Abstract
American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger grew into the role of music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage. This article examines the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education, principally through examination of primary and secondary sources and review of her published works. While historical in some of its methodological procedures, it is even more so a biographical study of a composer who was consumed with a passion to preserve and transmit American heritage music to children. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this research draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. The authors examine the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger as an educator, with particular emphasis on the manner in which music of the people was masterfully transcribed from recordings and prepared for children and their teachers in schools and preschools.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 238-254 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Research in Music Education |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2008 |
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- Education
- Music
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In: Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2008, p. 238-254.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review
TY - JOUR
T1 - American folk songs for children
T2 - Ruth Crawford Seeger's contributions to music education
AU - Watts, Sarah H.
AU - Campbell, Patricia Shehan
N1 - Funding Information: Watts Sarah H. University of Washington, [email protected] Campbell Patricia Shehan University of Washington 10 2008 56 3 238 254 American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger grew into the role of music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage. This article examines the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education, principally through examination of primary and secondary sources and review of her published works. While historical in some of its methodological procedures, it is even more so a biographical study of a composer who was consumed with a passion to preserve and transmit American heritage music to children. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this research draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. The authors examine the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger as an educator, with particular emphasis on the manner in which music of the people was masterfully transcribed from recordings and prepared for children and their teachers in schools and preschools. Ruth Crawford Seeger folk music children's music sagemeta-type Journal Article search-text 238 American Folk Songs for ChildrenRuth Crawford Seeger's Contributions to Music Education SAGE Publications, Inc.200810.1177/0022429408327176 Sarah H.Watts University of Washington, [email protected] Patricia ShehanCampbell University of Washington American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger grew into the role of music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage. This article examines the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education, principally through examination of primary and secondary sources and review of her published works. While historical in some of its methodological procedures, it is even more so a biographical study of a composer who was consumed with a passion to preserve and transmit American heritage music to children. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this research draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. The authors examine the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger as an educator, with particular emphasis on the manner in which music of the people was masterfully transcribed from recordings and prepared for children and their teachers in schools and preschools. Ruth Crawford Seeger folk music children's music Ruth Crawford Seeger, arguably one of the greatest twentieth-century American composers, was exemplary in her role as a music educator.1 As a teacher of music to young children, a sensitive transcriber of a rich repertoire of American folk songs selected with them in mind, and an author of multiple collections of songs for use by music and classroom teachers, Crawford's contributions to music education were considerable in shaping repertoire and practice for music in schools of the mid- twentieth century. Even as her married name, Seeger, has been associated with a “first family” in the performance and scholarship of American music, she carved her own niche in music education—one that was pathbreaking for her time and which has had ramifications for foundational experiences in music for American schoolchildren ever since.2 Address correspondence to Sarah H. Watts, University of Washington, 23211 Highway 99 A208 Edmonds, WA 98026; e-mail: [email protected]. 