Windswept House-John Knowles Paine (January 9, 1839 – April 25, 1906), was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of other composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those responsible for the first significant body of concert music by composers from the United States. The other five were Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker. Paine grew up in a musical family in Maine. His grandfather, an instrument maker, built the first pipe organ in the state of Maine and his father and uncles were all music teachers. His father carried on the family musical instrument business. One uncle was an organist. Another was a composer. In the 1850s Paine took lessons in organ and composition from Hermann Kotzschmar, completing his first composition, a string quartet, in 1855 at the age of 16. After his first organ recital in 1857, he was appointed organist of Portlands Haydn Society, and gave a series of recitals with the object of funding a trip to Europe where he hoped to further his music education. On arrival in Europe Paine studied organ with Carl August Haupt and orchestration with Friedrich Wilhelm Wieprecht in Berlin. He also toured Europe giving organ recitals for three years, establishing a reputation as an organist that would precede his return to the United States. After returning to the US and settling in Boston in 1861, he was appointed Harvard’s first University organist and choirmaster. While acting in this role Paine offered free courses in music appreciation and music theory that would become the core curriculum for Harvards newly formed academic music department (the first such department in the United States) and his appointment as Americas first music professor. He would remain a member of the faculty of Harvard until 1905, just a year before his death. For more information, please visit Wikipedia.org, Love History? Please Share and do give our page a LIkE. Thank you. ;)
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 04:16:23 +0000