Frederick Shepherd Converse
Frederick Shepherd Converse (born January 5, 1871 in Newton , Massachusetts , † June 8, 1940 in Westwood , Mass.) Was an American composer and professor.
Life
Converse was born the youngest of seven siblings and received her first piano lessons at the age of ten. He studied music first at Harvard University with John Knowles Paine , then from 1896 to 1898 with Joseph Rheinberger at the Academy of Music in Munich . From 1900 to 1902 he taught harmony at the New England Conservatory in Boston , from 1903 to 1907 composition at Harvard College. From 1908 to 1914 he was Vice President of the Boston Opera Company. During World War I, he served in the Massachusetts State Guard. In 1920 he returned to the New England Conservatory as a teacher of music theory, from 1931 he worked there as dean of the faculty until 1938 for health reasons that led him to resign. In 1908 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1921 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) and Florence Price (1888-1953) are among his best-known students .
plant
Although Converse was rooted in the late Romantic style of his European contemporaries, he increasingly dealt with specifically American topics in his works. Around 1905 he took up suggestions of French impressionism in harmony and orchestration. From the late 1920s he modernized his style further by incorporating bitonality , fourth harmonics and dissonances. In his symphonic suite American Sketches (1928) and other works from this period, he also made use of jazz rhythms and harmonies.
Converse wrote, among other things, 5 operas and 7 symphonies. In 1910, his 1905 opera The Pipe of Desire was the first work by an American to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York . Converse's best-known works today include the symphonic poem The Mystic Trumpeter (1904) based on a poem of the same name by Walt Whitman , the orchestral piece Flivver Ten Million ( The Ten Millionth Ford Car ) from 1927 and the American Sketches from 1928.
literature
- Robert J. Garofalo: Converse, Frederick Shepherd. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
Individual evidence
- ^ Members: Frederick S. Converse. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 23, 2019 .
- ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter C. (PDF; 1.3 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved February 23, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Converse, Frederick Shepherd |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American composer and university professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 5, 1871 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Newton , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 8, 1940 |
| Place of death | Westwood , Massachusetts |