George Frederick Bristow

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George Frederick Bristow (1825 - 1898) was an American composer.

He advocated American classical music, rather than favoring European pieces. He was famously involved in a related controversy involving William Henry Fry and the New York Philharmonic Society.

Musical Career

Bristow was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 19, 1825, into a musical family. His father, William, was a well-respected conductor, pianist, and clarinetist, and he gave his son lessons in piano, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and violin. George joined the first violin section of the New York Philharmonic Society orchestra in 1843 at the age of seventeen, and remained there until 1879. The New York Philharmonic’s records indicate that he was concertmaster between 1850 and 1853. In the 1850s Bristow became conductor of two choral organizations, the New York Harmonic Society and the Mendelssohn Union (and later several church choirs). In 1854 he began his long career as a music educator in the public schools of New York. Throughout his life Bristow was a champion of American music and a nationalist in his choice of texts. The amount and quality of his choral music, although mostly ignored by Grove’s, makes Bristow a historically important choral composer.

Bristow’s Choral Music

Bristow’s compositional output is divided in three periods: his early years, during which most of the compositions are instrumental; the middle period beginning in 1852, during which he wrote more than forty works,

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