Browne, Augusta (1820–1882)

American composer, organist and author who was one of the most prolific woman composers in the U.S. in the period before 1870. Born Augusta Garrett in Dublin, Ireland, in 1820; died in Washington, D.C., on January 11, 1882.

Brought to U.S. sometime in the late 1820s; served as organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn (1840s and 1850s); began to publish successful parlor songs and salon piano pieces (1840s); some of her most important pieces are The Chieftain's Halls (1844) and The Warlike Dead in Mexico (1848); was also a prominent musical journalist, arguing for women's right to a complete and equal musical education.

Augusta Browne was a confident composer who made a significant impact on the American musical scene in the years before and after the Civil War. Born in Ireland, she had no apparent problems in adapting herself to the musical environment of a vibrant, bustling New York City. Though her parlor songs and piano pieces appear to modern observers as hopelessly naive, in their own day they summed up personal romantic yearnings and national aspirations in times of war and peace. A strong-willed and opinionated individual, Browne resisted using American vernacular styles in her compositions, insisting that to rely on them would be "taste-corrupting." She was equally adamant on the subject of a woman's right to a full and complete musical education, a topic she expounded in the strongest possible terms in her article "A Woman on Women," which appeared in the Knickerbocker Monthly in 1863.

John Haag , Athens, Georgia