239 Music professionals of various callings and specializations are united by way of their likely experience at one time or another in performing and teaching, but Ruth Crawford Seeger was an exception in the extent of her demonstration of the capaci- ties to perform, compose, teach, and think musically.3 Be they artist-performers, con- ductors, musicologists, theorists, or composers, those who work within the realm of music may well be influential in an educational sense as well—even when they least expect it. Crawford was a competent pianist, a brilliant composer of modernist works of a distinctly American flavor, and an enthusiastic scholar with a keen musical and analytical ear.4 By happenstance and later by her development of a passionate com- mitment to music and children,5 Crawford grew into the role of a music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage.6 The aim of this article is to examine the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this study draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. Even as the Seeger family is deeply entwined within a twentieth-century conceptualization of that which constitutes American music, it is the legacy of Crawford's efforts that has lived on in the content of classroom music for children. At the heart of a thorough understanding of music education are the songs them- selves that sound in their transmission from teachers to students in preschools, kinder- gartens, and elementary schools. Crawford's extent of involvement in the selection and transcription of folk songs, and in providing fundamental harmonic arrangements for the ubiquitous piano, is worthy of study for what can be known about how these songs, which have helped generations of children experience a significant component of Anglo American and African American musical cultures, became part of the school repertoire. In pursuit of understanding the life and works of an influential figure within music education required the employment of biographical research techniques. Miller asserted the critical importance of developing a narrative telling of the key events of an individual's life and the need to grapple with individual identity as it was positioned within the context of time and place.7 Chamberlayne, Bornat, and Wengraf noted the burgeoning of interest in the biographical method, so as to refer to it as a “turn” or transformation within the social sciences.8 Within the realm of music education scholarship, researchers have successfully used the biographical method in the study of influential figures such as John Blacking, Charles Faulkner Bryan, and Charles Seeger.9 We applied the historical research techniques of exam- ining primary and secondary sources in this biographical study of Ruth Crawford Seeger, and a content analysis of published works by and about the composer-edu- cator was likewise vital to the research process. Primary sources consisted of an array of published works by Crawford that included music notation of songs and essays suggesting the songs' applications and uses in classrooms and communities. Credible secondary sources written by notable scholars with access to reliable primary sources are emerging, too, particularly those that discuss Ruth Crawford 240 Seeger's compositional output10 and her multiple musical involvements throughout her life.11 We deemed her published collections of transcriptions and arrangements to be of central importance in a consideration of Crawford's contributions to music education, and thus, we reviewed these musical works as well. Schoolgirl and Piano Teacher The landscape of music composition and teaching would be forever transformed by the life and works of Ruth Crawford Seeger, born to parents Clark and Clara Graves Crawford, on July 3, 1901.12 The birth of Crawford in East Liverpool, Ohio, marked the arrival of the family's second child; the first, a son, was named Carl. Family life centered on the career of Crawford's father, a Methodist minister, whose position required several moves to various Midwestern locales.13 The austere lifestyle of a pastor's family was reminiscent of Clara Crawford's own upbringing, yet it contrasted interestingly with her penchant toward feminism, financial indepen- dence, and a desire to be musical—all attributes that were undoubtedly bestowed upon her daughter Ruth.14 Clark Crawford's duties eventually led the family to Jacksonville, Florida, where, shortly thereafter, he died of tuberculosis.15 His death left Crawford, her mother, and brother with little financial security.16 Crawford tried to offset this lack of funds by selling musical settings of her various writings, which was an unsuccessful endeavor.17 The family's primary source of income was gener- ated through the operation of a boarding house.18 Beginning with her first piano lesson on her sixth birthday, Crawford's musical talent flourished throughout childhood and adolescence. Her junior year of high school ush- ered in a new phase of her musical development when she commenced piano study with Bertha Foster, a forward-thinking musician and teacher at her own Foster's School of Musical Arts. An unmarried woman, Foster represented the “New Woman,” one who was free to seek out and enjoy a fulfilling career19 and leadership within the musical community of Jacksonville.20 After a few years' piano study, Foster promoted Crawford to the tutelage of Valborg Collet, a stern taskmistress of a piano teacher.21 During Crawford's high school years, Madame Collet was unrelenting in her promotion of Crawford's piano studies.22 Madame Collet occasionally offered praise to Crawford, which was just as often countered with moments of criticism, as when Collet compared Crawford's piano playing to that of an infant. Crawford recalled the instance, stating, She said I played like a baby, that her pupils did not play like babies, they played like little artists, which hurt my feelings a bit. I am not saying I did not need & deserve this criticism: I am saying it hurt my feelings a bit, as I think it would anyone's.23 Crawford took to pen and paper to explore this relationship and eased her anxi- eties through her daily journaling and the spinning of fictional tales.24 She persisted in her commitment to the keyboard and became the star of Collet's studio.25 241 