Notes on the program

Fortune has cast my lot in a country where it [music] is in a state of deplorable barbarism.

~ Thomas Jefferson, Williamsburg, Virginia, June 8, 1778

Although Jefferson spoke despairingly of music in early America, the outlook was not as bleak as he imagined. A year after this complaint was uttered, Pennsylvanian composer John Antes would write to Benjamin Franklin, requesting Franklin promote his string quartets. Over the next decade and a half, European composers Jean Gehot, William Selby, Rayner Taylor and John Christopher Moller would make the voyage to America to help establish the new “Immigrant School” in nascent America. And in 1803, “Crooked Shanks,” a composition by the formerly enslaved Occramer Marycoo, was published. Like many aspects of the new democracy, music was happening—it was just taking some time to become established and more broadly known. This program explores the concert instrumental music of early America composed during the period of 1767-1803—a period during which, perchance, Jefferson’s opinion on American music was altered. By 1818, forty years after he had despaired of its state, the elder statesman found the music of the still-young nation a “delightful recreation.”

Jean (Joseph) Gehot (1756-1793 or 1820)

Born in Brussels, Belgium, Gehot made his mark in the musical world as both a violinist and composer. Though much information about his personal life has been lost, Gehot left multiple treatises and compositions that give us insight into his musical life. By 1780 Gehot had emigrated from Belgium to London, where he published at least three treatises: A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Music (1784) The Art of Bowing the Violin (1790) and Complete Instructions for Every Musical Instrument (1790), and he may also have traveled to France and Germany. In 1791, Gehot performed in the critically acclaimed “Professional Concerts” that were organized by Johann Peter Salmon for Haydn’s first extended visit to London.

In 1792 Gehot moved again, this time to the young United States with fellow musician and future influential American composer James Hewitt (1770-1827). In New York, he presented a number of compositions, including his Overture in 12 movements, expressive of a voyage from England to America, a work with engagingly descriptive titles for each movement, such as “Going on board, and pleasure at recollecting the encouragement they hope to meet with in a land where merit is sure to gain reward” and “Universal Joy On Seeing Land.” Gehot also performed in Philadelphia as part of the City Concerts organized by the influential British composer and fellow immigrant to the United States, Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809).

Other compositions by Gehot span a range of chamber works, including twelve string trios, seventeen string quartets, twenty-four military pieces for wind instruments, and six duets for violin and cello. Despite his musical output, Gehot died in such obscurity that nothing is known about the later years of his life, only that he passed sometime between 1793 to 1820. Our program attempts to raise this prolific composer from obscurity, offering the trio in what is believed to be only the second recording in existence, and the Duetto movement in its recording premiere.

John Antes (1740-1811)

The family of John Antes, born in Fredrick Township near Philadelphia on March 24, 1740, joined the Moravian community near Bethlehm, Pennsylvania while he was still a child, setting the stage for a life rooted in the enjoyment of music. The Moravians were well known in the British Colonies for their exceptional musical standards; Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1756 that the Moravians in Bethlehem had “very fine music in the church” and that “flutes, oboes, French horns, and trumpets, accompanied the organ.”

Antes’s first mark on music history was as the earliest known American luthier. As a young man, he desired to become a missionary and received an assignment in Egypt. While awaiting his departure, he took up the craft of instrument building, making his first violin in 1759—at only 19 years of age—and his first viola and cello in 1763.

It was later, while in Egypt, that he expanded his craftsmanship to that of a composer. Of the several pieces of chamber music referenced in Antes’s correspondence during that time, only a set of three string trios for two violins and cello are currently extant. Notably, these works connect him directly to John Bland, the famed London music publisher of Mozart and Haydn, who published Antes’s trios sometime before 1795. In a concoction of poor Italian and English, the title page of the set reads:

Tre trii, per due violini and violoncello, Obligato. Dedicati a Sua Excellenza il Sigre G. J. De Heidenstam, Ambassatore de Sa Maj il Ri a Suede a Constantinapel, Compasti a Grand Cairo del Sigre Giovanni A-T-S Dillettante Americano Op. 3

Billing the composer as the “American dilettante,” the work is dedicated to the Swedish ambassador in Constantinople—a somewhat baffling approach to anonymity. Perhaps Antes (or Bland) was finding a humorous way to publish this music without denying Antes’s Moravian conviction to humility, though this semi-veiled riddle obscured his authorship for well over a century. Once he was firmly identified as the composer in 1941, this Opus 3 of John Antes confirmed his place as the first known American-born composer to write instrumental chamber music, giving him his important second mark, and a permanent place in music history.

William Selby (1738-1798)

Keyboardist, teacher, choirmaster, concert producer, and composer William Selby was born in England, one of three brothers who all became organists and composers. In London, Selby was the organist of All Hallows Bread Street and St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate churches, and of the Magdalen Hospital Chapel. His older brother John emigrated to Boston to take up the post of organist at King’s Chapel in 1771; in 1773, the younger Selby also left London for New England, becoming the organist at Trinity Church, Newport and in three years’ time, taking over John’s position at King’s Chapel.

It was at King’s that Selby organized the first colonial music festival, and he remains the first known organist in America to conduct the large works of Bach and Handel, perhaps laying the earliest foundations for the Handel & Haydn Society. William Selby is mentioned in the Continental Journal as trading in groceries and liquor, including “Port, Teneriffe, Malaga Wines, Tea, Brown and Loaf Sugar, logwood, English soap, etc.” for a brief period, but his primary output remained musical—of his reported choral anthems, organ concertos, sonatas, and a string quartet, all that remains are a collection of songs, hymns, and keyboard works.

