Collection Items

  • Biography
    Elinor Remick Warren, 1900-1991 Biography. Elinor Remick Warren has been described by musicologist Christine Ammer as the "only woman among the group of prominent American neo-Romanticists that includes Howard Hansen, Samuel Barber, and Gian Carlo Menotti." Warren was active up until her death in 1991 at age 91, and created over 200 works throughout her lifetime. Her music is currently enjoying a revival; in 2000, the Elinor Remick...
  • Biography
    Ned Rorem, b.1923 Biography. Dubbed by Time magazine as "the world's best composer of art songs," the appellation is certainly befitting of Ned Rorem, who, with nearly 500 songs in his catalog, has easily surpassed the efforts of nearly every American composer in this genre (Charles Ives is perhaps the closest second, with nearly 200 songs in his catalog). In addition to Rorem's extensive contribution to American...
  • Biography
    Erich Korngold, 1897-1957 Biography. It is not surprising that the remarkable melodic gifts of Austrian-born composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, heritor of the late Romantic musical traditions of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, should manifest itself in a significant number of compositions for the voice. Indeed, vocal works form the core of Korngold's Å“uvre, in which are represented at least five full-length operas, seven song cycles, and additional...
  • 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...
  • Article
    " I Bring You Heartsease" by Gena Branscombe Article. Also published as a solo song, Branscombe's choral setting (SSA) was issued by Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Boston, in 1915. The text, written by the composer, refers to a variety of flowers shared by lovers in springtime. Heartsease, the progenitor of the cultivated pansy, was most likely the flower that yielded a powerful love potion in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Branscombe's musical...
  • Article
    " In Arcady by Moonlight" by Gena Branscombe Article. Also published as a solo song, Branscombe's choral setting (SSA) was issued by Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Boston, in 1914. The text is by Kendall Banning (1879-1914) and refers to a mythical utopian place, a pastoral vision in which all is in harmony with nature. The poem begins, "In Arcady by moonlight (where only lovers go), there is a pool where fairest of...
  • Article
    "The Morning Wind" by Gena Branscombe Article. Also published as a solo song, Branscombe's choral setting (SSA) was issued by Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Boston, in 1914. The text is by Kendall Banning (1879-1944). The short piano introduction depicts the morning wind with an arpeggiated triplet figure in compound meter. The wind, the dawn, and "the land so fair" are wooing the narrator to explore "wherever roads may lead." The...
  • Article
    " Ol' Marse Winter" by Gena Branscombe Article. Branscombe's SSA setting of poetry by Mary Alice Ogden (1858-1926) was published by Arthur P. Schmidt Co., Boston, in 1914. Ogden's verse was used by permission of The Smart Set Co., a New York literary and cultural magazine edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan between 1914 and 1923. Branscombe sets the text, written in African-American dialect, to constant eighth notes,...
  • Article
    " Balm in Gilead" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. As with most of Burleigh's works for chorus, Balm in Gilead was originally set for solo voice. He dedicated the solo arrangement to John Wesley Work of Fisk University, author of the treatise Folk Songs of the American Negro (1915). The SSA version, arranged for women's chorus by Burleigh, is inscribed to the Schumann Club, conducted by Percy Rector Stephens. Balm in Gilead...
  • Article
    "De Gospel Train ('Git on bo'd lit'l children')" by Harry Th... Article. Burleigh's setting of De Gospel Train has its roots in several sources, but most likely originated from the Bahamian spiritual Get on Board. A revival song featuring a pentatonic melody, De Gospel Train is one of several African-American spirituals that became closely associated with the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. Burleigh's arrangement was published in 1921 in separate versions for solo voice...
  • Article
    " Deep River" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. Burleigh's 1917 setting of Deep River for solo voice, published by G. Ricordi & Co., New York, is one of the composer's most beloved works. It was so well-received, it inspired the publication of nearly a dozen more spirituals the same year. In addition to the original versions for solo voice, men's chorus, and women's chorus, Deep River received transcriptions for string quartet,...
