Seeger, Music for Small Orchestra
Like many other women composers, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is receiving renewed attention. She achieved some recognition in her lifetime as a talented composer, but it was short-lived, partly no doubt because of her untimely death.
She studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and in 1930 became the first woman composer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. She went to Europe and met with leading composers such as Bartok, Schoenberg, and Berg. Although she turned to her own version of serialism in the 1930s, her earlier compositions were more influenced by Scriabin and a freer atonality.
She composed Music for Small Orchestra in 1926, but it did not receive its premiere performance until 1969 at West Texas University in Canyon, Texas. The work is sometimes listed as “Two Movements for Chamber Orchestra.” It features two contrasting movements scored for a somewhat unusual collection of ten instruments. The movements are marked “Slow, pensive” and “In roguish humor, not fast.”
In Music for Small Orchestra, you hear various ostinato patterns (short repeated sequences) layered on one another. The thick texture of the first movement softens the dissonance into a calm atmospheric setting. Rhythm plays a more prominent role in the second movement. One can hear traces of Stravinsky and Bartok throughout.
She was also heavily involved with John and Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress’s efforts to collect and preserve American folk music. She arranged and transcribed many of the folk songs, and her work in this area after 1934 took precedence over composing original works.
Crawford married the composer Charles Seeger in 1932. Her children with Seeger included folk singers Mike and Peggy Seeger. Her stepson from her husband’s prior marriage was the renowned folk singer Pete Seeger.