Aside from being a poet, musician, and composer, Francis Hopkinson has a unique place in music history as the composer of the earliest extant American secular composition: My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free (1759). A man of various interests, talents, inventions, occupations, and a student of James Bremner, his musical interests kept him in the studio, drawing room, and church. He began to practice the harpsichord at 17, occasionally concertized, organized compilations, and composed psalms, secular pieces, and an anthem. Some of his most well-known works are Seven Songs (1788), A Collection of Psalm Tunes (1763), The Psalms of David...for the Use of the Reformed Protestant and Dutch Church (1767), Ode in Memory of James Bremner (1780), and America Independent (or The Temple of Minerva) (1781). Even amateur singers are familiar with his work through their practice and performance of his tune Beneath a Weeping Willow's Shade. Politically prominent, he became a member of the Pennsylvania Bar in 1761, worked as a lawyer and judge, was diplomat to the Continental Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His musical inventions include the Bellarmonic, a keyboard for the glass harmonica, and an original technique of quilling the harpsichord. © Meredith Gailey, All Music Guide

Below are works by F.Hopkinson that every music lover should explore: