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This is a full biography of the talented American woman composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. She was a prominent member of the American avant-garde composers in the 1920s, then married Charles Seeger and became very involved in the American folk song movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which also included Seeger's son Peter and John Lomax. The book also discusses the dilemma of a creative woman who was caught in domestic life and thus could never fully realize her musical potential.

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 adaptations (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.

정보제공 :

Part I	Early Years: 1901-1920	
1	A Minister''s Daughter	3
2	An "American Woman Pianist"	15
Part II	Chicago: 1921-1929	
3	The "Wonder City"	27
4	New Ways of Knowing	44
5	"Trees of Sound and Color": Music, 1924-1929	65
6	"A Career or Life?"	85
Part III	New York: 1929-1930	
7	One West 68th Street	105
8	"The Curves in Our Friendship"	129
9	"In Europe One Can Work!"	141
10	"Dear Superwoman"	165
Part V	New York: 1932-1936	
11	Homecoming	179
12	"Music as a Weapon in the Class Struggle"	188
13	"A Thread Unwinding": Music, 1930-1932	201
14	"Composing Babies"	225
Part VI	Washington: 1936-1953	
15	Discovering "Unmusical" America	233
16	Lomax Country	247
17	"The Breath of the Singer": Transcriptions	268
18	American Folk Songs Go to School	280
19	Dio''s Circus	291
20	A Fork in the Road	310
21	"Keep the Song Going": Folk-Song Arrangements	330
22	"Wading in Grace"	341
Epilogue	353
Appendix A.	Analysis by Ruth Crawford Seeger of the Third and Fourth Movements of the String Quartet 1931	357
Appendix B.	Chronological Checklist of Works	361
Notes	372
Selected Bibliography	424
Discography	433
Index	437