George Frederick Bristow

George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), a pillar of the nineteenth-century New York musical community, was educated, lived, and worked in New York for his entire life. A skilled performer (piano, organ, violin, conducting), he was a decades-long member of the Philharmonic Societies of New York and Brooklyn, and conducted the Harmonic Society, Mendelssohn Union, numerous church choirs, and pickup choral and instrumental ensembles organized for special events. He taught music privately and in the public school system. Bristow’s professional activities were those of a highly skilled urban journeyman musician--typical of many who worked in America during the period. Bristow was a steadfast and outspoken supporter of American composers throughout his career. This started in 1854 with his participation--along with William Henry Fry and editor Richard Storrs Willis--in a months-long journalistic battle that centered on the Philharmonic Society’s lack of support for American composers, an activity that has dominated his historical reputation. But he was also a prolific composer: of five symphonies, two oratorios, an opera, many secular and sacred choral pieces, chamber music, songs, and works for piano and organ. As a quiet and self-effacing individual, Bristow was not a self-promoter. But many of his contemporaries regarded him as a skilled performer, a generous colleague, and the most important American classical composer during much of the mid-century period.