The mutual admiration between Crawford and Bertha Foster led to Crawford's employment as a piano teacher at Foster's School of Musical Arts following her high school graduation in 1918. During this time, she continued her own piano studies while instructing young children in piano.26 At the time, teaching music was viewed as a field ripe with opportunities for talented young women such as Crawford. In addition to Crawford's appointment at the School of Musical Arts, she implemented her piano skills in various performance venues, such as recital halls and social clubs, while developing a sterling reputation for her work in teaching piano to young children.27 Seeds of Crawford's future as a composer began to surface during her time teach- ing children in Jacksonville.28 She began modestly with the playful invention of small pieces to play for her students. These improvisations and musical sketches evolved into a small repertory of compositions. Selections such as “Whirligig” and “The Elf Dance” won the praise of several of her teachers and other musical con- tacts.29 Crawford's early dabbling in the creation of new pieces was a mere foreshad- owing of what was yet to bloom in her future as a musician, even as her attention was directed toward her students. In 1921, Crawford began to consider leaving Jacksonville to pursue piano study elsewhere in the country or abroad and decided on matriculation at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.30 With the money she earned from teaching piano and the financial support of a cousin, she left Florida for Chicago in the autumn of 1921, bound for the Conservatory and a one- year program that would culminate in the awarding of a teaching certificate. 31 A Composer in the Making Ruth Crawford Seeger was one in a pantheon of influential American composers of the twentieth century. She surrounded herself with music in her Chicago period of study in the 1920s, at which time she became acquainted with the great works of Western European art music as they were performed live by the Chicago Symphony and Chicago Opera. From Adolf Weidig, she learned the foundations of the composi- tion craft, absorbing and emulating models from masters such as Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin; this influence was reflected in her early works such as Kaleidoscopic Changes on an Original Theme, Ending with a Fugue (1924). She was drawn to the esoteric, aesthetic mysticism of Djane Herz, from whom she learned to cultivate art and mysticism, including the Taoist value of passive receptivity, within herself. In 1925, Crawford became acquainted with Daniel Chenneviere, an influential creator of modern music, who later adopted the name Dane Rhudyar.32 Rhudyar emerged as a “messianic figure” in her life, in that he blended the roles of art and spirituality, and espoused dissonance as utopian modernism—”a social emancipation through eman- cipation of the total chromatic.”33 Crawford developed a long-standing professional association with American poet-laureate Carl Sandburg, serving first as a piano 242 teacher for his three daughters and eventually becoming like part of his family.34 She contributed Romantic arrangements to Sandburg's anthology of folk songs, The American Songbag (1927), and set several of his poems to music, including Five Songs on Sandburg Poems (1929). Crawford's early glimpses of American folk music might be attributed to Sandburg. Charles Seeger summarized the exchange when he shared that “along in 1925 and '26 Sandburg was telling her that this music that she was writing was alright, but then told her what the real music of America was . . .”35 By the end of the decade, her compositions were exemplars of posttonal pluralism, in which tonality was optional rather than required. An eclecticism streaming from Europeans like Scriabin, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Hindemith gripped her imagi- nation and influenced her work. Her Five Preludes for Piano (1925), Sonata for Violin and Piano (1926), and Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano (1930) are examples of some of the techniques of dissonant counterpoint, motoric rhythms, and metric play that characterized her style. The death of her mother in 1928 ushered Crawford into a period of newfound independence. She departed Chicago for New York in September 1929, and joined the “composers' circle,” which included members such as Henry Cowell, Charles Ruggles, Charles Seeger, Dane Rudyhar, Edgard Varese, and Leon Theremin.36 She accepted an offer from Charles Seeger for composition studies with him in late 1929. Over a period of several years, their relationship shifted from teacher-pupil, to father-daughter, and eventually to romantic interests that led to their marriage in 1932. As the first woman to earn a Guggenheim fellowship, she elected to spend 1930 and 1931 in Europe.37 This was her most productive year as a composer, result- ing in her highly acclaimed String Quartet 1931, among other chamber works. In 1939, Crawford Seeger composed Rissolty, Rossolty, subtitled An American Fantasy for Orchestra, a sophisticated three-minute work for high school orchestra that fea- tured a traditional fiddle tune with two folk songs that were fragmented and recom- bined. She continued to compose to the end of her life, although her priorities shifted as she was raising her children, tending to family matters, and becoming involved in transcription and arrangement projects with important repercussions for music edu- cation.38 Her last composition was the three-movement Suite for Wind Quintet, com- posed in 1952, which brought her back