John Knowles Paine's Symphony No. 1 is a milestone in the development of American music. It was not the first symphony written by an American (George Frederick Bristow, for many years a violinist in the New York Philharmonic, had already written seve…
The premieres of John Knowles Paine's two symphonies-the First in 1876, the Second in 1880-may be said to mark the effective beginning of the American symphonic tradition. American composer George W. Chadwick, who had been a young man in Boston in th…