  • Article
    " Dig My Grave," one of "Two Negro Spirituals" by Harry Thack... Article. In 1914, G. Schirmer published the collection Afro-American Folksongs, edited by scholar and music critic Henry E. Krehbiel (1854-1923). The collection included eleven spiritual arrangements for unison chorus by Burleigh. Dig My Grave was among those arrangements, in a section on funeral music. The four-part, unaccompanied arrangement was published in 1914 along with Deep River by G. Schirmer, New York.
  • Article
    " He Met Her in a Meadow" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. Burleigh's He Met Her in a Meadow was first published for solo male voice in 1921. G. Ricordi & Co., New York, published versions for mixed chorus, men's chorus, and women's chorus in 1922. Burleigh wrote the song's lyrics about a young farmer's late-evening flirtation. The musical setting is melodramatic and sentimental, foreshadowed in the tempo direction, Andante con molto sentimento. The ostensible...
  • Article
    " Nobody Knows de Trouble I've Seen" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. Following the success of Deep River in 1917, Burleigh arranged and published nearly a dozen more settings of African-American spirituals in the same year, including Nobody Knows de Trouble I've Seen. Burleigh's simpler arrangement of the spiritual for unison chorus had previously appeared in Afro-American Folksongs (1914), edited by Henry E. Krehbiel. G. Ricordi & Co., New York published versions for solo voice,...
  • Article
    " Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" by Harry Thacker ... Article. Burleigh arranged Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child for solo voice in 1918. He created a setting for women's chorus the following year, dedicated to The Schumann Club, conducted by Percy Rector Stephens.
  • Article
    " Southern Lullaby" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. One of Burleigh's original compositions, Southern Lullaby, was published in 1920 by G. Ricordi & Co., New York, in editions for both solo voice and for unaccompanied mixed chorus with soprano and tenor solos. The text is by poet George V. Hobart (1867-1926), a Burleigh acquaintance from Nova Scotia. They both became charter members of the American Association of Composers, Authors, and Publishers...
  • Article
    " Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. Burleigh's arrangement of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was originally published for solo voice in 1917 following the success of Deep River. This famous spiritual was first introduced to the concert stage by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1871. While the biblical basis for the spiritual's text can be found in II Kings: 2, 11, the origin of the piece is more closely associated...
  • Article
    " Weepin' Mary" by Harry Thacker Burleigh Article. Burleigh's brief setting of Weepin' Mary was published in 1917 in versions for solo voice and women's chorus by G. Ricordi & Co., New York. The women's chorus version was arranged by Nathaniel Clifford Page (1866-1956). Only thirty-one measures in length, the setting is a quiet, introspective piece in AAB form. The text is a commentary on a biblical passage: "But Mary stood...
  • Article
    " Julep Song (The Good Old Mint Julep for Me!)" by Will Mario... Article. Will Marion Cook's musical The Southerners remains a milestone in the history of Broadway theater. Premiering at the New York Theater on May 12, 1904, The Southerners was the first Broadway musical to feature a racially integrated cast. Characters with speaking parts were portrayed by white actors in blackface and were supported by an all-black chorus of singers and dancers. Cook's wife, Abbie...
  • Article
    " Whoop Her Up!" by Will Marion Cook Article. Will Cook's reputation as a leading songwriter for black musical theater led to the performance of many of his works by singers such as Irene Bently, Fannie Brice, and Marie Cahill in stage productions by white performers. Whoop 'er Up! (With a Whoop, La! La!) was sung by Cahill in two separate musicals, The Boys and Betty (1908) and Judy Forgot (1910).
  • Article
    " My Lady Nicotine" by Will Marion Cook Article. Very little has been written about My Lady, Nicotine (Smoke! Smoke!), composed by Cook with lyrics by F. Clifford Harris. In her 2008 biography of Cook, Swing Along, Marva Griffin Carter lists the piece as part of Cook's last major work for musical theater, Darkydom (1915).
