The history of music in nineteenth-century America, and the place of music within American culture of the period, is an area of scholarly inquiry that recently has received increased attention. It is also, as the varied articles collected in this issue illustrate, a complex topic and an area ripe for much additional research. The four articles deal with different aspects of nineteenth-century American music history and culture; in each, however, there are also areas of overlap and intersection. All four authors use as a starting point issues that have already been the subject of some scholarly attention, and examine these topics either more thoroughly or from a new theoretical or contextual point of view. The resulting aggregate should help readers to understand better a complicated and under-explored world, for all four articles highlight the complexity of musical life in America and explore some of the many ways that cultural life in the United States reflected and resonated with that of Europe. All four authors, furthermore, either hint at or explicitly mention areas that are ripe for further research.

On 7 June 1845, the New York Herald published a letter by an ‘occasional correspondent’ from Philadelphia concerning William Henry Fry's first grand opera, Leonora, which premiered three days before at the Chestnut Street Theatre. The letter contained the following remark:

All were delighted with the music, it was so much like an old acquaintance in a new coat; indeed some of ‘the cognoscenti’ said that it was a warm ‘hash’ of Bellini, with a cold shoulder of ‘Rossini,’ and a handful of ‘Auber’ salt – whilst others congratulated Mr. Fry upon his opera being so much like Norma ….

From the standpoint of the twenty-first century, the breadth of John Philip Sousa's career seems remarkable and unprecedented. His marches, of course, continue to dominate concert band programmes around the world. But Sousa was also a notably profitable composer of dances, songs and descriptive works that were once performed not only by bands, but also by orchestras, soloists and parlour musicians. His successful run as a theatre violinist, operetta composer, novelist and commentator made the Sousa name omnipresent in late nineteenth-century American cultural life. Given his considerable breadth and remarkable fame, it is hardly surprising that Sousa's name is found in seven of the 20 chapters that comprise the recent Cambridge History of American Music (second only to Charles Ives).

In August of 1846, Margaret Fuller – one of the most influential feminist intellectuals in American history – sailed from New York City to Europe prepared to continue her work as the lead columnist for the New-York Tribune. As it was planned by Fuller and Horace Greeley – the Tribune's editor – while abroad, Fuller would work as an international correspondent and send to the Tribune letters of her travels that recorded her thoughts about Europe, which she did from late 1846 until late 1849, with her final piece appearing in the 6 January 1850 edition of the paper. In ‘Letter No. XI’ (1847) of Fuller's more than 30 European dispatches to the Tribune, she recounted for her readers several of the operas that she attended while in Paris. After first reviewing Robert le Diable, Guillaume Tell, L'Elisire d'Amore and Semiramide in this 31 March letter, Fuller turned her attention to a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Fuller assessed Don Giovanni differently from the other operas in her letter. Rather than highlight the merits of the singers or staging, she prefaced her review with an account of her decision to take ether in an attempt to alleviate the pain she had been suffering as a result of toothache. In some depth, Fuller described the pleasurable sensations that she had experienced because of the ether. As she noted, however, the treatment had not stopped her discomfort. This troubled her on more than one level. For one, she was in acute pain; but Fuller was also worried that her suffering might make it difficult for her to sit through the entirety of Don Giovanni. Fuller had long wanted to attend this opera, so despite her concern she went. Her choice to go would delight her, for as Fuller wrote in her letter, once Don Giovanni began, ‘the music soothed the nerves’ of her toothache ‘at once’. But even more wonderful than this, she explained, was that, after hearing Mozart's music, the pain from her toothache ‘left [her] from that time’ on.

In the spring of 1856, the critic Émile Girac published a review of George Frederick Bristow's Symphony No. 2, the Jullien Symphony, in The Albion. What he wrote is revealing; it reads in part:

But do you know how much is expressed by those two little words the Jullien Symphony? They mean simply that Jullien did more for Concert music in three months, than the Philharmonic Society has accomplished since Mr. U.C. Hill created it and brought it before the world. [Jullien] gave us Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, as we have never heard them interpreted in New York. He taught us the art of shades and effects in music …. He [also] revealed to us the powers of Bristow, Fry, and Eisfeld, and did far more for their reputation than was ever done by the Society, which owed so much at least to the first and last of these noble and courageous musicians. … [T]his is the true meaning of Bristow's symphony.