benifit concert: Members of the local music community, made up of native Americans and post-Revolution musical migrants from England and the Continent, sometimes participated in benefit concerts in which the musician who benefited took the financial risks and received all the profits (SONNECK description begins O. G. [T.] Sonneck. Early Concert-Life in America, (1731–1800). Leipzig, Germany, 1907. description ends , 123). Today’s concert, which featured pieces by the contemporary European composers Haydn, Sarti, and Martini (Schwartzendorf), also included “A New Overture” by Alexander Reinagle, the local musical impresario, a flute concerto by the local composer and organist William Brown, a “Concerto Violoncello” by Henry (Henri) Capron, whom GW later hired as a music teacher for Nelly Custis, and several pieces for violin and piano by “Mr. Juhan” (Pa. Packet, 29 May 1787; PHi: GW Household Accounts, 1793–97; see entry for 28 May 1795; and see COVEY description begins Cyclone Covey. “Of Music, and of American Singing.” In Seeds of Liberty: The Genesis of the American Mind, by Max Savelle, 490–552. New York, 1948. description ends , 517).

In the spring of 1783 James Juhan (Joan, Juan), who advertised himself as a teacher of harpsichord, violin, flute, “Tenor Fiddle,” violincello, and guitar, and also as a maker of harpsichords and “the great North American fortepianos,” arrived in Philadelphia, and on 6 Aug. presented “a grand Concert of music, Vocal and Instrumental” (Pa. Gaz., 25 June, 6 Aug. 1783; SONNECK description begins O. G. [T.] Sonneck. Early Concert-Life in America, (1731–1800). Leipzig, Germany, 1907. description ends , 123–24, 265). He may have been related to Alexander Juhan, Jr., who advertised himself as “Master of Music, lately arrived in this city,” who offered to teach “the Harpsichord and Violin” as well as singing, and who cosponsored a series of subscription concerts in 1786–87 in Philadelphia (Pa. Packet, 23 Dec. 1783; SONNECK description begins O. G. [T.] Sonneck. Early Concert-Life in America, (1731–1800). Leipzig, Germany, 1907. description ends , 80).