Whitney Eugene Thayer (December 11, 1838,

Mendon, Massachusetts Mendon is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,228 at the 2020 census. Mendon is part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, an early center of the industrial revolution in the United ...

– June 27, 1889, Burlington, Vermont) was an American

organist An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists. In addition, an organist may accompany congregational h ...

and composer. Thayer gave his first concert just after the installation of the new organ in the

Boston Music Hall The Boston Music Hall was a concert hall located on Winter Street in Boston, Massachusetts, with an additional entrance on Hamilton Place. One of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the United States, it was built in 1852 and was the ...

in 1863. An early student of

John Knowles Paine John Knowles Paine (January 9, 1839 – April 25, 1906) was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those ...

,Bill F. Faucett
"George Whitefield Chadwick: The Life and Music of the Pride of New England"
Northeastern University Press, 2012. he advanced to studied organ and counterpoint in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

with Carl August Haupt (who also taught Paine). After returning from Berlin he worked in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and later in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

as an organist. He was also a touring virtuoso, organ teacher, and music writer. Apart from a festive cantata and a

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

, he composed numerous works for organ, art songs, and vocal quartets.

Notes and references

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* 1838 births 1889 deaths 19th-century American composers 19th-century classical composers 19th-century organists American classical organists American male organists American male classical composers People from Mendon, Massachusetts Pupils of John Knowles Paine American Romantic composers Classical musicians from Massachusetts 19th-century American male musicians Male classical organists {{US-keyboardist-stub