in touch—after years of labor-intensive transcription work—with the compositional craft of her Chicago style period, including the manipulation of serial material in the third movement.39 Wife, Mother, and Teacher Prior to her Guggenheim year in Europe, Crawford had worked diligently with Charles Seeger over the summer months of 1930 on a manuscript concerning the art and pedagogy of composition and counterpoint.40 It was during this time that “the partnership between Seeger and Crawford generated the core of inquiry through 243 which Crawford crystallized her musical expression in composition and Seeger syn- thesized his thoughts on modern musical composition.”41 During days of writing and evenings of singing folk songs with family members, their friendship blossomed into romance. Still, Ruth had departed in September for Europe, spending the bulk of her time in Berlin. Throughout her stay overseas, Crawford was prolific in her letter writing to Seeger.42 Upon her returning to New York, Crawford and Seeger found themselves in the midst of the Great Depression, where, despite the economic struggles and the reduc- tion of Seeger's teaching load, the couple married in October of 1932.43 The summer of 1933 brought with it various financial strains, but concluded with the birth of the Seegers' first son, Michael. Daughter Margaret (Peggy) followed in 1935. Composing proved to be difficult for Crawford while rearing small children; her creative output shifted away from composing music to “composing babies.”44, 45 Fortunately for the struggling Seeger family, Charles was recommended for a position in the Washington, DC, area. Following the family's move to Silver Spring, Maryland, two more children were welcomed into the family—Barbara in 1937 and Penelope in 1943.46 Proximity to the nation's capital allowed Crawford and Seeger access to various archives of American folk music, an interest that would shape the remainder of their lives. While juggling the care of her children, the management of a household, and the exploration of folk music traditions, Crawford began to take on piano students once again and taught an occasional theory lesson. In reflection on the bustling years in Silver Spring, Mike Seeger remarked, During those Silver Spring years, Dio [his name for his mother] took care of the family, gave birth to Penny, edited several books of folk songs . . . All with a cranky portable typewriter, without driving a car, without diaper service or a washing machine (or a weather forecast), and mostly before dial telephones .47 Songs to Teach America: The Lomax Collection There was much collective music making within the Charles Seeger family, and both Ruth Crawford Seeger and her husband had had prior encounters with American folk music by the time Charles was hired in 1935 as part of Roosevelt's New Deal to set up music recreation programs in rural America. During this time, Ruth and Charles frequently joined with folk musicians such as Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter and left-wing activists such as labor organizer Aunt Molly Jackson, and it was during these gatherings—first in New York, and later in their home outside of Washington, DC—that they came to know the folk song collectors John A. Lomax and his son, Alan. In the mid-1930s, it was common practice for Alan Lomax to bring the folk singers from their recording sessions at the Library of Congress to evening singing sessions and instrumental jams at the Seegers' Silver Springs 244 home.48 The younger Lomax was especially taken by their proletarian views and acknowledged later that he had initially learned to associate social economics with music and to connect music with culture through late-night discussions at the Seeger home.49 While the reigning Roosevelts were interested in folk music, Charles sought to bring it to the attention of scholars, and the Lomaxes were intent on giving folk music back to the people. 50 Even as she was raising the young Mike and Peggy Seeger (and later Barbara and Penny), Crawford began to arrange some of the music she was hearing from guests in the family home and at traditional music festivals—songs such as “Billy Boy,” “Frog Went A-Courtin,'” “I Ride an Old Paint,” “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” and “The Three Ravens.” These were published as Nineteen American Folk Tunes for Piano (1936–1938) and were intended as piano compositions for children in the elemen- tary grades. In 1937, as a result of a constant association between the Seegers and the Lomaxes, the elder Lomax asked Ruth to transcribe some of the collection of field recordings that he had recently donated to the Archive of American Folk Song—2,800 items on 700 aluminum and acetate disks. John Lomax needed a fresh point of view, a careful ear, and a clear musical mind that could portray the music accurately in notation and yet without the scientific accuracy of every quarter-tone differentiation in pitch. Ruth was the clear choice.51 The music of the Lomax recordings was rich and varied, covering some 16,000 miles of collecting and representing multiple genres from many corners of the nation. As Crawford delineated in her preface to Our Singing Country (1941), there was “a work song in 5/4 meter, a Cajun tune consistently in 10/8 throughout a Ravel- like banjo accompaniment, a ballad or archaic tonal texture, a Bahamian part-song of contrapuntal bareness.”52a, and cities like New Orleans and Boston. The impetus of the Lomaxes was to gather and preserve the songs and to one day return them to the people. With Crawford's transcriptions, these songs could be brought to