  • Article
    " Breathe on Us, Breath of God" by Arthur Farwell Article. Farwell wrote a large number of works intended for amateur community choruses, ranging from unison songs and arrangements to more complicated four-part settings. His New York Community Chorus met on Sundays in Central Park for massive "sings," attended regularly by more than eight hundred people. For these occasions Farwell prepared song sheets containing a potpourri of unison arrangements—everything from classics in English translation...
  • Article
    " Hosanna" by Arthur Farwell Article. Hosanna was published in 1918 along with Breathe on Us, Breath of God, as part of Farwell's Four Part Songs for Community Chorus, op. 51. It is the only piece in the set dedicated to the students of the Third Street Music School Settlement, which Farwell directed from 1915 to 1918. The Settlement was founded in 1894 to provide high-quality music instruction to...
  • Article
    "The Wind and the Day (A Sunset on Yarrow)" by Arthur Foote Article. This part-song, one of fifty-two composed by Foote, was dedicated to Horatio Parker (1863–1919), a fellow member of the Second New England School of composers. It sets a pastoral poem by Scottish writer Andrew Lang, who edited the poems and songs of Robert Burns in 1896. The text and music paint a picture of a sunset over the heather. Foote injects chromatic harmonies...
  • Article
    "The Jumblies, Op. 68, No. 4" by Arthur Foote Article. Foote sets this humorous limerick by Edward Lear (1812-88) "Allegro giocoso." He chooses only the first and fourth stanzas of Lear's five-stanza poem. The music is scored in C minor, with a parenthesized note under the first measure, "preferably in C-sharp." Foote provides a dynamic scheme and articulations to capture the text's humor. "And when the sieve turned round and round, and ev'ry...
  • Article
    " Come, O Thou Traveler" by Harvey Bartlett Gaul Article. Gaul composed the anthem Come, O Thou Traveler for SATB mixed chorus and organ during his tenure as organist and choirmaster at Emmanuel Church in Cleveland. He dedicated the piece to Henry G. Eskuche, organist at St. Peter's Church in Brooklyn, New York. It was published in 1908 by the Boston Music Company.
  • Article
    " Now Is Christ Risen from the Dead" by Harvey Bartlett Gaul Article. Now Is Christ Risen from the Dead is an Easter anthem for soprano solo, SATB mixed chorus, and organ, published in 1905 by William A. Pond & Co., New York. The text is taken from I Corinthians 15:55–57: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the...
  • Article
    " Pirate Song" by Henry F. Gilbert Article. Gilbert's Pirate Song was first published by the Wa-Wan Press, which was founded by composer Arthur Farwell in 1901. The purpose of the Press, named for an Omaha Indian ceremony meaning "to sing to someone," was to publish American works that broke with European tradition. Gilbert worked alongside Farwell in promoting a distinctly American style. Gilbert also advocated for the use of humor...
  • Article
    " Christ is Risen" by Victor Herbert Article. Herbert gained fame primarily through his forty-three operettas. His output, however, also included numerous works for orchestra, band, various instruments, and some twelve choral pieces. He wrote a large-scale cantata, The Captive, op. 25, for the 1891 Worcester (Massachusetts) Festival. His extended anthem for soloists and chorus, Christ is Risen, was premiered at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo, New York, in 1908. A year...
  • Article
    " Christ Jesus Comes from Heavenly Height" by Peter C. Lutkin Article. For much of his life, Lutkin composed original carols as Christmas card greetings. Child Jesus Comes from Heavenly Height was one of two such greetings later published by H. W. Gray. It is a simple, strophic a cappella setting—in two verses with refrains—of a translated poem by Hans Christian Anderson. The verse begins with a unison descending line that separates into four parts...
