National Council on Public History

This virtual walking tour of downtown Boston, Massachusetts, leads visitors down the streets on which nineteenth-century music publisher Arthur P. Schmidt published the first repertory of serious art music in the United States. Schmidt was the first in history to publish a symphony composed by an American—John Knowles Paine’s Second Symphony of 1880—and one of the first to publish a symphony composed by a woman—Amy Beach’s “Gaelic” Symphony of 1897. The tour traces Schmidt’s career not only geographically but historically, presenting archival images and examples of sheet music in the digital exhibits that accompany each stop on the tour.