Fly, Eagles, fly! Celebrate the Eagles’ first Super Bowl victory* with music about – well, eagles, today on The Classical Network.
Anthony Philip Heinrich, dubbed by one contemporary critic “The Beethoven of America,” was the first full-time American composer to write on a large scale. Incredibly, he didn’t embark on the career that would ensure his lasting notoriety until the age of 36.
Heinrich was born in Bohemia in 1781. When his uncle’s fortune was wiped out during the Napoleonic Wars, young Heinrich turned to the violin. He immigrated to America and settled for a time in Philadelphia. There, he learned of a job in Pittsburgh. He embarked in high spirits, traveling the 300 miles mostly on foot, but when he arrived he found the job had already been filled. Disconsolate, he wandered southwest into the wilderness of Kentucky.
At the end of a 700 mile journey, Heinrich awoke from a raging fever to find himself in a log cabin. He set about reinventing himself as a composer, writing music for impractically large forces in an idiom that would have seemed advanced at the time, full of chromaticism and jangling harmonies. He also somehow managed to pull together enough musicians to perform Beethoven’s First Symphony – only its second performance in the United States.
Later, Heinrich would become a founding member of the New York Philharmonic Society, perform some of his own music before President Tyler, and make several extended trips to Europe. Still, he was not to escape poverty, and he died in neglect in New York City in 1861.
Hardly surprising for a personal friend of John James Audubon, a number of Heinrich’s works deal with ornithological themes. The most ambitious of these must be “The Ornithological Combat of Kings, or the Condor of the Andes and the Eagle of the Cordilleras” (1847). While it might not be the most polished or compelling work of art, it is the one I think best reflects the scrappy can-do spirit of long-suffering Philadelphia Eagles fans.
Hear it this afternoon, one of several pieces inspired by eagles – in honor of the Eagles. America’s got talons, between 4 and 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
*Just to clarify, the Eagles previously won the NFL championship in 1948, 1949, and 1960 – the first “Super Bowl” did not take place until 1967 – so please don’t tear down my goal post!
