American Music Timeline - 1800s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New York Symphony Orchestra founded

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

Henry Lee Higginson establishes Boston Symphony Orchestra

Metropolitan Opera House opens in New York

Carnegie Hall opens in New York

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

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