The notice shown in figure 6.1, confirming that the keyed bugle virtuoso and bandleader Francis Johnson (1792–1844) was indeed alive, was published at a key point in his career. By October 1824 he had been performing at social and military events in Philadelphia for a decade and a half. Johnson was the city's most in-demand musician for parades and balls, and his band had grown from four musicians to ten. He had mentored his bandsmen so well that trumpeter James Hemmenway was now both a published composer and an assistant conductor who could lead the band in Johnson's absence— or when the band was double-booked and needed to perform in two places at the same time.

Johnson's own reputation had grown beyond Philadelphia, with his band performing summer seasons in the resort hotels of Saratoga Springs, New York. When the Marquis de Lafayette made his much-anticipated return to the United States, from July 1824 to September 1825, Johnson and his band were hired to play for the parades and balls that Philadelphia held in the French general's honor. Johnson himself also accompanied Lafayette from September 26 through about October 12, 1824, providing music as various militia groups escorted the general from Trenton to Philadelphia, and then onward to Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore. Despite never before composing for the theater, Johnson received a commission to write a new score for William Moncrieff's spectacular equestrian melodrama Cataract of the Ganges. His band played for the American premiere at Philadelphia's Olympic Theatre on October 10, 1824, just days before the publication of the notice in figure 6.1.

Although he enjoyed a certain degree of celebrity as one of the most successful bandleaders of his day, Francis Johnson has only recently begun to receive serious attention from scholars. The bulk of scholarly attention has focused primarily on his compositions from the 1830s and early 1840s, when his career was at its peak and when he was most frequently and most violently confronted with the racism endemic to the antebellum United States.