  • Article
    "The Carol of the Beasts" by Peter C. Lutkin Article. Lutkin wrote The Carol of the Beasts for the Northwestern University A Cappella Choir. By 1922, the year this setting was published, the choir had toured widely and had been a featured performing ensemble at a conference of the Music Teachers National Association.
  • Article
    " O Little Town of Bethlehem" by Peter C. Lutkin Article. O Little Town of Bethlehem was published by the Clayton F. Summy Company in 1903 and dedicated to Lutkin's second son, Caryl Cecil Lutkin. Tragically, Caryl died of diphtheria four days before Peter Lutkin was to conduct the first performance in Evanston, Illinois, of the newly formed Northwestern University A Cappella Choir.
  • Article
    " Two Northern Songs, Op. 43: No. 1, The Brook; No. 2, Slumbe... Article. These two brief unaccompanied works, from MacDowell's first period of choral writing during his Boston years, are similar to his accompanied solo songs. Delightfully tuneful melodies are employed within regular phrase groups in a somewhat adventuresome harmonic framework. The textures are mostly homophonic with some polyphonic interest.
  • Article
    " Barcarole, Op. 44" by Edward MacDowell Article. This work is unique among MacDowell's choral works for its lush vocal richness and coloristic four-hand piano display. Frequent hemiolas, grace notes, trills, and triplet patterns in the piano partner with a lyric melodic breadth and sensitive harmonic progressions in the voices. The poem is by F. M. von Bodenstedt (1819-1892), a well-known German writer whose texts were also set by Brahms, Grieg,...
  • Article
    " Cradle Song" by Edward MacDowell Article. The text is by MacDowell after a German poem by Peter Cornelius (1824-1874). A lullaby, this brief work is representative of a quintessential American male glee club song: a cappella, homophonic, closely voiced, regular phrases, heartfelt, and tender. Chromatic motion often occurs against pedal tones. Interest is found more in the overall harmonic effect than in the melody. MacDowell dedicated the work to...
  • Article
    " Dance of Gnomes" by Edward MacDowell Article. In dramatic contrast to Cradle Song, the song Dance of Gnomes sets a text by MacDowell that is jarring, spooky, and humorous. The Gnomes, also called "Flower Fairies," conjure up shadows, moonlight, dark forests, and magic spells. Later in the work they call themselves "ugly, hairy imps," "ugly noddles" (noddle is the nape of the neck, back of the head), and "willful hussies."...
  • Article
    "The Witch, Op. 5" by Edward MacDowell Article. From 1896 to 1898, MacDowell published four partsongs for the Mendelssohn Glee Club under the pseudonym of Edgar Thorn, fearing the members would feel obligated to accept the songs if he revealed he had written them. Other works by "Edgar Thorn" are The Rose and the Gardener, Love and Time, and War Song. The narrative text by MacDowell is about a witch living...
  • Article
    " Summer Wind, Song of Sylphs" by Edward MacDowell Article. This is the last of MacDowell's original choral works to be published, written while he was teaching at Columbia University. The text's poet, Richard Hovey (1864-1900), also taught at the university. The text from Hovey's epic poem, Launcelot and Guenevere, depicts the light summer breeze and imbues it with human qualities: "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. / The fleet wind's footing / is light...
  • Article
    " Long, Long the Night" by Daniel Gregory Mason Article. Mason wrote Long, Long the Night shortly after his appointment as lecturer at Columbia University in 1905. It is a setting of the poem, On Chloris Being Ill (1795), by Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759-1796). In the poem, Burns laments the illness of a long-time family friend, Jean Lorimer, for whom he had a particular fondness.
  • Article
    " Domine salvum fac praesidem nostrum, Op. 8" by John Knowles... Article. John Knowles Paine composed Domine salvum fac praesidem nostrum soon after accepting a music-instructor position at Harvard University. Written for the inauguration ceremony of Thomas Hill as Harvard President, the work premiered on March 4, 1863. The composer conducted members of the college choir, the Harvard Music Association, and the Germania Orchestra. The piece was repeated on October 19, 1869, for the inauguration...
