Bach, Crüger, Buxtehude and others were among the elite liturgical composers who built the Protestant chorale form of religious song. The chorale forms that found their root in Germany quickly found their way into the churches of Europe, and eventually into the churches of the missionaries on foreign soil. In England, the hymns were quickly adopted, and a young generation of liturgical composers sprung up in the fertile time of the Reformation, and began writing gospel chorales in English for use in the reform church of England.

These hymns were the sort that accompanied composers and regular folk to the new world, in tattered or crisp hymnals, beloved by their owners.
In the 18th and 19th century in North America, there was a great revival of ‘reform’ music, due to the increasingly diverse and powerful Protestant sects emerging and expanding in the still-fledgling country. In this time period, the first singing schools emerged, first in New England, and then the south, and just like MTV is the rage now, so were singing schools and community hymn-sings back then.

In the new music-philic society, many composers emerged, most compiling hymns, many writing their own to complement their collections or repertoire. One of these composers was William Batchelder Bradbury, who around 1850 wrote the tune to the hymn now made famous by O Brother Where Art Thou: “Angel Band”. He was born in the United States in 1816, and studied with Lowell Mason, who wrote more than 1,600 re¬li¬gious works, is of¬ten called the ‘fa¬ther of Amer¬i¬can church music.’” Bradbury was the organist at the First Baptist Church in New York City for six years, until the age of 31, and also became involved with many children’s choirs and was responsible for bringing music into many of New York’s public schools.

What is interesting about Bradbury is that he, we can assume, in order to pursue the origin of his music, went with his entire family to Europe for two years, studying composition and teaching technique in England and Germany. When he returned, he devoted his life to compiling and composing hymns and songs for a total of 59 compilations of sacred and secular music.