One of Fuller's appendices to Woman in C19 is an excerpt from Haydn's Creation, and it makes me wonder what the performance would have been when she heard it (she mentions wonderful music). Just private piano playing and singing, or would it have possibly been staged in Boston?

BSO and other big American orchestras aren't really around until later/gilded age right? 1881 for BSO, so what predated that? I know music was important to the transcendentalists, but my assumption was largely private and maybe some church choirs

Is it possible by 1840 or so Boston had the musical forces to mount a large symphonic oratorio like Creation or would it have been severely paired down, maybe just organ and choir? Or would she just have seen published scores and heard snippets through private performance?

Or would she even just have read the libretto...?

Okay just found there was (is) a Haydn and Handel society that was staging oratorios in Boston starting in 1818!!!