school- children, to homes, and to families. In fact, Ruth referred to her transcription project as “the family book,” and her daughter, Peggy, remembered years later that “the house resounded with music morning, noon and night” as the field recordings were played many times over during the transcription process.53 Her brother, Mike Seeger, had exclaimed at age 5 that, so immersed was the household in listening to the songs of the collection, “It feels as though the sounds are coming from inside me!”54 Having been heavily influenced by their family's immersion in the preservation of folk music, both Peggy and Mike Seeger grew to become highly regarded as per- formers and recording artists during the folk song revival of the 1950s and 1960s, with Mike still active as a performer today.55 Transcription was painstakingly hard work for Crawford, and the fee of $1 per song was contentious for the labor-intensive work. She was working out every pitch and duration, taking her direction from the previous work of Béla Bartók in his research into Hungarian folk songs and musicologist George Herzog's scientifically accurate transcriptions.56 The Ansley turntable she used, along with a small speaker 245 that was wired to black earphones, allowed her to slow the speed down on the faster songs. She struggled to represent the tunes with precision, and she, the conservatory- trained musician, would argue heatedly with Alan Lomax, the folk song collector, on the details. Once she exploded to Bess, Alan's sister, who was working at the national archives, concerning a particular musical decision she had made in the tran- scription process that Alan had judged as incorrect: “I have listened to this song 83 times. Has your brother listened to it 83 times?”57 and next to the turntable was a notebook with tally marks to denote just this record of the number of times she had spent listening to the recording of that song.58 Of the 300 tunes Crawford transcribed, 190 were published, many of them in Our Singing Country in 1941. Fiddle tunes such as “Bonyparte” were impeccably notated, as were African American field hollers such as “Trouble, Trouble,” spiritu- als such as “God Don't Like It,” and Anglo American sailor songs such as “Peter Gray.” In the process of publication, Crawford fought for engraving over the use of an old and dirty font and eventually won. She pressed hard for the publication of her eighty-page monograph on singing style and transcription that she referred to as “The Music of American Folk Songs,” which documented her study of transcription methodology.59 The publishers, backed by the Lomaxes, condensed this component into ten pages of print, which matched the general preface. They countered that people were not inter- ested in buying a thesis and that a study of the musical challenges of transcription would put the book out of touch with a readership of everyday Americans without expert musi- cal training. Crawford was devastated but could not overrule their decision.60 Despite critical acclaim for the impeccable musical notation and literary presen- tation of each song, Our Singing Country was a commercial failure.61 The melodies were devoid of piano accompaniment, which did not appeal to the interests of middle-class Americans who desired piano-vocal arrangements for their home enter- tainment. The volume was praised by musicologists and folklorists alike, however, which encouraged Crawford to continue to transcribe for the rest of her life.62 These musical experts were struck by her suggestions for the style of singing folk songs, that the songs need not be endowed “with the manners of fine-art or popular perfor- mance” which would “sentimentalize or dramatize” the songs away from their intent by folk singers as simple and straightforward.63 They were persuaded by her articu- lation of folk singing style for its invariance of dynamics, its off-beat rhythms, met- ric irregularities, nondiatonic intonation, and particularities of vocal timbre. Crawford's engagement with the Lomaxes and their collections of American musi- cal heritages was further manifested in her arrangements found in the collaboration with Charles Seeger in Best Loved American Folk Songs: Folk Song U.S.A.64 Her work with the Lomax materials were lessons in analytical listening and in honing her understanding of an American musical heritage through the close-up and consistent efforts to depict the melodies in notation as they truly had been sung. 246 American Folk Songs for Children In the midst of juggling her time among her children, household duties, compos- ing, and other projects, Crawford was about to stumble on yet another musical ven- ture that would consume much of her time and energy. While living in Silver Spring, Maryland, the opportunity became available for the Seegers to send their youngest daughter (at the time), Barbara, to a local cooperative nursery school. In exchange for Barbara's attendance at this school, Crawford was expected to pay $4.50 in monthly tuition fees in addition to serving as a teacher's aide one morning per week. She experienced much anxiety over her new role in a children's school environment. However, she was quickly won over by the idea following a morning of singing with the children. Crawford had a breakthrough with “Mary Wore Her Red Dress,” insert- ing each child's name and article of clothing into the song.65 Charles Seeger recalled her successful morning of teaching, as he returned home that day to a “radiant Ruth.”66 The experience was a catalyst for Crawford's newest project, a music booklet consisting of various American folk songs, intended for an audience