Herrman S. Saroni (February 1824 in Bernburg, Kingdom of Prussia – August 29, 1900 in Marietta, Ohio) was an American composer, author, and publisher.

Biography
Saroni was born and educated in Germany, and referred to himself as a student of Mendelssohn. However, in a biography published during his lifetime, he was said to have studied under Friedrich Schneider.

In 1844 he applied for naturalization in New York city, where he later edited Saroni's Musical Times between 1849 and 1851. He organized a successful series of chamber music recitals during those years, featuring performers such as Theodore Eisfeld, Julia Northall, and Otto Dresel. Through critical writing and translating, he helped to spread German pedagogical approaches to American music education and appreciation.  Despite the resulting "vogue of Mendelssohn in America", Saroni's influence remained obscure and only vaguely identifiable in its development for many years.

After 1851 he moved to Georgia, where he founded the Columbus Symphony Orchestra (1855). He later lived in Alabama, but eventually settled in Marietta, Ohio, where he taught piano at Marietta College.  He died there in 1900.  His wife died the following year, on September 16, 1901.  Her obituary mentions four granddaughters: three in Marietta (Mrs. W. B. Gaitree, Miss Small, and Miss Kittie Small) and a fourth in Knoxville, Tennessee.

A “Brief Account of His Life and Work” in the August 30, 1900, Marietta Daily Leader, mentioned that he “made and lost several large fortunes” in America, “but in his later years he was in comfortable circumstances.”  “Those who knew him best, knew him as a kind-hearted, well-educated and refined man.”

Music
Saroni composed parlor songs in English. These songs "demonstrate a shift away from bel canto traditions towards a lied-influenced style in this genre."

He also composed light piano pieces, two operettas, The Twin Sisters (1860) and Lily-Bell, the Culprit Fay (1868), and a Centennial Ode (1888).

Inventions
Saroni is well known for his music. The Library of Congress holds many of his works. Grace D. Yerbury ascribes an American school of music to him in her 1971 book America in Song: from Early Times to About 1850 and David F. Urrows credits him with writing the first operetta in America in his 2008 article “Herrman S. Saroni and the first American Operetta” in the Bulletin of the Society of American Music. However, Saroni’s many inventions went virtually unnoticed until Daniel A. Bellware detailed them in the 2018 article “The Musical and Mechanical Genius of Herrman S. Saroni” in Muscogiana, the most complete biography of the musician/inventor to date.

Many of Saroni’s inventions were related to the use of “petroleum vapors” or what is commonly called gasoline in place of heavier and more expensive coal. Starting just after the American Civil War, Saroni began dabbling in uses for that fuel. He went into business selling petroleum vapor stoves in the Augusta, Georgia in 1866. He converted a coal-powered steamboat to gasoline power and demonstrated it on the Ohio River between Louisville and Cincinnati in 1867. Saroni lit the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota with petroleum vapor lights in 1878 and ran the first automobile through the streets of that city in 1879. He obtained at least seventeen patents between 1866 and 1892 in the United States and Canada. Most of the patents involved uses for gasoline but a few were musical.

Writings
"The Power of Music," Union Magazine of Literature and Art, July 1848
Saroni's Musical Times, editor, 1849-1851
The Musical Vade Mecum, 1852
English translation of Theory and Practice of Musical Composition by Adolph Berhard Marx (1852)

Music

Larger works
Centennial Ode (1888)
Lily-Bell, the Culprit Fay, operetta (John Church Co.), 1868
The Twin Sisters, operetta (Oliver Ditson), 1860

Piano music
The Atlantic: Grande Valse Brilliante (Firth, Hall & Pond), 1847
Autumn: Grand Waltz(Firth, Hall & Pond), 1847
La Belle Georgianne: Grand Waltz (Horace Waters), 1855
Bohemian Grand March (John F. Nunns), c. 1845
Comorn Grand March (Samuel C. Jollie), 1850
The Ivy Green Waltz (Firth, Hall & Pond), 1844
La Vivandiere: Grand Valse (Stayman & Bros.), 1851 
Mount's Quick Step: as performed by the New York brass band (Millet's Music Saloon), 1844
North Carolina Grand March (William Venderbeek), 1846
Twilight Waltz (F. W. Ratcliffe), 1851
Un Souvenir, for the Piano. Op. 185 (Oliver Ditson), 1899
Summer Blossom Polka (G. W. Brainard & Co.), 1851 
Vive la Republique (arr. of La Marseillaise) (William Hall), 1848
The Wild Brier Polka (G.W. Brainard), 1851

Vocal music
The Awakening of Italy (Italian text by G.F. Secchi di Casali) (William Hall), 1848
Bingen on the Rhine (G. P. Reed), 1847
Full Many Years Ago (text by Rev. Sidney Dyer) (G. W. Brainard & Co.), 1851
The Gipsy in the North (Eugene Liés), (Firth, Hall, & Pond), 1846
The Heart's Despair, 1848
I Wandered in the Woodlands (William Hall), 1849
Jingle, Jingle, Clear the Way (1844)
Let Me Perish in the Early Spring (1845)
Memory of the Past (J. L. Cummings), 1847
Music From Afar (vocal duet) (Firth, Hall, & Pond), 1846
My Cynosure (John F. Nunns), 1845
O'er the Wildly Heaving Sea (Firth Hall & Pond), 1845
Oh! my Heart is Weary Waiting (Summer Longings) (Edward L. Walker), 1849
Our Childhood's Home (text by Henry John Sharpe) (William Hall), 1848
The Pequote Brave (1844)
Slumber, Infant! Slumber (Duet for two sopranos) (John F. Nunns), 1845
Speed Away: a song founded on a beautiful Indian superstition (Firth, Hall & Pond), 1847
The Saw Mill (Die Säge Mühle) (William Hall), 1848
They Tell Me Thou art Gay Once More! (P. K. Weizel), 1848
Thou'rt Weeping Still (Peters, Webb & Co.), 1851
Winter Flowers (1850)

Footnotes

References

External links
 

1824 births
1900 deaths
American male songwriters
American male composers
19th-century American musicians
19th-century American male musicians
Prussian emigrants to the United States
Naturalized citizens of the United States
People from Bernburg
Marietta College faculty