It Wasn’t Easy Being a Founding Father of the American Symphony
George Frederick Bristow, born 200 years ago this month, struggled to find American champions of his music as orchestras favored European tradition.
Can a French horn be played with a fish in its bell? Or a trombone if filled with water? An experimental composer might tackle these questions in a piece about threats to ocean wildlife or rising sea levels, but, nearly two centuries ago, one young musician asked them for a less noble purpose: revenge.
That man was George Frederick Bristow, born 200 years ago this month. He was one of the country’s finest early composers, a musical jack-of-all-trades, a compassionate schoolteacher, a skilled fisherman and, yes, a prankster.
Bristow venerated the European classical tradition and wrote squarely within it. But, capturing a growing sense of cultural independence, he used tried-and-true genres like the symphony to tell American stories with musical sounds and imagery familiar to ordinary people.
Born in Brooklyn and aptly named after George Frideric Handel, Bristow began piano lessons with his father at age 5. He recounted that sweat poured down his father’s face while teaching him to read music, an anxiety that faded only when George received an encore at his debut recital four years later....
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