  • Article
    " O Bless the Lord, My Soul" by John Knowles Paine Article. O Bless the Lord, my Soul was published in 1911 by Boston Music Co. The present edition was copyrighted 1911 by G. Schirmer, and revised and edited by Charles Leslie.
  • Article
    " Centennial Hymn, Op. 27" by John Knowles Paine Article. Centennial Hymn was published in 1876 by J. E. Ditson & Co., Philadelphia, and republished in 1930 as Whittier's Centennial Hymn by Oliver Ditson, Boston. The vocal score was also published in two periodicals as part of the centennial celebrations—the Philadelphia Enquirer (May 10, 1876) and the Atlantic Monthly (June 1876).
  • Article
    " Ojalá" from "The Spanish Gypsy" by Patty Stair Article. Patty Stair composed Ojalá in 1907, while a faculty member at the Cleveland Conservatory of Music. Written for four-part women's voices with accompaniment, the piece was dedicated to the Rubenstein Club of Cleveland. That organization was a large women's choral group, modeled on a New York City ensemble founded by William Rogers Chapman (1855-1935), a New York public school music teacher. Chapman named...
  • Article
    " Minuet" by Patty Stair Article. Minuet, published in 1903, is one of a number of SSAA choral pieces Stair provided for the active women's singing clubs that existed in Cleveland at the turn of the twentieth century. One of Stair's more popular compositions, Minuet was originally written as an instrumental piece for the Cecilian Quartet, founded in 1875. Stair added the text, of unknown origin, some time later....
  • Article
    " So Sweet Is She" by Patty Stair Article. So Sweet Is She was composed in 1916, rather late in Patty Stair's career. Written for four-part men's voices, this piece is somewhat unique for Stair, who was better known for composing women's choral pieces such as Minuet and Little Dutch Lullaby. Stair was active with several women's music organizations in Cleveland, including the Rubenstein Club and the Women's Music Teachers Club.
  • Article
    " Song for a May Morning" by Patty Stair Article. Patty Stair wrote Song for a May Morning in 1914 to address the needs of the burgeoning women's musical clubs that gained popularity during the first part of the twentieth century. The piece begins with a lively duet between the upper two voices. The alto parts join the texture in close imitation of the top voices. A homophonic section follows featuring more adventurous...
  • Article
    " They that wait upon the Lord" by Arthur B. Whiting Article. Arthur Whiting composed the anthem They that Wait upon the Lord after he moved from Boston to New York in 1895. Published in 1903 by G. Schirmer, this anthem demonstrates Whiting's preference for composing in traditional musical forms. The work is typical of his New York period compositions, which tended toward large-scale, highly developed compositions. It would have been appropriate for large festival...
  • Article
    " O God, My Heart Is Ready, Op. 17" by Arthur B. Whiting Article. O God, My Heart Is Ready, published by G. Schirmer in 1899, was written at a time when Whiting was turning his attention to large choral and instrumental forms. Prior to that period he had focused primarily on smaller instrumental works and compositions for the piano. A significant portion of Whiting's study in composition took place in Germany with Josef Gabriel Rheinberger. Hence,...
  • Article
    " Spelling Bee" by Septimus Winner Article. Though he wrote and published many choral arrangements, Winner was not primarily a choral composer. Like Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864), his choral writing was limited to close harmony settings of song choruses, usually no longer than a few pages.
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    " Pretty to Me" by Septimus Winner Article. Winner published Pretty to Me under the pseudonym Alice Hawthorne, his mother's maiden name. It has been argued that American society's refusal to accept women in certain roles was the primary reason that there were not more known female composers in America. Though there was likely some truth to such assertions, Winner's songs published under a female pseudonym, suggest that the statement was...
