The next important society founded was the Boston Handel and Haydn. It is still alive and has had great influence on musical life not only in its native city but throughout America. After the war of 1812, a musical jubilee was held in Boston. It was so successful, that a society was formed from the fifty members of the Park Street Church choir and others interested in “cultivating and improving a correct taste in the performance of sacred music.” This was the Handel and Haydn, which has lived up to its intention. The young society showed American spirit and asked Beethoven to write a work for it! The Colossus was pleased with this recognition from over the seas, and in one of his note books had written “The oratorio for Boston.” MUSIC IN BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S PHILADELPHIA Although New England was the cradle of music, Philadelphia was the art center in the second half of the 18th century, and went ahead of Boston in culture, because it was not held down by Puritan laws. In 1741 Benjamin Franklin published Dr. Watt’s hymns, and later invented an instrument called the harmonica,—not the little mouthorgan. Franklin’s instrument was a set of thirty-five circular glasses arranged on a central rod, tuned to play three octaves and enclosed in a case that looked like a spinet. There is one in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Try rubbing the edge of your tumbler with a moist finger and you will hear the sound this instrument made. In Goldsmith’s _Vicar of Wakefield_, we read that fashionable ladies “would talk of nothing but ... pictures, taste, Shakespeare and the _musical glasses_.” These had been invented by no less a person than Gluck! He played a concerto on twenty-six drinking glasses, accompanied with “the whole band,” and claimed he could play anything that could be performed on a violin or harpsichord! It was after hearing them in London, that Franklin improved upon them and made his harmonica. FRANCIS HOPKINSON, “FIRST AMERICAN POET-COMPOSER” On whom should fall the title of first American composer? William Billings was born before Francis Hopkinson (1757–1791), but in 1759, Hopkinson wrote a secular song, _My Days Have Been so Wondrous Free_, eleven years before Billings’ _New England Psalm Singer_ saw the light of day. Billings was the product of New England Psalmody, was an uncouth self-taught son of the people. Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia, was a college bred man, lawyer, poet, essayist, patriot, composer, harpsichord player, organist, and inventor. He was an intimate friend of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Joseph Bonaparte; a member of the Continental Congress, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.