Charles Hommann (1803-?1872) was a Philadelphia-born musician and composer during the years in which instrumental music, especially European classical music, became increasingly prominent in the United States. He was encouraged by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia (to which he was elected a professional member in 1825), an organization founded in 1820 to aid its aging musician members and dedicated to "the cultivation of skill and diffusion of taste in music." The organization's work permeated and enriched the city's culture, providing, through its orchestral and choral performing groups and an Academy of Music (1825-31), musical opportunities for its members and Philadelphians in general.

 Society programs indicate that orchestral performers in the Society's concerts, violinist and violist Charles Hommann among them, had first-hand knowledge of overtures and symphonies by prominent late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European composers, including Méhul, Romberg, Rossini, Beethoven, Auber, Paer, Vogel, Mozart, Haydn, Boiéldieu, and Weber. Hommann's surviving orchestral compositions--two overtures and a symphony--seem a fitting response to the musical milieu created by the Society and its members. Although little-remembered today, Hommann was a respected composer in his day. One of his overtures received a gold medal prize from the Philharmonic Society of Philadelphia in 1835. Hommann's two other surviving orchestral works suggest they predate the prize overture. None were ever published, leaving Hommann's work in relative obscurity.

 This edition of Hommann's three extant orchestral works, accompanied by an essay discussing his cultural and historical milieu, will bring renewed attention to the enterprising Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia and make accessible for study and performance the earliest-known products of an emerging tradition of notable orchestral works by American composers.