of children and those who cared for them. Drawing on her transcriptions for the songs featured in Our Singing Country and her own folk music expertise, Crawford's booklet began to take shape. She created “simple piano arrangements so that the mothers would learn the songs and practice them” and “not only the musicians but all the mothers may co-operate in bringing the songs to the children.”67 By March of 1942, American Songs for American Children had emerged in a purple ditto for- mat, which was retitled shortly thereafter as American Songs Before Six; it was eventually published by Oak Publications as American Folk Songs for Children (1948) and featured the illustrations of Barbara Cooney.68 This process of compil- ing folk music for children was both natural and logical for Crawford, given her involvement in the Our Singing Country project and her extensive use of folk songs with her own children. Crawford acknowledged this pattern of music mak- ing when she wrote that “back as far as our own children can remember, our house has been full of the sound of songs . . . ballads, work songs, love songs, prison songs, dance songs, hollers, chants, spirituals, blues.”69 As Mike Seeger recalled, “they played `Get Along Home Cindy' on the piano to get us to go to bed at night.”70 So complete was her devotion to the folk music of America that, accord- ing to her husband, “the music that she gave to her [piano] pupils from about 1945 to about the time she died was music of the type that showed the folk strand in those composers' compositions, especially Bartok.”71 Crawford's new focus for her work in folklore and education, much of it keyed toward the publication of American Folk Songs for Children, engrossed her for the subsequent ten years. She adamantly believed that American children should first encounter the music of their own nation and that these encounters with folk music infuse children with a sense of cultural awareness and belonging: 247 This kind of traditional or folk music is thoroughly identified with the kind of people who made America as we know it . . . they made it and are still making it . . . this music has been a natural part of work, play, sleep, fun, ridicule, love, death . . . it knows and tells what people have thought about the ways of living and the things that happened.72 Crawford relayed the importance of early childhood exposure to national musical traditions when she stated in the foreword to American Folk Songs for Children, Many of us open a savings account at the bank when a child is born, and add layer after layer of small deposits which he can later draw on for a college education. Perhaps a fund of songs might be begun as early, and added to layer after layer—an ever- growing wealth of materials which he can draw on at will and can take along with him as links from himself to the various aspects of the culture he will be going out to meet.73 She felt that folk songs are best left in their original forms, staying true to textual and sentimental intents. Several music teachers challenged her somewhat progres- sive ideas, because they wished to teach and proliferate the music of European tra- ditions. However, she remained true to her beliefs, during her service as a consultant in various early childhood programs in the Washington, DC, area, and even in con- junction with the Silver Burdett music textbook publishing company. She published subsequent volumes of folk songs for children including Animal Folk Songs for Children in 1950, American Folk Songs for Christmas in 1953, and Let's Build a Railroad, which was published in 1954, one year after her death.74 Table 1 provides a list of her published works intended for use in the music education of children. As early as 1942, when American Folk Songs for American Children was yet a mimeographed manuscript, Ruth was invited with Charles, Alan Lomax, and musi- cologist Ben Botkin to compile a sample songbook for that year's meeting of the Music Educators National Conference (MENC), to which she contributed transcriptions and a final copy. Vanette Lawler, the MENC executive secretary who had been work- ing with Charles on music projects of the Pan-American Union that would raise an awareness of Latin American and American folk music, arranged for Lomax and Pete Seeger to perform songs from the booklet, including “Cindy,” “The Wabash Cannonball,” and “John Henry,” and Woody Guthrie's folk-styled song, “So Long, It's Been Good to Know You.” MENC President Lilla Belle Pitts later marked the convention as the organization's “official recognition by music educators of the American folk song.”75 With this call for a dissemination of knowledge of traditional American music came the revisions of textbooks to encompass American heritage songs along with the largely Germanic folk songs and melodies that had filled their earlier publica- tions. Silver Burdett Company hired Ruth as a consultant for a new series, with the intent of publishing selections of her transcriptions, albeit in sanitized form that would leave out potentially offensive texts that referred to ethnic or social issues in 248 Table 1 Ruth Crawford Seeger's Published Folk Song Collections outdated or disrespectful ways.76text improvisation” that had as its greatest interest the integration of American folk music into the lives of middle-class children—even if variants of the words were necessary to make the transition.77 The breadth and depth of Crawford's American Folk Songs for Children is signif- icant. Her compilation of songs of many regions and social functions is a time cap- sule of American musical and interpersonal traditions. Many