Paine, John Knowles

1839 - John Knowles Paine, born on the 9th of January. He was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for his large-scale orchestral music.

1858 - 1861 - He completed his studies in Berlin.

1861 - After returning to the US and settling in Boston, he became a member of the faculty of Harvard, a post that he retained for many years.

1863 - He had won, largely on the merit of his many appearances as an organist and his countless public lectures on musical form and history, a position on the faculty of Harvard University.

1875 - The First Symphony, his language is clear and natural, owing much to the German classics he studied with Kotschmar and at the Hochschule in Berlin.

1880 - He began to stretch his tonal and expressive language, in an effort to remain more "current", his music suffered noticeably (as in the programmatic Second Symphony.

1906 - Died on the 25th of April in Cambridge, Massachusetts.