Splendidly Played: Origins of American Pop Culture

1842 --- Foundation of the New York Philharmonic, the oldest of the "Big 5" American orchestras.

Founder: violinist Urelli Corelli Hill (b. 1802, New York City)

Urelli Cordelli Hill. Opening conductor of the first performance of the N.Y. Philharmonic on Dec. 7, 1842. (Wikipedia)

Hill's father was a musician and composer in Vermont, and his grandfather had been a fifer in the Revolutionary War. 

In 1835, at age 32, Hill traveled to Europe and spent several years there taking lessons and visiting the finest concert venues on the continent and Britain. 

The Elbe basin in Europe. The river drains the mountain-rimmed region of Bohemia and flows northwest through eastern and northern Germany to the North Sea. Cities along the river include Dresden, Magdeburg, and Hamburg (its principal port). Cities on its tributaries include Prague,  Leipzig, Zwickau, Potsdam and Berlin.

Beethoven (1770-1827), age approx. 48 in 1818, by August Klöber. (source)

At the time Hill went to Europe, the Romantic era of music was at its height. Beethoven had died just eight years earlier, and was still in living memory of the people Hill met.

At a festival on the banks of the Elbe, Hill was transfixed by a performance of Beethoven's music. But like a true Romantic, his ecstasy was bittersweet. In this case it was tempered by a despair that a hundred years would need to  pass before one could hear anything like it back in America.

(N.Y. Times, 2002)
In fact it was scarcely a decade. After Hill returned home and formed his Philharmonic Society, Beethoven led off the orchestra's inaugural concert at the Apollo Rooms on lower Broadway on Dec. 7, 1842. George Templeton Strong, the music connoisseur and diarist, pronounced the ensemble's debut ''glorious'' and the Beethoven (the Fifth Symphony) ''splendidly played.'' 

Opening bars of Symphony No. 5 in C minor of Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 67. Composed between 1804-1808 while Beethoven was in Vienna. It was first performed on Dec. 22, 1808 by Theater an der Wien. (listen)

George Templeton Strong (b. 1820), noted diarist and audience member at the American premiere of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in 1842.

(N.Y.Times, 1992)

"After the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, Mr. Hill yielded that baton to Henry C. Hill, who led opera arias and duets by Weber, Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini and overtures by Weber and Kalliwoda. There was even some chamber music, a quintet by Hummel."

Hill continued to conduct the Philharmonic several more years then left New York for Ohio in the late 1840s. After several years, he returned to the Philharmonic as a violinist and board member.

(N.Y. Times, 2002)
"Hill played violin with the orchestra until he was over 70, then fell into poverty and depression. In 1875, living in Paterson, N.J., he wrote a farewell note to his second wife: Why should or how can a man exist and be powerless to earn means for his family?"

cf. New York: a documentary film by Ric Burns on George Templeton Strong, aired 1999 on PBS.

cf. A Clockwork Orange, 1971. Clip (violent images): "O bliss, bliss and heaven. It was gorgeous and gorgeosity made flesh." 

cf. "Bernstein explains Beethoven's Fifth", aired 1954 on CBS television.