William Moore

William Moore was an American tune-book compiler and composer associated with the early nineteenth-century shape-note tradition. Reliable personal information about him is limited, but hymnological sources place his life approximately from 1790 to 1850 and associate him with Wilson County, Tennessee. He contributed material to early American sacred-song collections and is best known for The Columbian Harmony, a four-shape tune book published in Cincinnati in 1825.

The Columbian Harmony drew on the developing repertory of Southern and frontier hymnody while also presenting tunes Moore claimed as his own. Hymnological commentary reports that he claimed authorship of eighteen tunes in the collection, including HOLY MANNA. That melody was printed with the revival hymn Brethren, We Have Met to Worship and later became one of the most durable tunes in American congregational song. Moore also contributed or arranged material that appeared in William Walker's Southern Harmony in 1835.

Modern authorities usually describe the attribution of HOLY MANNA to Moore as traditional or attributed rather than absolutely documented, a caution appropriate to a repertory shaped partly by oral transmission and repeated editorial borrowing. Whatever the precise origin of every melodic detail, Moore's Columbian Harmony was an important vehicle for the tune's early publication and circulation. HOLY MANNA has since been paired with many hymn texts and remains a characteristic example of early American shape-note hymnody.