more usual in professional real estate and architectural circles where otherwise the term flat is commonly, but not exclusively, for an apartment without a stair (hence a 'flat' apartment). Technically multi-storey apartments are referred to as 'duplex' (or 'triplex') indicating the number of floors within the property. Usage generally follows the British in Singapore, Hong Kong and most Commonwealth nations.

Apartment House 1776

Apartment House 1776 is a 1976 composition by the American composer John Cage, composed for the United States Bicentennial and premiered by six orchestras across the country in 1976. The work was commissioned jointly by the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. In these performances, the work was performed together with Cage's 1975-76 orchestral work Renga.

Following Cage's Musicircus principle (featuring what he called a "multiplicity of centers"), the work calls for four solo vocalists, each representing a different religious tradition in the United States: Protestant, Sephardic, Native American, and African American. The singers, who represent the four religious traditions practiced at the U.S.'s founding in 1776, select authentic songs from their respective traditions and sing them without attempting to match them to those of the other singers.

The soloists for the original performances were Helen Schneyer (Protestant), Nico Castel (Sephardic), Swift Eagle (Native American – Apache and Santo Domingo Pueblo), and Jeanne Lee (African American). The original performances were conducted by Seiji Ozawa (Boston), Pierre Boulez (New York) and Zubin Mehta (Los Angeles) .