American Music Timeline - 1800s

Updated August 5, 2020 | Infoplease Staff
American Music Timeline

Part II: The 1800s

by David Johnson
1814 1842 1861 1880 1891 1897 Next: 1900-1920

1814

Francis Scott Key writes poem The Defense of Fort McHenry, which appears in The Baltimore Patriot newspaper

1815

Key puts The Defense of Fort McHenry to music of popular British song, To Anacreon in Heaven, and publishes "The Star-Spangled Banner"

1842

Philharmonic Society of New York founded, nation's oldest symphony orchestra

Circa 1850

Col. Sandford C. Faulkner believed to write music and words to The Arkansas Traveler, song (and also a play) about a country fiddler, popular in Ohio River Valley

1851

Stephen Foster writes "Old Folks at Home" for a minstrel show

1861

Julia Ward Howe writes poem for Atlantic Monthly, "Battle Hymn of the Republic," based on hymn, "John Brown's Body"; William Steffe (probably) writes music to create popular Civil War song

1866

Musical play, The Black Crook, forerunner of musical comedy of 1920s

1878

New York Symphony Orchestra founded

1880

In Spring, by John Knowles Paine, performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first American symphony published in U.S.

1881

Henry Lee Higginson establishes Boston Symphony Orchestra

1883

Metropolitan Opera House opens in New York

1891

Carnegie Hall opens in New York

1897

John Philip Sousa composes march "Stars and Stripes Forever"; creates more than 100 popular marches, orchestral music

1897

Composers Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb establish, popularize ragtime, give birth to America's popular music industry, ending reliance on Europe





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