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Virginia
Eskin,
Piano
Arnold
Steinhardt,
Viola
Charleston
String
Quartet
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Marion Bauer (1882-1955)
and Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) began their life-long
friendship in the summer of 1929, when both enjoyed
privileged living at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough,
New Hampshire -- a haven for Amercian artists since
1907. nothing to do but take care of your self and your
work: lunch baskets dropped off at the door of your
studio, dinners with writers, painters, and fellow musicians,
walks through pine woods.
At a time when
women in music had to face down Victorian stereotypes
of dilletantism and sentimentality, the MacDowell Colony
provided a "room of one's own." A Peterborough
regular, Bauer came for her first visit in 1917. Within
two days of arriving for what would be her only stay
there, Crawford wrote how it was "glorious to be
working again...I never knew the moon and stars would
come inside me so."
Considering their
historical reputations, few people would suspect the
meeting points between these two composers, -- Bauer,
representing what Carol Oja in her forthcoming book
calls the "forgotten vanguard," and Crawford,
known today as a pivotal figure in the radical "ultra-modern"
movement. But back then, both believed strongly in the
manifest destiny of a similar kind of modernism: both
spent the 1920's exploring frontiers of harmony; both
greatly admired Scriabin, taking his mystical impressionism
as their starting point; and both were influenced by
transcendentalist aesthetics. After hearing some of
Bauer's piano preludes, Crawford recorded her impressions
in her diary: "I am bewildered by the strangeness
of the experience, [by our] affinities. Our manner of
building, our feeling very strongly the spirit of our
work, our strengths and weaknesses -- in all these,
tho we are individuals, yet we are very close. Tho we
have only just met, yet our spirits have been friends
for years."
from Notes
by Judith Tick
Author of Ruth Crawford Seeger. A Composer's Search
for American Music
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