William Harold Neidlinger (1863-1924) was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied with Dudley Buck and Carl Christian Müller. He was organist at St. Michael’s Church, conducted the Amphion Male Chorus, the Cecilia Women’s Chorus in Brooklyn, and the Treble Clef Club and Mannheim Glee Club in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1896, he went to London and studied with E. Dannreuther. He briefly lived in Paris working as a singing teacher before returning to America in 1901. For a number years, he was a important singing teacher in Chicago, Illinois. He turned his attention toward working with children with disabilities and established a school for children lacking motor skills, especially speech and vocal disabilities, in East Orange, New Jersey. He died in Orange, New Jersey. His compositional output includes operas, songs, hymns and part-songs. His most successful works were those for children, especially “Small Songs for Small Singers,” a standard work for kindergartens. His best known piece is the Christmas song “The Birthday of a King.”

All are mixed chorus unless noted; some contain divisi.