Collection Items

  • Biography
    Arthur Farwell (1872-1952) Biography. Although Arthur Farwell did not intend to pursue a professional career in music, he became one of America's most influential composers, with over 100 compositions to his name. He is best known for his works based on Native American themes; however, he also used cowboy tunes, African-American spirituals, and Spanish-Californian melodies as the basis of his compositions. Initially, his musical style reflected a...
  • Biography
    H. T. Burleigh (1866-1949) Biography. Harry Thacker Burleigh played a significant role in the development of American art song, having composed over two hundred works in the genre. He was the first African-American composer acclaimed for his concert songs as well as for his adaptations of African-American spirituals. In addition, Burleigh was an accomplished baritone, a meticulous editor, and a charter member of the American Society of Composers,...
  • Biography
    Will Marion Cook (1869-1944) Biography. Biography. Biography. One of the most important figures in pre-jazz African-American music, Will Marion Cook is also one of its better known personalities. As a composer, conductor, performer, teacher, and producer, he had his hand in nearly every aspect of the black music of his time and worked with nearly every other important musician in his fields. Uncompromising and difficult to work with,...
  • Biography
    R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) Biography. Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in Drummondsville, Ontario, Canada, on October 11, 1882. His ancestors were among the slaves who escaped to the North and settled in that slave-founded town. In 1901, Dett began studying piano with Oliver Willis Halstead in nearby Lockport. Three years later he was admitted to the Oberlin Conservatory, where he majored in piano and composition. In 1908, Dett...
  • Biography
    Amy Beach (1867-1944) Biography. Biography. Amy Marcy Cheney was born on September 5, 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire, to a prominent New England family. Her mother, Clara Imogene (Marcy) Cheney, was a talented amateur singer and pianist. Young Amy was a true prodigy who memorized forty songs at the age of one and taught herself to read at age three. She played four-part hymns and composed simple...
  • Biography
    Dudley Buck (1839-1909) Biography. Biography. Biography. Dudley Buck was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 19, 1839. His father discouraged Buck's early interest in music, preferring that his son enter the family's successful shipping business. At age sixteen, Buck took his first piano lessons, and his rapid progress convinced his father to allow the boy to pursue a musical career. In 1858, Dudley moved to Leipzig to...
  • Biography
    George W. Chadwick (1854-1931) Biography. Biography. Biography. George Whitefield Chadwick was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on November 13, 1854. His mother died shortly after his birth. His father remarried and George quickly learned to become self-reliant. As a youngster, he received brief musical instruction from his brother. Both his father and brother participated in the great 1869 Peace Jubilee in Boston, as members of the 10,000-member chorus. That...
  • Biography
    Mabel Daniels (1878-1971) Biography. Mabel Wheeler Daniels was born on November 27, 1878, into a musical family in Swampscott, Massachusetts, near Boston. Both her grandfathers were church musicians. Her parents sang in Boston's Handel and Haydn Society and her father also served that prominent musical institution as president. Mabel studied piano from an early age and began writing short pieces by age ten. Her musical interests continued...
  • Biography
    William W. Gilchrist (1846-1916) Biography. Biography. Biography. William Wallace Gilchrist was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1846. His family moved to Philadelphia in 1857, and Gilchrist's musical career centered on that city for the remainder of his life. His father's merchant business was ruined at the outbreak of the Civil War, and the young Gilchrist had to rely on his own resources from an early age.
  • Biography
    Margaret R. Lang (1867-1972) Biography. Margaret Ruthven Lang was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1867. Her mother, Frances Morse Burrage Lang, was an amateur singer. Her father, Benjamin Johnson Lang, was a prominent musician who conducted the Apollo Club and the Cecilia Society and served as organist for the Handel and Haydn Society. He was a friend of Richard Wagner, and the Lang home entertained prominent...
  • Biography
    Horatio W. Parker (1863-1919) Biography. Horatio William Parker was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, on September 15, 1863. He received his earliest musical training from his mother, Isabella Jennings Parker, who instructed him in piano, organ, and music theory. He went on to study with pianist John Orth, theorist Stephen Emery, and composer George Chadwick, with whom Parker maintained a lifelong friendship. Although he began composing small pieces during...
  • Biography
    Gena Branscombe (1881-1977) Biography. Gena Branscombe was born in Picton, Ontario, Canada in 1881. She entered the Chicago Musical College in 1897 to study piano with Rudolph Ganz and composition with Felix Borowski. At the school she won gold medals for her compositions in 1901 and 1902. Between 1903 and 1907, she taught piano in Chicago, leaving to join the faculty as head of the piano department...