  • Article
    "The Friends We Love" by Septimus Winner Article. The Friends We Love was published in 1868 under Winner's pseudonym Alice Hawthorne. Winner's music store, established with one of his brothers shortly after they completed high school in Philadelphia, published this simple strophic choral ballad. The music store provided Winner, who was proficient on the violin and guitar, a place to teach music lessons and to market his own songs and methods...
  • Biography
    William Grant Still, 1895-1978 Biography. Known as the "Dean of African-American Composers," William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his mother was a high school English teacher. He began to study the violin at age 14 and taught himself to play a number of other instruments, excelling at the cello and oboe. In 1911, Still entered Wilberforce University in Ohio...
  • Biography
    Charles Naginski Biography. Charles Naginski (1909-1940) was born in Cairo, Egypt. In 1928, he won a fellowship at the Juilliard Graduate School in New York City. During his career, tragically cut short by an accidental drowning in a swimming pool at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, Naginski wrote works for orchestra, string quartet and songs for voice and piano. He did not write many songs, but the...
  • Biography
    Sidney Homer Biography. Sidney Homer (1864-1953) studied with George Chadwick in Boston, and with others in Germany. In 1895, he married contralto Louise Beatty (Homer), a world-renown opera singer who sang often at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. The two lived in New York beginning in 1900 and Sidney Homer began to write songs for his wife to include in her recitals. Homer...
    • Contributor: Homer, Sidney
  • Biography
    Michael Daugherty Biography. Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) is one of the most popular American composers of his generation. He is known for evocative compositions inspired by pop culture such as the Metropolis Symphony (1988-93) inspired by the Superman comic book, his opera Jackie O (1997) and the infamous Dead Elvis for solo bassoon and chamber ensemble (1993) which features a bassoonist dressed as Elvis Presley. Daugherty's...
  • Biography
    Henry Clay Work Biography. Henry Clay Work (1832-1884) was born in Middleton, CT to abolitionist parents. A printer by trade and self-taught song composer, Work was employed by the Root & Cady music publishing house in Chicago and published his first song in 1853. Known for his emotionally charged Civil War songs such as Marching Through Georgia (1865), he was one of the most popular songwriters of...
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    Historic Events in the Civil War: Fort Sumter Article. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, the Confederate Army began shelling the garrison of Union soldiers who had steadfastly refused to abandon Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Just over an hour later, Union guns responded. Little did the residents of nearby Charleston know that the gunfire that had awakened them was but a harbinger of the conflagration that would ravage the nation...
  • Biography
    Francis La Flesche (1857-1932) Biography. The second son of Omaha chief Joseph La Flesche, Francis La Flesche attended the Presbyterian Mission school and participated in tribal ceremonies associated with approaching manhood. His mission education proved useful in his work as an interpreter and research assistant for James Owen Dorsey, who arrived on the Omaha reservation in 1878 to continue his studies in Dhegiha Siouan languages. In 1879 La...
  • Biography
    Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923) Biography. In many respects, Alice Fletcher was a typical Victorian intellectual--articulate, energetic, and active in a variety of social movements and women's organizations. She began her studies of American Indian life under the private tutelage of Frederick W. Putnam, director of Harvard University's Peabody Museum, and joined the public lecture circuit, as did many intellectuals of her day, championing the new discipline of anthropology....
    • Contributor: Fletcher, Alice C. (Alice Cunningham)
  • Biography
    Stetson Kennedy (1911-2011) Biography. Stetson Kennedy, one of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the twentieth century, was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1916. As a teenager he began collecting Cracker and African-American folksay material while he was collecting "dollar down and dollar a week" accounts for his father, a furniture merchant. He left the University of Florida in 1937 to join the WPA...
