William Henry Fry died in Saint Croix on this date in 1864.
Born in Philadelphia in 1813, Fry was pioneering figure in American music, the first native-born composer to write on a large scale. He composed orchestral works and the first opera by an American to be performed publicly during his lifetime (“Leonora,” in 1845). He was also an outspoken advocate of American music – that is to say, music composed by Americans – at a time when German imports ruled the roost. It would be decades before American music would gain a toehold in the concert halls, which makes Fry an even more remarkable figure.
He studied music with a former bandleader in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, who went on to become the head of Philadelphia’s Musical Fund Society. Fry himself would become the society’s secretary.
He was also a journalist, a writer on music, and the first music critic to write for a major American newspaper. He was a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and acted as music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.
Fry composed seven symphonies, all of them of a descriptive nature. My personal favorite is the “Niagara Symphony,” written for P.T. Barnum, conceived for enormous forces augmented by eleven timpani (because ten just won’t do).
Fry died of tuberculosis, “accelerated by exhaustion,” at the age of 51. Sure, he died in Saint Croix (a.k.a. Santa Cruz), but he lives on in this “Santa Claus Symphony” (1853), more fussily detailed in its program than anything by Richard Strauss. Forget Macy’s. There’s more of Moore in this jolly old elf than there is Coca-Cola.
NASTY SANTA: Illustration by Thomas Nast (c. 1872)
