Hans Gram (composer)

Hans Gram (1754-1804) was a Danish composer and musician who emigrated to the United States in the early 1780s. In Boston, Massachusetts, he served as organist of the Brattle Street Church, and as a music teacher. He lived in Charlestown; and in Boston on Belknap's Lane and Common Street. His music "was performed at the funeral of John Hancock." He died in Boston in 1804. In 1810 a "Hans Gram Musical Society" formed in Fryeburg, Maine.

Works

• Death Song of a Cherokee Indian. 1791
• (Compositions published in Massachusetts Magazine, ca.1791)
• Sacred Lines, for Thanksgiving Day
• Bind Kings with Chains, an anthem for Easter Sunday
• Hans Gram (1795), The Massachusetts compiler of theoretical and practical elements of sacred vocal music, together with a musical dictionary and a variety of psalm tunes, chorusses, &c., chiefly selected or adapted from modern European publications, Boston: Printed by Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews  (Compiled and edited by Hans Gram, Samuel Holyoke and Oliver Holden).
• Hymn to Sleep. (Gram translated lyrics from German and added his verses)

• "For singing schools & societies. Thomas and Andrews, Faust's statue, no.45 Newbury-street, Boston." Salem Gazette 11-18-1794
• Salem Gazette 11-18-1794
• The Massachusetts Compiler "was largely influential in establishing the custom of using seven syllables in the scale (do, re, me, fa, sol, la, si) in place of the four syllables (fa, sol, la, mi)." Robert G. McCutchan. "American Church Music Composers of the Early Nineteenth Century." Church History, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep., 1933)
• Boston Evening Gazette, reprinted in: Hallowell Gazette, 02-15-1815