Charles Wakefield Cadman

Charles Wakefield Cadman (born December 24, 1881 in Johnstown , Pennsylvania , † December 30, 1946 in Los Angeles ) was an American composer .

Cadman took piano lessons at the age of 13 and was soon composing simple pieces. He studied music in Pittsburgh and in 1908 became a music critic for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. A year earlier he had read Alice Fletcher's treatise on the songs and stories of the Indians, which steered his composition in new directions. On Fletcher's recommendation, he traveled to the Omaha Indians in Nebraska , whose melodies he recorded and transcribed. Cadman learned the instruments of the Indians and then idealized their music by inserting them into the harmonic tonal language of the 19th century .

His first resounding success as a composer came in 1909 with his songs From the Land of the Sky blue water and At dawning . His opera Shanewis was based on authentic Indian melodies. It was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918 and was the first opera to be given there in two consecutive programs.

Riding on his wave of success, Cadman toured North America and Europe in the 1920s , lecturing on Native American music. At the same time he wrote film music.

In the following decade, American public interest in Native American music dried up, and with it Cadman. Once wealthy and in demand from all sides, in the last decade of his life Cadman could no longer assert himself beyond California. He died in 1946 an impoverished and forgotten artist.

In 1932 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

literature

• Charles Wakefield Cadman: Four American Indian Songs, Opus 45. High Voice , Boosey & Hawkes, London 1909
• Charles Wakefield Cadman: Thunderbird; piano suite , book-on-demand, edition 1900
• George Murray, Charles Wakefield Cadman: Hollywood Extra - Operetta in Two Acts , published by CC Birchard & Company, Boston 1938

Individual evidence

1. ^ Charles W. Cadman. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 20, 2019 .