

Title: | GOLDEN HILL |
Composer (attributed to): | Amzi Chapin |
Composer (attributed to): | Ananias Davisson |
Composer (attributed to): | Lucius Chapin |
Meter: | 6.6.8.6 |
Incipit: | 13262 15651 65565 |
Key: | D Major |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
Hymn Tune Index No. 15646. Earliest source is Ananias Davisson, Kentucky Harmony, 2nd ed. (Harrisonburg: Ananias Davisson, 1817), credited to Davisson there, but in the 3rd ed. (1819) it was unattributed.
HTI notes the similarity between this tune and No. 4077b, WORCESTER, which traces to Andrew Law, Select Harmony (Cheshire, 1778), where it was credited to "Wood," although the resemblance is only in the first two phrases.
See also No. 14590, THIRTIETH PSALM, first printed in Robert Patterson, Patterson's Church Music (Cincinnati: Browne and Looker, 1813), and credited to "Chapin" in John Armstrong, The Pittsburgh Selection of Psalm Tunes (Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum, 1816).
Another variant is No. 11003, THE GENERAL DOOM, from Jeremiah Ingalls, The Christian Harmony (1805).
For further reading, see James W. Scholten, "Frontier Singing Master and Folk Hymn Composer," Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 1975), pp. 109-119, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3345284; also David Warren Steel & Richard H. Hulan, The Makers of the Sacred Harp (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2010), p. 181.
—Chris Fenner & David W. Music