  • Biography
    Arthur Foote (1853-1937) Biography. Arthur Foote was born in 1853 in Salem, Massachusetts, and grew up in Boston. After beginning his music education at age twelve, he studied harmony at the New England Conservatory before entering Harvard College in 1870. There he studied counterpoint and fugue with John Knowles Paine. He also led the Harvard Glee Club (1872-74), where he gained practical experience in working with voices....
  • Biography
    Harvey Bartlett Gaul (1881-1945) Biography. Harvey Bartlett Gaul was born in New York City on April 11, 1881. Best known as an organist and composer, he began his musical studies with George LeJeune and Dudley Buck. He completed his musical training in Great Britain with Alfred R. Gaul and Philip Ames, and in France with Alexandre Guilmant, Charles-Marie Widor, and Vincent d'Indy.
  • Biography
    Henry F. Gilbert (1868-1928) Biography. Henry Franklin Belknap Gilbert was born in 1868 in Somerville, Massachusetts, to musical parents. He received early training on piano and violin, entering the New England Conservatory, where he studied violin with Emil Mollenhauer and composition with Edward MacDowell between 1886 and 1892. He worked as a free-lance violinist and in a variety of trades—printing, real estate, music publishing, writing, and lecturing. He...
  • Biography
    Victor Herbert (1859-1924) Biography. Victor Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1859. His father died when Victor was an infant. His mother married a German physician, and the family moved to Stuttgart when Herbert was seven years old. In Stuttgart, he studied cello and entered the Stuttgart Conservatory in 1877 to study with Max Seifritz. He played in various orchestras, including the Viennese orchestra of Eduard...
  • Biography
    Peter C. Lutkin (1858-1931) Biography. Peter Christian Lutkin was born on March 27, 1858, in Thompsonville, Wisconsin. His parents, Peter Christian and Hannah (Olivarius) Lutkin, emigrated to the U.S. from Denmark in 1844. He attended Chicago public schools and was a chorister and organist at St. Peter and St. Paul's Episcopal Church. At age thirteen he began formal music training, studying organ with Clarence Eddy, piano with Regina...
  • Biography
    Daniel Gregory Mason (1873-1953) Biography. Daniel Gregory Mason was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, November 20, 1873. He was the son of Henry Mason (a cofounder of the Mason-Hamlin piano company), nephew of pianist-composer William Mason, and grandson of pioneer music educator Lowell Mason. Mason and his three brothers participated regularly in chamber music performances in addition to school music activities.
  • Biography
    John Knowles Paine (1839-1906) Biography. John Knowles Paine was born in Portland, Maine, on January 9, 1839. He began studying music in his youth, primarily with Hermann Kotzschmar, a German organist who emigrated to the United States in 1848. From 1858 to 1861, he furthered his training in Berlin with organist Karl-August Haupt and composer Wilhelm Wieprecht. Firmly grounded in the musical taste and culture of mid-nineteenth-century Europe,...
  • Biography
    Patty Stair (1869-1926) Biography. Patty Stair was born in Cleveland, Ohio, November 12, 1869. She attended the Cleveland public schools and the prestigious Hathaway Brown School for Ladies—the oldest private girls' school in Cleveland. The niece of well-known tenor Edwin Stair, she came from a family that encouraged her to study music at an early age. She began teaching music, serving as church organist, and composing at...
  • Biography
    Arthur B. Whiting (1861-1936) Biography. Arthur Battelle Whiting was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1861. He was the nephew of organist and composer George E. Whiting. A naturally gifted musician, Arthur first appeared publicly as a concert pianist in Worchester, Massachusetts, at the age of thirteen. He studied first at the New England Conservatory with William Hall Sherwood and George Whitefield Chadwick and later at the Munich Conservatory...
  • Biography
    Septimus Winner (1827-1902) Biography. Septimus Winner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1827. He was the seventh child (hence the name Septimus) of Eastburn Winner, a violin-maker, and Mary Ann Hawthorne, a relative of New England poet and author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Largely self-taught, Winner studied music as a youth with Leopold Meignen, a French-born composer, conductor, publisher, and teacher. Throughout his life he performed regularly with the...
  • Biography
    Edward Alexander MacDowell (1860-1908) Biography. Edward MacDowell was one of the most celebrated American composers in the nineteenth century. His compositions won the approval of music critics, both in Europe and the United States, as well as of his contemporaries, including composers such as Franz Liszt and Joachim Raff. MacDowell's early works bear the influence of his training in Germany, reflecting European styles and cultures. Nearly all of...