Fubar's 19th Century American Musical Memories MP3 page

Benjamin Carr (1768-1831)
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Yankee Doodle Arranged as a Rondo (1805)

The University of Pennsylvania hosts an excellent biographical sketch and portrait of Benjamin Carr.

He composed Yankee Doodle Arranged as a Rondo in 1805 as part of a piano suite, The Siege of Tripoli, celebrating Commodore Edward Preble's victory over the Tripolitan pirates in 1804. Piano "battle music", of which The Siege of Tripoli is the first known American example, was very popular at the time and remained so for much of the 19th century.

He composed well over 300 works in his lifetime, many of which survive. He died in Philadelphia in 1831. Members of the Philadelphia Musical Fund Society placed a monument honoring him at St. Peter's Episcopal Church:

Charitable, without ostentation,faithful and true in his friendships,with the intelligence of a manhe united the simplicity of a child.In testimony, of the high esteem in which hewas held, this monument is erectedby his friends and associates of theMusical Fund Society of Philadelphia.