    • Contributor: Kennedy, Stetson
  • Biography
    John Avery Lomax (1867-1948) Biography. John Avery Lomax was born in Goodman, Mississippi, on September 23, 1867, and grew up on the Texas frontier, just north of Meridian in rural Bosque County. A Texan at heart, if not by birth, his early years on the family farm accustomed him to the hard work that, along with a boundless energy, became a hallmark of his life and career.
    • Contributor: Lomax, Ruby T. (Ruby Terrill) - Lomax, John A. (John Avery)
  • Biography
    Alan Lomax (1915-2002) Biography. Alan Lomax (left), age 20, and an unidentified child on board a boat during the Library of Congress field trip to the Bahamas, 1935. Lomax Collection, Prints and Photographs Division [LOT 7414-H, no. N251-1].
  • Article
    " Home on the Range" The complex history of the song "Home on the Range" involves the history of the American west, the struggles of the pioneers, and the working life of the cowboy. It also demonstrates the difficulty of finding the origins of a song passed on by word of mouth over time. (Listen to a field recording of the song sung by James Richardson and recored by...
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    " John Henry" Several versions of the ballad "John Henry" may be found in the collections of the American Folklife Center. The recordings available online include Arthur Bell singng the song while beating time as if hammering and Harold Hazelhurst singing "John Henry" as a work song for driving railroad spikes. The song probably originated as a work song, like these versions, for work involving the use...
  • Biography
    Charles Lafayette Todd (1911-2004) Biography. Charles "Lafe" Todd at the recording machine surrounded by a group of Mexican boys and men. Photo by Robert Hemmig, El Rio F.S.A. Camp, California, 1941. AFC 1985/001: P16.
    • Contributor: Todd, Charles L.
  • Biography
    Robert Sonkin (1911-1980) Biography. Robert Sonkin, right, listens to fiddler Will Neal (detail from a photo of the recording session). Photo by Robert Hemmig, Arvin Camp, California, 1940. AFC 1985/001: P8-p1.
    • Contributor: Sonkin, Robert
  • Biography
    Willis Laurence James (1900-1966) Biography. Willis Laurence James. Photo from The Peachite Vol. II, No. 2, Folk Festival Number, March 1944.
    • Contributor: James, Willis
  • Biography
    Lewis Wade Jones (1910-1979) Biography. Louis Wade Jones. Photo from The Peachite Vol. II, No. 2, Folk Festival Number, March 1944.
    • Contributor: Jones, Lewis Wade
  • Biography
    John Wesley Work, III (1901-1967) Biography. John Wesley Work III. Photo from The Peachite Vol. II, No. 2, Folk Festival Number, March 1944.
    • Contributor: Work, John W. (John Wesley)
  • Biography
    Robert Winslow Gordon (1888-1961) Biography. Robert Winslow Gordon in a portrait taken in 1928, when he joined the staff of the Library of Congress as the first Head of the Archive of American Folk Song. Photo courtesy Mr. and Mrs. Bert Nye.
    • Contributor: Gordon, Robert Winslow
  • Biography
    Juan Bautista Rael (1900-1993) Biography. Juan B. Rael interviewing Manuela "Mela" Martínez, Taos, New Mexico, circa 1930. Photo courtesy of the Rael Family.
  • Biography
    Captain Pearl R. Nye (1872-1950) Biography. Captain Pearl R. Nye. American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
    • Contributor: Nye, Pearl R.
  • Biography
    Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) Biography. Margaret MacArthur (publicity photo).
    • Contributor: Macarthur, Margaret
  • Biography
    Ruby Terrill Lomax (1886-1961) Biography. Lolo Mendoza and Chico Real, with guitars, at the home of Mrs. Sarah Kleberg Shelton, Kingsville, Texas. One example of the many documentary photographs taken by Ruby Terrill Lomax while collecting folk songs and music with John A. Lomax, September 1940. LOT 7414-F, no. N27 [Prints and Photographs Division].