Peter Pelham (Jr.) (1721-1805)

A London-born organist, harpsichordist, teacher, and composer, Peter Pelham, Jr. was a member of the notable, musical Pelham family, which relocated to Boston sometime around 1730. Known for having helped to establish one of the earliest public concerts in 1731, the family may also have participated in the very first known public concert in 1729. The young Pelham was apprenticed to Charles Theodore Pachelbel, the son of famed composer Johann Pachelbel, and in 1736, followed Pachelbel to Charleston, South Carolina where he continued his study and became a harpsichord teacher himself. Pelham returned to Boston in 1744 to serve as the first organist at Trinity Church, but by 1750, he again relocated, this time to Williamsburg, Virginia to take up a post at Bruton Parish.

In Williamsburg, Pelham continued the tradition his family had helped to start by conducting and giving public concerts—some of which were reportedly attended by the future president, Thomas Jefferson. Pelham also ran a small music store, was supervisor of the printing of currency from 1758 to 1775, and between 1770 and 1780, was superintendent of the Public Gaol (the contemporary British term for jail). He became blind late in life, in 1802, and died in Richmond, Virginia three years later.

Rayner (sometimes Raynor) Taylor (1747-1825)

Rayner Taylor was born in Soho, London in 1747 and baptized at St. Anne’s, the parish church of many French Huguenots. His family likely came to England as refugees after Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; thought to be a theatrical family, the Taylors may have found that Soho, the center of London’s theatrical world, suited their preferred trade. Sometime before his tenth birthday, the young Taylor was recruited to the Chapel Royal, which offered him excellent musical training and an introduction to the elite echelons of the music world. As a chorister, he would have participated in state ceremonies such as the funeral of George II in 1760 and the coronation of George III in 1761, as well as Handel’s funeral in 1759.

During his working years in London, Taylor frequently appeared in newspaper articles alongside more well-known composers. The May 16, 1791 edition of The Times, for example, announced two concerts—one by Taylor and another by Franz Josef Haydn, who was on his first of two extended stays in the British capital and at the height of his fame.

By the following summer, Taylor had set sail for the United States—perhaps driven by a sense of adventure, an interest in the ideals of the new nation, or an elopement with a certain soprano named Miss Huntley. His first mention in America is in a concert advertisement in Richmond, Virginia, followed that same year by his advertising himself as a teacher of the “piano forte, harpsichord, etc.” in the Baltimore area, where he and Miss Huntley had moved. Taylor took up the post of organist at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Annapolis, which required a weekly commute from Baltimore, but by 1793, just a year into his American adventure, Taylor moved again, to the acting capital of the United States, Philadelphia.

Taylor’s compositions of sonatas, popular arrangements, and songs catered well to the growing amateur musical marketplace, and his output also included larger-scale symphonic works for public presentation, including a violin concerto performed by George Gillingham and orchestra in 1796 and a work titled Storm Symphony, performed in 1809 at the University of Pennsylvania.

He also continued to be highly esteemed as a performer; the English born composer Alexander Reinagle (1755-1809) who had heard the great C.P.E. Bach perform, testified that Taylor’s skill was “to be equal to the skill and powers of [C.P.E] Bach himself.”

Taylor died in Philadelphia on August 17, 1825 at the age of 78. His tombstone was erected by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, signaling his destitution at the end of his life. Despite a lengthy career and the esteem of his musical contemporaries, Taylor has faded into obscurity and much of his output has been lost. His sonata for violin that appears on this program offers a lovely insight into what we surely are missing from this talented and once-successful composer and musician.

John Christopher Moller (1755-1803)

German musician John Christopher Moller worked across various spaces within the musical world: violinist, keyboardist, composer, concert manager, teacher, music store proprietor, and—to top it off—he could play the glass harmonica. In 1775, at the age of twenty, he moved to England and soon after composed the string quartet featured on this program, reminiscent of early Haydn quartets for its idiomatic dialogue between the instruments. A decade later, Moller emigrated from London to the newly formed United States. He became active in the New York City Concerts, working with both English composers Alexander Reinagle and James Hewitt, and continued to compose, keeping within a German style of composition instead of following the Italian-British style that was popular in his new country. Notably, Moller taught George Washington’s adopted granddaughter “Nelly” Custis and Thomas Jefferson’s daughter Maria, and in 1793, he co-founded America’s first dedicated music publishing house, “Moller & Capron.” At the age of forty-eight, Moller died in his American hometown, New York City.

Occramer Marycoo (1746-1826)

While the bulk of the composers on this program had the prerogative to voluntarily start a new life in the young United States, not every early American composer had that choice. Occramer Marycoo was most likely from modern day Ghana. Marycoo was forcibly transported to the American colonies, most likely in 1764 on the ship “Elizabeth” owned by the sea captain Caleb Gardner. Records from the Transatlantic Slave Database show that the ship left Cape Coast, a prison fort in Ghana, with 120 captives on board. Only 89 survived the crossing. Although most of the enslaved people were shipped to the Caribbean, Gardner kept Marycoo as his own property, renaming him Newport Gardner. Marycoo quickly became fluent in English and French, learned the fundamentals of music, and was said to be composing within four years of his arrival in America. The most prominent theory as to who taught Marycoo suggests it was the American composer Andrew Law (1749–1821). Numerous compositions by Marycoo are referenced in the historical record, but only one survives—Crooked Shanks, a spirited work that marks Marycoo’s place as the first published Black composer in the United States.

Marycoo would go on to gain freedom for himself and his family, open a singing school and become an influential leader in the community. He lived a staggeringly successful life that transcended unimaginable horrors, and he is also one of only a handful of formerly enslaved people known to have attempted a return to Africa, setting sail on his journey home in 1826. In the midst of a culture and young nation built on hereditary slavery, Marycoo forged his own path while keeping his own identity. That intensely independent spirit can be heard in Crooked Shanks by the man called Newport Gardner—Occramer Maryco.