Ruth Crawford Seeger

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Ruth Crawford Seeger (born July 3, 1901 in East Liverpool , Ohio , † November 18, 1953 in Chevy Chase , Maryland ) was an American composer .

Life

Ruth Crawford first attended the School of Musical Art in Jacksonville (Florida) and from 1920 studied piano with Heniot Levy and Louise Robyn and composition with John Palmer and Adolf Weidig at the American Conservatory in Chicago (Illinois) . She finished her piano studies with the Scriabin student Djane Lavoie Herz , who brought her together with some leading " ultra-modernists ". This group of American composers strove for a completely new, experimental musical language and rejected the classical European tradition. Especially Henry Cowell and the mystical- theosophical circle around Dane Rudhyar influenced the young composer.

From 1925 to 1929 Crawford taught piano at Elmhurst College of Music in Chicago and settled in New York City in 1929 to continue her composition studies with the musicologist and composer Charles Seeger , Cowell's teacher. From 1930 to 1931 she was on a Guggenheim grant in Berlin , Munich , Vienna , Budapest and Paris and met the leading European composers. In 1931 she married her teacher Charles Seeger.

After 1933, her creative work came to a standstill. Together with her husband, she now devoted herself to the collection, adaptation and research of American folk songs and the upbringing of children. It was only shortly before her cancer death in 1953 that she turned back to composition. Her style remained modern; her mostly short works are atonal , dissonant and perfectly structured. Many of their innovations were only taken up again by later composers.

Crawford-Seeger is the stepmother of popular folk singer Pete Seeger . Her own four children (e.g. Peggy Seeger ) also devote themselves to folk music.

Works

  • 5 Preludes for piano (1924)
  • Sonata for violin and piano (1926)
  • Music for Small Orchestra (1926)
  • Suite No. 1 for five wind instruments and piano (1927)
  • 4 Preludes for piano (1928)
  • Suite No. 2 for four strings and piano (1929)
  • 5 songs after Carl Sandburg for voice and piano (1929)
  • Piano Study in Mixed Accents for piano (1930)
  • Diaphonic Suite No. 1 for oboe solo (1930)
  • Diaphonic Suite No. 2 for bassoon and violoncello (1930)
  • Diaphonic Suite No. 3 for 2 clarinets (1930)
  • Diaphonic Suite No. 4 for oboe and violoncello (1930)
  • String Quartet (1931)
  • 3 songs for alto, oboe, percussion, piano and orchestra ad. lib. (1930–32)
  • 2 Ricercari for voice and piano (1932)
  • Suite for wind quintet (1952)

literature

  • Mary Matilda Gaume: Ruth Crawford Seeger: Her Life and Works . Indiana University, Bloomington 1973.
  • Mary Matilda Gaume: Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music . In: Composers of North America . tape 3 . Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, New Jersey 1986, ISBN 0-8108-1917-1 .
  • Judith Tick: Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music . Oxford University Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-19-506509-3 .
  • Joseph Nathan Straus: The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, ISBN 0-521-41646-9 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Crawford Seeger, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH East Liverpool , Ohio, United States
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1953
Place of death Chevy Chase , Maryland, United States