Composers Datebook

Today in 1825, a benefit concert was arranged in Boston for one of that city’s favorite musicians: Johann Christian Graupner—not a household name for music lovers today, but in the early 19th century, Graupner was an important musical link between the Old World and the New. Graupner was born near Hanover in 1767. The son of an oboist, young master Graupner mastered that instrument, too—and many others. After service in a German military band, he made his way to London, where in 1791 he was picked as the principal oboist for the first of Haydn’s symphonic concerts there. In 1797, Graupner’s itchy feet took him to Charleston, South Carolina, where he met and married a pretty English actress and opera singer. The couple moved to Boston and became active in the musical life there. Graupner opened a music store, importing from Europe both those newfangled fortepianos and the latest in sheet music. In 1810, he became the first president of Boston’s Philharmonic Society, and in 1815 helped organize that city’s Handel and Haydn Society—a performing organization that still exists today. For Graupner’s benefit concert on May 1, 1825, Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 was included on the program, marking that symphony’s first documented performance in America. It was presumably an “authentic” performance, too, since Graupner had most likely played it under the composer’s own direction back in London some three decades earlier.