| Ruth Crawford Seeger |
Article Index for Ruth |
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Information AboutRuth Crawford Seeger |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER | |
| 1901 births | |
| 1953 deaths | |
| 20th century classical composers | |
| modernist composers | |
| american composers | |
| women composers | |
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Ruth Crawford’s music education began at age 11 with piano lessons from her mother, and then included study with Madame Valborg Collett, who was a student of Agathe Grøndahl, and continued at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago with Heniot Levy and Louise Robyn. She learned composition from Adolf Weidig whose instruction accelerated her skill. But, it was her study under Djane Lavoie Herz ,a disciple of Skryabin, which was important for the social and intellectual world it opened for her. During this time she met Cowell, Rudhya and the leading Chicago poet Carl Sandburg whose writings she eventually set to music. Later that year she became the first woman to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship and went to Berlin. (Hisama 2001, p.3). Despite being in the heart of German modernism, she chose to study and compose alone. Yet, though letters, Seeger’s ideas were crucial to the development of her style and selections. She and Seeger married in 1932 after her second Guggenheim award and subsequent trip to Paris. Notably, at the ISCM Festival in Amsterdam (1933) her Three Songs for voice, oboe, percussion and strings was the only piece by an American performed that year. The family, including Mike Seeger , Peggy Seeger , Barbara, and stepson Pete Seeger , moved to Washington D.C. in 1936 after Charles’ appointment to the music division of the Resettlement Agency . While in Washington D.C. Crawford Seeger worked closely with John and Alan Lomax at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library Of Congress to preserve and teach American folk music. Her arrangements and interpretations of American Traditional folk songs are among the most respected including transcriptions for: American Folk Songs for Children, Animal Folksongs for Children (1950) and American Folk Songs for Christmas (1953) Our Singing Country and Folk Song USA by John and Alan Lomax. However she is most well known for Our Singing Country (1941.) She also composed Rissolty Rossolty, an ‘American Fantasia for Orchestra’ based on folk tunes, for the CBS radio series American School of the Air. She briefly returned to her modernist roots in early 1952 with ''Suite for Wind Quintet'', shortly before her death caused by cancer. Crawford began her career as an experimental composer, but the label only truly applies to her early works. Her work in traditional music preservation my have come from her interest in Eastern mysticism and the musical complexities of Native American music also, her conceptual palette was affected by American literary transcendentalism. As a composer, she may be thought of as the musical bridge between the modern and transcendental movements. COMPOSITIONS Early
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Other Works
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EXTERNAL LINKS
Grove Music Encyclopedia, J. Tick |
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