“ ‘In Europe one can work!’ the young composer Ruth Crawford declared with excitement. Traveling abroad on a Guggenheim fellowship—the first woman to receive one—she had arrived in Berlin in 1930 planning to write her first orchestral piece,” writes William Robin in Sunday’s (10/15) New York Times. Instead, she wrote String Quartet 1931, “which the JACK Quartet will play on Oct. 21 at the Miller Theater at Columbia University…. Shortly after its completion, Crawford returned to the United States and married [Charles] Seeger. In short succession, she became a wife, a mother, a leftist and a folk revivalist…. The JACK’s performance [situates] Crawford’s piece within a broader traversal of the American string quartet, connecting her work to later giants like Elliott Carter and contemporary composers including Erin Gee and Natacha Diels…. The quartet … was rediscovered by midcentury composers like George Perle and Carter, who acknowledged the work as a major influence…. But the quartet was more end than beginning. Crawford returned to New York, married Seeger and stepped eagerly into the role of stepmother to his children, and then mother of four of their own. (She also added Seeger to her name and is widely known to posterity as Ruth Crawford Seeger.)”
Posted October 17, 2017
