- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsBlogGift CardsMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music
Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is frequently considered the most significant American female composer in this century. Joining Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell as a key member of the 1920s musical avant-garde, she went on to study with modernist theorist and future husband Charles Seeger, writing her masterpiece, String Quartet 1931, not long after. But her legacy extends far beyond the cutting edge of modern music. Collaborating with poet Carl Sandburg on folk song arrangements in the twenties, and with the famous folk-song collectors John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s, she emerged as a central figure in the American folk music revival, issuing several important books of transcriptions and arrangements and pioneering the use of American folk songs in children's music education. Radicalized by the Depression, she spent much of the ensuing two decades working aggressively for social change with her husband and stepson, the folksinger Pete Seeger.
This engrossing new biography emphasizes the choices Crawford Seeger made in her roles as composer, activist, teacher, wife and mother. The first woman to win a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in music composition, Crawford Seeger nearly gave up writing music as the demands of family, politics, and the folk song movement intervened. It was only at the very end of her life, with cancer sapping her strength, that she returned to composing. Written with unique insight and compassion, this book offers the definitive treatment of a fascinating twentieth-century figure.
Book Details
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publish Date: Feb 10th, 2000
- Pages: 488
- Language: English
- Edition: Revised - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.04in - 6.12in - 1.16in - 1.51lb
- EAN: 9780195137927
- Categories: • Music• Women• History & Criticism - General
About the Author
Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University. She is co-editor of Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950 and author of American Women Composers Before 1870.
More books by Judith Tick
Praise for this book
"An exceptional new biography." --The Los Angeles Times"Fascinating and compelling." --American Quarterly"This long-awaited book is more than a biography of a neglected American musician. It is an eloquent and subtle portrait of music and culture in twentieth-century America. It is a beautifully written, exemplary work of scholarship and biography."--Leon Botstein, President, Bard College, and Editor of The Musical Quarterly"A wonderful book, which will be an inspiration to women musicians in many countries and languages. It will be of interest to many--not just women, and not just musicians or teachers or collectors of folk music."--Pete Seeger"This brilliant and lyrically written biography confronts the question that has long perplexed Ruth Crawford Seeger's admirers: why did such a gifted twentieth-century American composer produce so few works? Judith Tick...reconstructs a complex life--illuminating not only the creative artist but also the folksong scholar, teacher, wife, and mother."--Carol J. Oja, Director, Professor of Music, The College of William and Mary"....Judith Tick dances gracefully through copious sources....to reveal the independent, complex, innovative, and humane composer.... It is Tick, however, and her subject Ruth Crawford who shed light on the real possibilities for women who explored and created music for the masses as well as the musical elite."---National Women's Association Journal