The American Composers Series, published by the University of Illinois Press since 2006, has chronicled the life and works of individual American composers, including familiar and less-familiar composers of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music. The short length (most volumes are under 150 pages), paired with comprehensive coverage of each subject, makes the books exceptionally useful for college courses. Among the diverse composers represented, only one (Dudley Buck, the topic of Lee Orr's excellent 2008 study) was active primarily in the nineteenth century. Katherine K. Preston's book on George Frederick Bristow (1825–1898), the thirteenth in the series, is thus an important expansion of the coverage and a welcome addition to the literature on American musical culture before 1900.

Preston's treatment of the composer goes well beyond the traditional life-and-works format of musical biographies in two important ways. First, the analytical discussions of works are not segregated from the biographical narrative in separate chapters but are integrated into the flow of the narrative. This approach, which has become increasingly common in recent years, assumes that the reader has an interest in both biography and musical analysis and also has the necessary musical background to understand both subjects, even as the discussion shifts back and forth within chapters. Second, Preston incorporates extensive background on the evolving culture and infrastructure of music in the United States during this era. It would not be a stretch to say that this book expands the ‘life-and-works’ format to ‘life, context and works’.

As the framework for a comprehensive overview of nineteenth-century musical culture in New York, one could hardly find a better subject than Bristow. Preston notes that his first public performance on keyboard took place when he was nine, and he was still actively engaged in professional music-making when he died on 13 December 1898. Along the way, the exceptionally busy musician managed to take part in many key events of American music history. He played in the violin section of the New York Philharmonic for decades and may have been one of the organization's founding members in 1842 (then age 16, he was already an experienced theatre violinist). He conducted the orchestra that played musical examples for William Henry Fry's famous lecture series in the winter of 1852–53, and he played in the orchestra tour organized by Louis-Antoine Jullien in 1853–54, during which he famously joined Fry in a war of letters against John Sullivan Dwight over the growing influence of German immigrants and the lack of American repertoire on New York Philharmonic concerts.Footnote ¹ He was actively engaged in the New York American-Music Association of 1855–57, the MTNA American Composers Concerts of the 1880s, and the Manuscript Society of New York in the 1890s, which premiered his fifth and final symphony in April 1898. An accomplished choral conductor, he led the New York Harmonic Society from 1851 to 1863, the New York Mendelssohn Union from 1867 to 1871, and the Harlem Mendelssohn Union from 1871 to 1873. Additionally, he worked as a church organist and piano teacher for much of his adult life. As Preston notes in her concluding paragraph, ‘Bristow was a musician whose professional life personifies the development of one type of musical culture in nineteenth-century New York. He was a man who, at one time or another, wore most of the hats of nineteenth-century urban musicians in both America and Western Europe and who was quite skilled at a remarkable number of those varied activities’ (p. 154).

To explore these myriad aspects of Bristow's professional life, Preston intersperses the chronological narrative with four interludes addressing his more important subsidiary activities:

Reading these four sections will call to mind many parallels to participants in today's ‘gig economy’. Bristow's ancillary activities often offered little in the way of job security or employment benefits, forcing him to be constantly vigilant for new opportunities and well-connected with those in positions of power. These connections, though, allow his biographer to draw relevant conclusions about the evolving musical life of New York during this seminal era, even if tracking down his activities is, in Preston's words, ‘needle-in-a-haystack work’ (p. 71). The contextual picture that she builds is of course primarily designed to elucidate Bristow's career, but the end-result is a sort of prosopography that sheds insight into an entire class of musicians whose interconnected activities made possible the explosive growth in art music culture in nineteenth-century New York. Bristow's long and fruitful career coincides with the period of New York's transformation from a provincial outpost of European music to a leading centre for cosmopolitan art music.

As we have seen, this study is surprisingly wide-ranging and devoted to much more than Bristow's compositions, even though it is the latest entry in a series of books on composers. Indeed, his works are not well known or frequently performed, even in the United States. As noted, Preston's discussion of Bristow's works is incorporated into the biographical narrative, with discussions of individual works ranging from a paragraph to several pages. Disappointingly, there is no comprehensive list of works, which would have made a useful addition to the scholarly apparatus of discography and bibliography. The composer's major works include five symphonies, several overtures, an opera, an oratorio, and numerous choral and solo piano works. Owing to the short length of the book and the long list of works, Preston has chosen not to engage in lengthy analyses, opting instead to devote the bulk of her commentary to critical reception.

