First in this list is the name of the man who stands as the patriarch of American music, John Knowles Paine, the first professor of music at Harvard University and the pioneer in the field of symphonic composition. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1839, Paine received a thorough academic training in Germany (1858-1862). While still abroad he produced several ambitious works and he returned to America with a fame that eventually secured for him the chair of music at Harvard. Here he filled an important mission in guiding the steps of many of the younger composers who studied with him. In the meantime Paine's academic life by no means stifled his creative impulse and his list of works shows a steady output up to within a short time before his death in 1906. Important among Paine's larger works are the two symphonies, the first in C minor and the second ('Spring Symphony') in A major, the oratorio 'St. Peter,' two symphonic poems, 'The Tempest' and 'An Island Fantasy,' the music to Sophocles' 'Œdipus' for male voices and orchestra, and an opera, 'Azara.' Besides these there is a considerable list of chamber music and much in the smaller forms. Paine's music, while never approaching modernity in the present-day application of the word, in passing through several periods of development arrived at a point where the idiom employed could in a broad sense be termed modern. An anti-Wagnerite in the early days of his academic austerity, he lived to be drawn into the Wagner vortex and in some of his later works the Wagner influence asserts itself. Perhaps the most representative of Paine's works is one which belongs to an earlier period, the music to _Œdipus Tyrannus_ (1881). In this work Paine uses a classic-romantic medium far from rich in its color possibilities, with which, however, he obtains a notable variety of effect and a glowing warmth of style. In size of conception the summit of Paine's achievement is to be found in his opera _Azara_ (1901) composed to a libretto of his own after the old Breton legend 'Aucassin and Nicolette.' Containing much that is beautiful, and estimable in its workmanship, the opera fails in dramatic force and has never come to a stage production. A concert performance of it was given, however, in 1906 by the Cecilia Society of Boston under the direction of B. J. Lang.