Synopsis

Today’s date marks an important anniversary in the history of the American symphony. It was on January 26, 1876, that John Knowles Paine’s Symphony No. 1 premiered in Boston. This was the first American symphony to be generally acknowledged both here and abroad as being on a par with the symphonies of the great European composers.

American musical life in the 19th century was heavily influenced by German models — and Paine’s Symphony No. 1 takes its key and much of its musical style from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Contemporary American composer and conductor Gunther Schuller once quipped that Paine’s Symphony No. 1 was “the best Beethoven symphony that Beethoven didn’t write himself.”

Even so, Paine’s 1876 Symphony is a landmark in American musical history, as was one of Paine’s earlier works — a grandiose Mass for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, which was premiered in Berlin in 1867 and successfully revived by Gunther Schuller in Boston in 1972.  

John Knowles Paine is remembered for other reasons as well: he was one of the founders of the American Guild of Organists, and he founded the music department at Harvard and became the mentor for a new generation of American composers.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Knowles Paine (1839-1906): Symphony No. 1; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, conductor New World 374