Timeline of Music in The United States To 1819 - 1815

1815

• In Boston the Handel and Haydn Society is formed to "improve sacred music performance and promote the sacred works of eminent European masters". This marks "a new stage in Americans' recognition of music as an art". It remains an influential part of Bostonian culture.
• The keyed bugle is introduced to the United States. The keyed bugle led to the development of a whole new class of valved brass instruments called saxhorns after their French inventor, Antoine-Joseph Sax
• This is the earliest proffered date for the formation of the first minstrel troops.
• The song "Backside Albany", with a melody borrowed from the British folk song "Boyne Water", is the first blackface air.
• Thomas Hastings, a prolific publisher of church music and author, publishes his "first and most famous collection", Musica Sacra.