Michael Henry Cross (d. 1897), from 1848 active as organist and conductor in Philadelphia; with many others. The ballad-writer Stephen Collins Foster (d. 1864) displayed from 1842 a remarkable gift of naïve expression.
Of international reputation later were the pianist William Mason, who was highly trained in Germany and since 1855 has been conspicuous in New York as a Nestor among teachers; Benjamin Johnson Lang, since 1852 the eminent conductor and composer in Boston; and especially John Knowles Paine (d. 1906), from 1861 settled in Boston and from 1876 professor at Harvard University—a composer of rich capacity in all the greater forms.
Out of some scores of foreign musicians who came to the United States before 1860, important examples were from 1799 the Italian Filippo Traetta (d. 1854), a vocal teacher and composer in New York and Philadelphia; from 1838 in New Orleans Eugène Prosper Prévost (d. 1872), and in New York the organist Henry Christian Timm (d. 1892), and Hummel's pupil William Scharfenberg (d. 1895); from 1844 the Irishman Thomas Ryan (d. 1903), and from 1847 the Holsteiner Wulf Fries (d. 1902), who were long identified with the Mendelssohn Quintet Club of Boston, organized in 1849; from 1845 in New York the Leipsic pianist Hermann Adolf Wollenhaupt (d. 1865), and the fine violinist and great conductor Theodore Thomas (d. 1905), brought as a boy from Hanover and soon widely known as a masterly educator of public taste; from 1847 the strong English pianist Richard Hoffman; from 1848 the violinist Theodor Eisfeld (d. 1882), the opera-composer and manager Max Maretzek (d. 1897), the famous Boston conductor Carl Zerrahn (d. 1906), the pianist Otto Dresel (d. 1890), Hermann Kotzschmar, long prominent in Portland, and Hans Balatka (d. 1899), from 1851 conductor at Milwaukee and Chicago; from 1849 the Austrian pianist Frederic Brandeis (d. 1899); from 1850 the Saxon conductor Karl Bergmann (d. 1876), and the Russian Karl Klauser (d. 1905); from 1852 the singing-master Julius Eduard Meyer (d. 1899); from 1853 the violinists Eduard Mollenhauer and Joseph Mosenthal (d. 1896), both pupils of Spohr; from 1854 Carl Christian Müller; from 1856 the violinist Julius Eichberg (d. 1893), and the English organist Frederick Herbert Torrington, prominent in Canada; from 1857 the conductor Karl Anschütz (d. 1870) and the pianist Robert Goldbeck of New York, Chicago and St. Louis; and from 1859 the eminent pianist Sebastian Bach Mills (d. 1898). Many of these were composers of ability, especially Hoffman, Brandeis, Müller, Goldbeck and Mills. These are but samples of the influential current of musical immigration.
The only strong orchestra organized during this period was the New York Philharmonic, founded in 1842. Chamber music was systematically presented by several organizations from about 1850. Important entrances into the field of publishing were the Boston house of Ditson in 1832, and the New York house of Schirmer in 1848 (Kerksieg & Breusing).
Besides the attention to piano-making that has already been noted (see sec. 183), reference should be made to the violin-makers August and Georg Gemünder, pupils of Vuillaume, who came to America in 1846-7 and became known as among the best workmen in the world.
