1776-2026: as the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its independence in a particularly tense political climate, dozens of early music ensembles are returning to the sounds of their history. From the first American oratorio to the music heard in the Spanish missions of present-day Arizona, they explore in music the country’s origins, promises, and contradictions. 
By Kyle MacMillan
To mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, early American music is turning to its own past. From Philadelphia to Bloomington, from Lafayette’s balls to the first Spanish missions in Arizona, festivals and ensembles are breathing new life into an often-forgotten repertoire, ranging from seminal oratorios to revolutionary dances and community songs. It is a way of re-examining the history of the United States through its sounds, instruments, and cultural exchanges, at a time when the democratic ideals proclaimed in 1776 seem to be put to the test once again.
Philadelphia, the soundtrack of Independence
That Tempesta di Mare would do something to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America was all but a given. After all, the internationally known baroque orchestra is based in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed.
To that end, the ensemble is presenting Soundtrack of Independence, a May festival with nine concerts and outreach activities spread across 14 days. The event is supported in part by the Philadelphia Funder Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial, which was put together to fund offerings just like this. “What we’re trying to commemorate with this are the principles on which the country was founded,” Gwyn Roberts, Tempesta’s co-founder and co-director, “which we think are really worth celebrating. And 250 years is pretty impressive and important, so we wanted to do something in Philadelphia in collaboration with a group of other ensembles.”
Soundtrack is among the most ambitious and visible of the dozens of early-music offerings taking place from New York to Frisco, Texas, and Berkeley, Calif., to mark the country’s semiquincentennial.
Celebrating 1776: A Given?
Such a celebration would seem like a natural fit for early-music organizations whose identity is rooted in drawing on the past, but many have decided not to take part, choosing to stick with more expected fare like John Dowland or George Frideric Handel.
Suzanne Ryan-Melamed, president and chief executive officer of the Bloomington (Ind.) Early Music Festival, theorizes that because 1750 (the year of J.S. Bach’s death) is generally cited as the end of the baroque era, the timing is off. “To some groups, it is too late,” she said.
At the same time, Roberts said, much of the music of this time was dance music or military music that is outside the focus of some conventional early-music ensembles, but such out-of-the-box possibilities are exactly what excited her. “To put a focus on really what was going on in the second half of the 18th century in Philadelphia gives us a repertoire that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” she said.
America’s first oratorio
The centerpiece of Soundtrack is a May 14 presentation of America Independent, or The Temple of Minerva, America’s first oratorio. Following its premiere in March 1781, the second known performance (which was mistakenly described as a debut in at least one newspaper at the time) in nine months drew an extraordinary group of dignitaries, including the Minister of France and George and Martha Washington.
The libretto was written by harpsichordist and composer Francis Hopkinson, who was also a lawyer, author and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He set his words to pre-existing music by four composers—Handel, Thomas Arne, Henry Carey and Niccolo Jomelli. “It’s really fun,” Roberts said. “It’s got beautiful music and the libretto, as often these things are, is kind of hilarious.”
Will the American republic endure?
In the oratorio, the characters known as the Genius of France and Genius of America, essentially ministers for the two countries, consult with Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, and her high priest about the likelihood the republic will survive. “We had to apply for a grant for this [program] a few years ago,” Roberts said, “so we didn’t know how apt that was going to be, but, boy, does it turn out to be a reasonable concern.”
The work was performed by the Colonial Singers and Players for America’s bicentennial with a chamber ensemble, much as it was in the 18th century, but this revival will be the first version to feature an orchestra. She admits in her program notes that this approach is “not exactly a reenactment of the original but a celebratory expansion of it.”
Other Soundtrack offerings
Other events during Soundtrack of Independence include harpsichord recitals May 9 and 12 with John Walthausen performing selections from Hopkinson’s private music collection and Strike Up the Band!, a May 10 program of revolutionary-era military music performed by the Music of the Regiment, which specializes in such fare.
“We’ve got all different kinds of things, different ensembles, different groups contributing their own ideas and programming and lots of different locations around Philadelphia,” Roberts said.
A Midwestern take on the celebration
The 32-year-old Bloomington Early Music Festival adopts a different theme for each of its annual installments, and for 2026, one of its board members suggested the 250th anniversary. “We just kind of jumped on it,” said Ryan-Melamed. “This is exactly what we can do really well.”
The festival put out a call for proposals from early-music ensembles around Bloomington and beyond, seeking in particular programs that examined what was happening outside of the 13 original colonies.
“I’m extremely proud to be an American,” Ryan-Melamed said, “I’m extremely proud that this culture, given the right circumstances, allows people to grow, change and become things that many other cultures do not allow. And we are in a time right now where we need to hold onto those ideals and fight for them.”
Franklin Quartet honors its namesake
A May 26 anchor of the Bloomington festival, titled Early Music & Early America, is the Philadelphia-based Franklin Quartet performing the kind of intimate musical program that could have marked the 1785 homecoming of the group’s namesake, Benjamin Franklin.