This emphasis proves especially fruitful for this composer and era, as getting his works played by reputable organizations and reviewed fairly was the major challenge for Bristow. The previously mentioned contretemps between fellow composer Fry and critics Dwight and Richard Storrs Willis was emblematic of the challenges faced by American-born composers during the middle of the nineteenth century. Though the eminent French composer Louis Jullien generously programmed works by Fry and Bristow during his 1853–54 tour of the United States, both composers felt that their works were criticized unfairly by Willis, Dwight, and other American critics, touching off an extended war of letters in the New York and Boston press. Their objections and the Eurocentric orientation betrayed by the critics reveals much about the challenges facing American composers during this era.

As explored extensively in the writings of Julie Schnepel and Douglas Shadle, the bias against American composers was particularly pronounced in criticism of symphonies.Footnote ² American critics expected a combination of originality, independence, Americanness, and universality that was frankly unattainable and a ‘higher’ standard than critics in other countries held for their countrymen. As a consequence, mediocre symphonies by European Kleinmeister faced fewer obstacles in the United States than the best works by native-born composers. Preston's chronicle of Bristow's struggles to obtain public hearings for his symphonies confirms this bias. Bristow's ‘Jullien’ Symphony (composed c. 1853) did as well as any of his works, thanks to the advocacy of its namesake. The ‘Arcadian’ Symphony (1873), on the other hand, was targeted by some critics as being too programmatic, despite the recent success of Joachim Raff's programmatic symphonies. The ‘Niagara’ Symphony for orchestra and chorus (1898) was premiered by the Manuscript Society of New York, but Preston was unable to locate a single review of the performance, a disheartening coda to his illustrious career as an orchestral performer and composer.

Bristow's choral works, by contrast, were better received. He clearly had a knack for writing anthems and other sacred vocal works appropriate to congregational use, which found a ready audience in late nineteenth-century America. His larger choral works, both sacred and secular, were favourably judged by conductors, audiences, and critics. The oratorio Daniel, op. 42 (1866) achieved one of the composer's greatest critical successes when it was premiered in 1867. Preston notes, ‘Happily, the critical commentary about Daniel was completely devoid of the type of complaints concerning similarities to European works that had marred the reception of Bristow's earlier instrumental compositions, despite the marked similarities to Mendelssohn's Elijah’ (p. 92). It seems that there was a different standard at work for choral music, which was verified by positive reviews of his other major choral works: Pioneer, A Grand Cantata, op. 49 (1872) and Great Republic: Ode to the American Union, op. 47 (1873). The latter piece was passed over by Theodore Thomas and the music committee of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, but its overture enjoyed much success in subsequent performances.

The only work that I wish had been described in more detail in Preston's fine book is Bristow's opera Rip Van Winkle, op. 22, mounted in a lavish production by the Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company and performed 18 times in the fall of 1855. This significant milestone in American operatic history may have been Bristow's most important contribution to the developing culture of American music before the Civil War, but it receives just over two pages of commentary in the book. Preston notes that the critical and popular response were both positive, with few complaints about European influences, and summarizes its style in this way:

In a longer book, Preston would no doubt have illustrated these and other observations with musical examples and more extensive analysis.

With this study, Bristow joins a very short list of nineteenth-century American composers of art music who have merited book-length biographies. In addition to Buck, cited earlier, these include Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), John Knowles Paine (1839–1906), William Wallace Gilchrist (1846–1916), Arthur Foote (1853–1937), George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931), Horatio Parker (1863–1919), George Templeton Strong (1856–1948), Edward MacDowell (1860–1908), Henry Holden Huss (1862–1953) and Amy Beach (1867–1944). Of those, only MacDowell and Huss made appreciable contributions to the musical life of New York City, giving Bristow's story added significance to scholars of this era.

To summarize, this book provides an excellent overview of the life and works of one of the most active musicians in nineteenth-century New York. It will serve as an excellent resource for courses in American music and as a foundation for future scholarly research on the composer and his era. Perhaps most importantly, this book should serve as essential reading for scholars of nineteenth-century European music – I can think of no book that gives such a broad introduction to the musical culture of nineteenth-century America in a similarly compact and focused way.