an American composer of the First New England School, and one of the primary figures in early American classical music. Read was influenced by the practices in European music in his later years, and later repudiated the compositions in the style that he exemplified and helped define. Three of the six works of his in the 1818 New Haven Collection were "corrected" to more closely conform to European standards before reprinting in that volume; his later manuscripts are works imitating the styles of European devotional music.
