Ruth Crawford Seeger (link takes you to a decent article with other pictures of her.)
Images courtesy of Peggy Seeger.

Ruth Crawford Seeger (nee Ruth Porter Crawford) (b. 7/3/1901 – 11/18/1953) was an American composer and musicologist. Her music heralded the emerging modernist aesthetic, and she became a central member of a group of American composers known as the “ultramodernists.” She composed primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, turning towards studies on folk music from the late 1930s until her death. 

She is best known for her String Quartet (1931,) which is “regarded as one of the finest modernist works of the genre.”

Early Years
Ruth Crawford Seeger was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, the second child of Methodist minister Clark Crawford and Clara Crawford (née Graves). The family moved several times during Crawford’s childhood, living in Akron, OH, St. Louis, MO, and Muncie, IN, and Jacksonville, FL. In 1912, her father died of tuberculosis. Afterwards, her mother opened a boarding house and struggled to maintain her family’s middle-class lifestyle.

Ruth began writing poetry at an early age and also studied the piano beginning at age six. In 1913, she began piano lessons with Bertha Foster. In 1917, Ruth began studying with Madame Valborg Collett, a student of Agathe Backer Grøndahl and the most prestigious teacher at Foster’s school. After she graduated from high school in 1918, Crawford began to pursue a career as a concert pianist, continuing her studies with Collett and performing at various musical events in Jacksonville. She also became a piano teacher at Foster’s school and wrote her first compositions for her young pupils in 1918 and 1919.

She moved to Chicago in 1921, where she enrolled at the American Conservatory of Music. While there, she attended symphony and opera performances for the first time, as well as recitals by eminent pianists. She studied piano at the conservatory, though her focus quickly shifted from piano performance to composition. During her second year at the conservatory, she began composition and music theory studies and wrote several early works, including a Nocturne for Violin and Piano (1923) and a set of theme and variations for piano (1923.) Ruth’s mother moved to Chicago to live with her in 1923. The next year, Ruth received her bachelor’s degree and subsequently enrolled in the American Conservatory’s master’s degree program.

In 1924 Ruth began private piano lessons; she continued to study theory and composition through 1929. Her piano teacher introduced her to an influential community of artists and thinkers. She also met poet Carl Sandburg, whose writings she would eventually set to music. In 1925, she composed “The Adventures of Tom Thumb,” an experiment which combined spoken word with music.

New York City and travels in Europe
Ruth spent the summer of 1929 at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on a scholarship, where she began a friendship with fellow composer Marion Bauer and began work on her Five Songs set to poems by Sandburg. That same autumn she moved into the New York City home of music patron Blanche Walton and began studying composition with Charles Seeger.

In 1930, Crawford became the first female composer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship; she used the grant money to travel to Berlin and Paris. During that time, she interviewed Emil Hertzka to discuss publishing her music, but he said that “it would be particularly hard for a woman to get anything published.” She traveled to Vienna and Budapest to discuss her music and gain support for publication.

In 1932, she and Charles wed. In 1933, Ruth’s Three Songs for voice, oboe, percussion and strings, which set poems by Sandburg to music, represented the United States at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Amsterdam.

Ruth & Charles’ children: Michael, Peggy, Barbara, and Penny. They called Ruth, “Dio.” Charles also had three children from his first marriage with Constance de Clyver Edson: Charles III, John and Pete. John and Charles III were adults when their father got with Ruth, but Pete was only 13 years old. Ruth took on full parental responsibilities for Pete.

Washington, D.C. and Seeger’s Shift to Folk Music
In 1933, Ruth Crawford Seeger significantly reduced her compositional output when she gave birth to her first child, Michael, committing as much time and energy as she could to taking care of him. Ruth said motherhood was like “composing babies.” The Seegers faced severe financial hardship when Charles lost his teaching position at the Institute of Musical Art. He kept a part-time position at The New School in New York; donations from friends and family supplemented their meager income.

In 1935, Charles Seeger received a call about a full-time job position in Washington D.C. with an agency that was to teach those left displaced and unemployed by the Great Depression to play music. Ruth Seeger wrote, “We had been here only a couple of months when Charlie began to get his fingers on the pulse of some of this very live-and-kicking music of ‘unmusical’ America.” A passion was born within Ruth Seeger and this passion led her away from composition in favor of documenting, preserving, and teaching the canon of American folk music. She worked closely with folklorists at the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folk Song to preserve and teach American folk music, collaborating with them to transcribe over 800 field recordings. Her arrangements and interpretations of American folk songs are among the most respected.

In 1952, Ruth returned to her modernist roots with her Suite for Wind Quintet, but unfortunately died of intestinal cancer in November of the following year.

Works
Early Period (1922-1929) = 19
Middle Period (1930-1932) = 8
Late Period (after 1932) = 6
Unknown date songs = 11

Ruth Crawford Seeger Biography in 600 Words by David Lewis at daughter Peggy Seeger’s website.

Source: wikipedia