George Frederick Root

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George Frederick Root (also: G. Friedrich Wurzel , born August 30, 1820 in Sheffield (Massachusetts) , † August 6, 1895 on Bailey Island (Maine) ) was an American composer and music teacher.

Root had piano lessons with George J. Webb and worked from the age of eighteen as a music teacher in Boston. In 1845 he went to New York, where he worked as an organist at the Church of the Strangers and as a music teacher at the Abbott Institute for Young Ladies . In 1850 he went on a study trip to Paris.

After his return he published songs from 1851 - sometimes under the pseudonym Wurzel. His first successful songs were The Hazel Dell (1853) and Rosalie, The Prairie Flower (1855). From 1853 he worked with New York songwriters such as Mary SB Dana ( Free As a Bird ), Frances Jane Crosby ( There's Music in the Air ) and Reverend David Nelson ( The Shining Shore ). With William Batchelder Bradbury he founded the New York Normal Institute to train music teachers.

In 1859 he moved to Chicago, where his younger brother Ebenezer Towner Root ran a music store. In the wake of the American Civil War , Root composed nearly thirty war songs, some of which - like Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! , The Vacant Chair , Just Before the Battle, Mother, and Battle Cry of Freedom became very popular.

The University of Chicago awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1875 for his services to music lessons and his compositions . In addition to numerous songs, Root also composed choral works and cantatas ( The Flower-Queen , 1852, The Haymakers 1857) and wrote a piano and organ school, manuals for harmony and music education and many articles for musical magazines. His son Frederic Woodman Root was also known as a composer.

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personal data
SURNAME Root, George Frederick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wurzel, G. Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheffield, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1895
Place of death Bailey Island (Maine)