  • Biography
    Sidney Robertson Cowell (1903-1995) Biography. Born Sidney William Hawkins in San Francisco, California. She earned her B.A., Stanford University in Romance Languages and Philology. In 1924 she married Kenneth Greg Robertson and, the same year, enrolled in Ecole Normale de Musique for piano study; attended her husband's courses in psychiatry at the University of Paris as interpreter; took seminars with Carl Jung in Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Biography
    Vera Hall (1902-1964) Biography. Vera Hall (Adell Hall Ward) at her home in Livingston, Alabama, October 1959. Photo by Alan Lomax. Used with the permission of the Association for Cultural Equity. Alan Lomax Collection AFC2004004_01010472.
  • Article
    Songs of Unionization, Labor Strikes, and Child Labor This article is about songs of unionization, labor strikes, and child labor. Union organizer and co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World, Mary Harris Jones, also known as "Mother Jones." Select the link for more information about this photograph.
  • Article
    Songs of the Temperance Movement and Prohibition "The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine," sheet music by George T. Evans, 1874. Select the link to view the sheet music.
  • Article
    Songs Related to the Abolition of Slavery "Slavery is a Hard Foe To Battle." Lyrics by Judson, 1855. The Hutchinson Family of singers performed many songs related to progressive movements such as the abolition of slavery, temperance, and women's sufferage in popular venues. Select the link to view the sheet music.
  • Article
    Songs of Social Change Pete Seeger sings at the opening of the Washington Labor Canteen, Washington D.C., an event sponsored by the United Federal Labor Canteen, the United Federal Workers of America, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), February 14, 1944. The canteen was integrated in defiance of the segregation laws of the District at that time. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is in the audience, seated between...
  • Article
    Songs of Women's Suffrage Women put up signs advertising a suffrage event featuring Dr. Anna Howard Shaw at the Long Branch Casino in New Jersey, ca. August 1915. Select the link for information and a larger photo.
  • Article
    The African American Civil Rights Movement We Shall Overcome. Booklet cover from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. Select the link for more information. Prints and Photographs LC-USZC4-6525.
  • Article
    Irish American Song Irish immigrants constitute one of the most expansive immigrant communities in the United States. The largest Irish American communities are to be found in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco, with many more Irish Americans living in other urban centers across the country.
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    The Chicano Civil Rights Movement Agustín Lira performing songs from the Chicano Civil Rights Movment at the Library of Congress, September 14, 2011. Select the link to view the webcast.
  • Article
    Folk Singers, Social Reform, and the Red Scare The Works Progress Administration era recordings and subsequent recordings of artists such as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie singing folk music helped to raise the awareness of the songs of rural Americans, Appalachians, African Americans, and various ethnic groups among urban and affluent Americans. These particularly influenced young people, who learned to sing these songs themselves, giving rise to the folk song revival. Though much...
  • Article
    Blues as Protest Prisoners at Cummins State Farm, Arkansas who were recorded by John Lomax in 1934, where he later recorded "I Don't Do Nobody Nothin" sung by C.W. "Preacher" Smith (A.K.A. Rev. Nathanial Hawkins) in 1939. Select the link for more information and a larger image.
  • Article
    Songs of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl Migrants Poster for the Los Angeles production of Hall Johnnson's "Run, Little Chillun". Prints and Photographs Division POS-WPA-CA.01 .R96, no. 1 (H size). Select the link for more information and a larger image.
  • Article
    American Indian and Native Alaskan Song This essay is from the introduction to songs and dances from Many Nations: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Indian and Alaska Native Peoples of the United States, p. 266. See the full citation under Resources below.
  • Article
    Regional Song Sampler: The Northeast Opera singer Alma Gluck with her husband, violinist, composer, and educator Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. Alma Gluck came to New York from Romania as a young girl with her family during the 1890s. Efrem Zimbalist immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1912. They provide examples of the extrordinary talent that came to the northeast during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prints...
  • Article
    Regional Song Sampler: The Southeast Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.