Featured are works by composers like Luigi Boccherini, Francois-Joseph Gossec and Ignaz Pleyel that the American forefather knew during his time in Paris. The program will also be heard May 7 as part of Soundtrack of America.
Other Bloomington Festival offerings include a May 27 concert with Tonos performing a collection of music from a Spanish Jesuit mission in what would later become Arizona, and A Songbook from Across the Sea: The Sounds of French Louisiana, a May 27 program featuring the Alchymy Viols in music from a songbook given by France to a New Orleans convent in 1736.
In all, there will be five live performances May 26-30 as well three virtual performances, which the public can stream on-line or view at free public screenings during the festival in the 144-seat auditorium in the downtown branch of Bloomington’s Monroe County Public Library.
Honoring Lafayette with dance
At the beginning of this decade, Julia Bengtsson was asked by the American Friends of Lafayette to be on a committee to help organize a bicentennial commemoration of the French Revolutionary War general’s 13-month farewell tour of America in 1824-25.
The co-director of the New York Baroque Dance Company turned for help to Alan Jones, a Paris-based expert on the under-researched realm of 18th-century American dance history. Together, they assembled a program of reconstructed dances that were probably part of the many balls that took place during Lafayette celebrations.
The New York Baroque Dance Company first presented the offering in December 2024 in honor of the Lafayette bicentennial, and it will perform it in five cities across the United States as part of the semiquincentennial, including June 12 at the San Francisco Early Music Society’s annual Berkeley Festival and Exhibition.
A pioneering Black composer
At the center of the program are five well-documented cotillions that Francis Johnson, the first African American composer to have his music widely published, wrote for a Philadelphia ball in tribute to Lafayette. “It’s this fantastic story of this African American composer on the verge of this big breakthrough, and he took the world by storm in part because of Lafayette’s tour where so much of the music written was by Johnson,” Bengtsson said.
Johnson, who also played keyed bugle and violin, and his Philadelphia brass band toured to England in 1838 and played for Queen Victoria, earning him the gift of a silver bugle from the monarch.
In all, he wrote some 200 works, many of them cotillions and quadrilles, ballroom dances that were coming into fashion at the time. The performances by his band included him on bugle. “You can imagine that as part of a social dance band,” Bengtsson said. “It sounds extremely different than a minuet performed 50 years earlier.”
Reconstructing 18th-century dance
The sheet music for Johnson’s New Cotillions for the Lafayette ball is accompanied by descriptions of the dance steps, so that buyers could try them at home. It was just a matter of Bengtsson and her colleagues deciphering the wording. “This choreography was written in shorthand, so it took us awhile to really figure out what this shorthand meant,” she said.
In all, there are 13 dances on the program, including a hornpipe, shawl dance and Spanish dance, almost all with music by Johnson. They were reconstructed by Jones at the Centre National de Danse in Paris with a grant from the French Ministry of Culture.
The performances in each city vary slightly, with some being formal dance concerts and others presented as balls. The program in Berkeley will feature four dancers and five members of the Music of the Regiment performing on the clarinet, cello, violin, fortepiano and serpent, a wooden, serpentine wind instrument with six tone holes and trombone-like mouthpiece.
The rest of the festival, which runs from May 28 to June 7, features a more traditional program, including a semi-staged production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas on June 3.
To go further…
- May 7-10 – Revolution! Early American Music from the Signing of the Declaration of Independence to the Civil War, Newberry Consort, Chicago and Milwaukee
The title makes clear the scope of this program, which will feature such early American instruments as the square piano, keyed bugle, fiddle and percussion, as well as a group of vocal specialists. The line-up spans a diverse range of repertoire from Moravian hymns to indigenous and military music and includes such composers as William Billings, Francis Johnson and Sarah Lancaster. Also featured is Newberry’s first-ever commission, a work for American period instruments and voices by composer and baritone Jonathan Woody, who has performed with the group several times. - May 29 – Close Encounters of the Colonial Kind, Austin Baroque Orchestra, Frisco, Texas
Music in the Chamber, a concert series organized by the City of Frisco, Texas, is marking the sesquicentennial with a series of offerings each focused on a different 50-year period during American history. This performance by six vocal and instrumental soloists from Austin Baroque zeroes in on the five decades after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the continuing musical influences of the four colonial powers that occupied portions of North America—England, Spain, France and the Netherlands. Featured will be works by composers like Willem Fesch, Ignacio Jerusalem, Mary Pownall and Manuel de Sumaya. - May 29 – The Early American Singing Tradition, Charlotte (N.C.) Bach Festival, Matthews, N.C.
This is something a little different. Not a concert but what is billed as a “free program of communal singing.” But much of the 18th-century musical line-up will likely be unknown to the vocal adventurers who take part. The festival’s website describes the event like this: “We’ll connect America’s early hymnody to Bach’s chorale tradition and have some fun exploring how both shaped worship, culture and community identity.” The rest of the festival, which runs May 28-June 7, consists of more standard fare like a semi-staged performance June 3 of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.
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