George Washington's "most endearing and least familiar weakness ... was for music, theater and dancing," reports Barrymore Laurence Scherer in the Wall Street Journal (7/1/10). Well, he did have a weakness for a friend's wife, Sally Fairfax, but that's not what this is about. Although not a musician himself, Washington loved taking in concerts in his travels, in some cases buying up blocks of high-priced tickets to do so. He liked hanging out with poets and musicians, like his friend Francis Hopkinson, too.

Hopkinson and others returned the love by composing music dedicated to Washington's "military and presidential accomplishments," including Hopkinson's "Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano." Shortly after the war was won, in 1781, Washington attended a concert celebrating the victory at the French Embassy in Philadelphia, featuring "The Temple of Minerva, America Independent," also written by Hopkinson. That must have been really cool at the time.

Washington hired a leading musician of the day to serve "as music master to his step-granddaughter, Nelly Custis," who played the harpsichord at Washington's Mount Vernon home. He offered all his step-children and grandchildren a musical education and kept a small library of music books, as well. By eyewitness accounts, "the chief" was a graceful and enthusiastic dancer, who especially dug the minuet. When he died, at 67, his passing inspired "another repertoire of dirges, elegies, odes and marches ... with musical offerings continuing to appear up and down the Eastern Seaboard throughout the winter of 1800."