John Knowles Paine

John Knowles Paine (1839-1906) was an American composer and organist, born in Portland, Maine, and the first professor of music at an American university, at Harvard. Trained in Germany, he wrote in the Romantic line that followed Beethoven, and the premiere of his First Symphony in 1876, followed by the Second, is often taken as the start of the American symphonic tradition. He studied with Hermann Kotzschmar in Portland and then in Berlin, where Karl August Haupt taught him organ. He joined Harvard as organist in the early 1860s and was made assistant professor of music in 1873.