Anthony Heinrich

Anthony Philip Heinrich (March 11, 1781 – May 3, 1861) was the first “full-time” American composer, and the most prominent before the American Civil War. He did not start composing until he was 36, after losing his business fortune in the Napoleonic Wars. For most of his career he was known as “Father Heinrich,” an emeritus figure of America’s small classical music community. He chaired the founding meeting of the New York Philharmonic Society in 1842. Life Born in modest circumstances in Schönbüchel (now Krásný Buk, part of Krásná Lípa), Bohemia, Heinrich was given into the care of a rich uncle, whose thriving business empire he inherited in 1800. In 1810 he became stranded in Boston by the loss of his entire fortune in the Napoleonic Wars and the ensuing economic crash. Penniless, he resolved to take up his long-time avocation and become a professional violinist and conductor. A formative experience for him was a 700-mile journey, on foot and by boat, into the wilderness of Pennsylvania and then along the Ohio River into Kentucky. The sights and sounds of the new American frontier inspired some of the most original, if not strange, program music of the nineteenth century. Settlin