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.
Industry Reviews
"Tick followed where Crawford's life has taken her, and has done so brilliantly....Informed by rich resources of letters, diaries, interviews, and domestic manifestos, and enriched by her grasp of the cultural tapestry against which Crawford's life took place, Tick has written an engaging narrative....With this absorbing book, readers may become familiar with a not-so-thoroughly modern composer whose life and work should now take a central place in the
continuing debate over the nature of twentieth-century modernism."--Women's Review of Books
"Elegantly written and richly textured....Essential for all libraries."--Choice
"Deriving insights from new sources and interviews and providing fresh analyses of many of Seeger's compositions, this lively but scholarly book grapples with its subject's several identities....Recommended to those seriously interested in women's studies, classical and folk music and music education, and American studies."--Library Journal
"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
"Tick followed where Crawford's life has taken her, and has done so brilliantly....Informed by rich resources of letters, diaries, interviews, and domestic manifestos, and enriched by her grasp of the cultural tapestry against which Crawford's life took place, Tick has written an engaging narrative....With this absorbing book, readers may become familiar with a not-so-thoroughly modern composer whose life and work should now take a central place in the
continuing debate over the nature of twentieth-century modernism."--Women's Review of Books
"Elegantly written and richly textured....Essential for all libraries."--Choice
"Deriving insights from new sources and interviews and providing fresh analyses of many of Seeger's compositions, this lively but scholarly book grapples with its subject's several identities....Recommended to those seriously interested in women's studies, classical and folk music and music education, and American studies."--Library Journal
"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, Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn College
"A stunning achievement....Judith Tick's biography and detailed loving assessment of Crawford's life and creative work should go a long way towards restoring this important but unfortunately rather neglected composer to her rightful place in the American musical firmament."--Gunther Schuller, composer/conductor
"This important biography vividly presents Ruth Crawford Seeger caught between the conflicting demands of composing, folksong collecting, and her responsibilities as wife and mother. Without these conflicts she no doubt would have produced even more masterpieces."--Elliott Carter, composer
"This vibrant, meticulously researched study rewards anyone eager to map American modernism in all its art forms and to grasp crucial connections to folk traditions."--Cecelia Tichi, author, High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music
"Judith Tick does a wonderful job of recreating the life Ruth Crawford lived through Crawford's diaries and letters and through the recollections of those who knew her....This will stand as the definitive biography of one of America's most interesting and significant composers."--J. Peter Burkholder, Indiana University
"Honors an innovative composer whose life itself served as a metaphor for American polarities: music--avant garde or traditional; family role--creative or constricted; politics-- mainstream or radical; folk culture--authentic or popularized. Seeger's musical legacy remains secure as we plumb its depths. In her modern sonatas and suites, vernacular declamations and ditties, we find our own journey markers."--Archie Green, folklorist; author of Only a
Miner
"Tick's excellent biography will help insure that Ruth Crawford Seeger is placed alongside other major women composers in the annals of music history. "--Joan Tower, composer, Bard College
"A splendid book...a delicate sensibility and sensitivity to the ironies of human life threads through this well-documented biography of the remarkable Ruth Crawford Seeger"--Bess Lomax Hawes, former Chief, Folk Arts Division, NEA
"A triumphant contribution on several fronts. This book outlines the history of the cultural, political, and musical life of early twentieth century America. It is painted on a large canvas and presented in novel-like prose....Simply stated, it is a book one cannot put down."--Pan Pipes
"...this superb new biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger, is the remarkable dichotomy of the musician's career....[Judith] Tick's history is meticulously documented."--Fanfare
"...a book one cannot put down....Tick's ability to place the reader in the midst of a life so scattered, an existence so harried, a cultural spectrum so vivid, and a sensibility so mystical is remarkable and full of sympathetic insight....This biography will be fascinating to many kinds of readers..."--Pan Pipes
"Tick's captivating and vivid portrayal of Crawford is meticulously documented....I highly recommend [this] biography for both women and men; it is exhaustive, clearly-written, and satisfying to read. Crawford's life story as told by Tick will certainly serve as an inspiration for many of today's composers and musicians."--IAWM Journal
"...magisterial...Judith Tick makes Crawford and the supporting cast seem very much alive....A fascinating story, this is also a work of very solid scholarship, documenting carefully every assertion and every conjecture...."--I.S.A.M. Newsletter
