John Knowles Paine:
Beginning the Tradition

Aaron Copland. Leonard Bernstein.
Igor Stravinsky. John Knowles Paine.

These four were among twenty-five composers, musicians, and educators inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 1998. The names of most of the inductees for that year are familiar ones, but how many people could guess which category - composer, musician or educator - John Knowles Paine falls under?

Harvard students and alumni will almost certainly be familiar with Paine Hall, the concert hall located behind the Science Center, but do they know that it was named in honor of Harvard’s first University Organist and Choirmaster and the first Professor of Music in the United States?

Humble Beginnings

John Knowles Paine was born in Portland, Maine in 1839, the son of a music store owner. Music ran in the family: his father was the conductor of the town band, a position his father had held. Paine showed musical talent at an early age, and was encouraged to cultivate that talent in studies with a business partner of his father, Herman Kotzchmar. Kotzchmar was a German immigrant who came to the United States as an itinerant orchestral musician, but became the leading musician in Portland. Under his tutelage the young Paine studied organ, piano, harmony, and counterpoint.

It soon became clear, however, that to continue his musical education, Paine would need to leave Portland. In 1858, he set sail for Germany, and remained there for almost four years. He studied organ performance, counterpoint and composition with Karl August Haupt, and received instruction in singing from Gustav William Teschner. During his time in Germany, he played several organ recitals in Berlin which were praised in many music journals.

His training completed, he returned to the United States in 1861, where he quickly took up the post of organist at Boston’s prestigious West Church (now known as the Old West Church). Within six months, he was offered a position at Harvard University, after the death of Harvard’s musical instructor and organist, and before long was praised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as an excellent organist with a good future.

It wasn’t until 1875 that he became a professor of music at the University, and set about creating the curriculum in music studies which was to earn him widespread renown. He was Harvard’s first professor of music, and indeed was the first professor of music in the United States.

His curriculum, which excluded much of contemporary American music, concentrated on Bach and Palestrina. This curriculum was widely imitated, first at Yale and then throughout the country, and set the standard for what music was considered worthy of study and what music was not.

Not Just a Professor

Although Paine could be remembered simply as an important music educator, he was more than just America’s first professor of music. He was also a composer, and the first American to write a symphony. His second symphony was so well received, that a stalwart of Boston Brahmin reserve was seen standing on his chair during the ovation at the conclusion of the performance in Sanders Theatre, wildly opening and closing his umbrella. He wrote an anthem, Domine salvum fac, which was performed with choir and orchestra at the inaugurations of two Harvard presidents, composed the Mass in D, and also the overture and incidental music to Sophocles’s “Oedipus Tyrannus.”

His magnum opus was a three-act opera entitled Azara. This opera, though enthusiastically received when performed in concert versions, was never performed despite being part of the Metropolitan Opera season for 1905/06. The largely Italian company refused to learn the opera in English, and Paine died in 1906 without seeing it performed. Despite the score and parts being published, a fully staged performance has yet to be mounted.

Resurgence

Paine’s work has not faded from view. In the early 1970’s, the Mass in D was recorded by noted conductor Gunther Schuller, who in 1994 invited the Harvard University Choir to perform the work at the Musica Sacra Festival in Germany. Paine’s works continue to be performed as part of the Church’s Sunday services due to the efforts of Dr. Murray Forbes Somerville.

After beginning his tenure as sixth University Organist and Choirmaster, Dr. Somerville, was leafing through a folio of Paine’s original manuscripts when he came across the Double Fugue on ‘God Save the Queen.’ Born in England, Dr. Somerville could not resist the urge to learn the piece and borrowed the Complete Organ Works of John Knowles Paine from the music library. “The Double Fugue wasn’t in the published complete organ works,” remembers Dr. Somerville. “I thought, ‘hang on a second…’ ” In the end, five organ works which had remained hidden for 150 years were published.