of these songs were sung in classrooms, their piano accompaniments played by elementary school music teachers (and sometimes kindergarten teachers). Music textbook publishers, espe- cially Silver Burdett Company, used the book as a resource for songs they would publish in their graded basal music textbook series in 1956, including such songs as “All Around the Kitchen,” “Built My Lady a Fine Brick House,” “Frog Went A- Courtin',” “Goodbye, Old Paint,” “Jingle at the Windows (Tideo),” “Oh, John the Rabbit,” “Old Joe Clarke,” “The Wind Blow East,” and “Who Built the Ark?”78 Crawford's “research-based folk song collections that aimed to introduce the children of the urban middle class to the wealth of American folk music” have been deemed outstanding contributions to the revitalization of the nation's music.79 249 Carl Sandburg, Crawford's longtime friend and supporter, reflected on her best-known book by stating, Ruth Seeger's songbook is no sudden notion. It represents many years of a rare mother living with her music and her children. Her collection embodies an extraordinary array of time-tested songs for little ones, many of them so old they have been forgotten and now have the freshness of the new.80 The “freshness of the new” extends even into present day, as Crawford's collection of songs has been used and loved by many generations of children, parents, and teachers. American Music in American Schools: Implications for Music Educators Music education in American schools transpires as a result of the efforts of those who are trained in the pedagogical method as well as those who orbit outside the core circle of certified teachers of music but who are likewise committed to the transmis- sion and preservation of music among children and youth. Historically, performers and composers alike have enriched the life of school music programs for young Americans. Indeed, the membership of the professional society, MENC, has boasted many of America's major composers over the years, including Ruth Crawford Seeger. Even while she helped to shape twentieth-century American art music with her com- positions, she also was influential in advancing a vision for the music education of young people in mid-century America through bringing America's folk music trea- sures into basal music textbook series and into the repertoires of teachers and children. She composed chamber works that were hailed by audiences and critics for their rhythmic sensibility and dissonant counterpoint, yet she also tapped her compo- sitional skills in the numerous folk song arrangements she penned for use with children.81 She offered to teachers and children, as well as the broader public, music from the wellsprings of American folk culture that they could sing and play for their enjoyment and edification. Although her primary training was as a composer and pianist, Crawford's unconventional journey into music education is noteworthy for the philosophical position she maintained on the musical and social values of American music for the benefit of children's own understanding of who they were musically and within the cultural history of their nation. Ruth Crawford Seeger's efforts in the transcription, preservation, and prolifera- tion of American folk music have vital implications for modern music educators. Her lengthy hours spent at the phonograph, notating the texts, melodies, and rhythms of earthy, original folk songs have left a musical legacy that provides a solid foundation to students' understanding of the music and musicians of historic 250 times and circumstances. The availability of these musical treasures in print ensured their future existence in schools across the nation, as Crawford intended for her col- lections to be applicable in the home or school setting.82 Teachers of her time were able, as are teachers now, to turn to Crawford's transcriptions as models of American musical and folk culture. The songs are much more than enjoyable tunes to delight the singer. They are bridges to the nation's past and vessels of the values, trials, victories, rituals, and relationships of the vast tapestry of American culture. Music educators are perfectly poised to use these musical artifacts, instilling cul- tural awareness and belonging through the teaching of folk songs to children and youth as they have in the past and continue to do presently.83 The work of Ruth Crawford Seeger in the realm of transcribing and arranging American folk music for children is unparalleled in its attention to detail and the preservation of original texts, melodies, and functions. In her preface to Our Singing Country, Crawford warned, “do not `sing down' to the songs.” 84 Clearly, it was her desire for these kernels of America's musical past to be respected as reflections of their social and cultural origins. Crawford's attention to authenticity and originality has implications for contemporary music educators teaching American music folk traditions as well as music from cultures from across globe. No piece of music exists in a vacuum; music emerges from intricate, multifaceted social and artistic contexts, situated in specific times and places. To extract pieces of music for the purpose of teaching without due regard to their origins would be unjust to both the musical tra- ditions and the learners. Crawford understood and adhered to this premise, much to the delight of the Lomaxes, husband Charles, and many musicians working within the realms of folklore and ethnomusicology. Yet, in contrast with Crawford's preservation of originality in American folk music stands her acknowledgement of the changing nature of folk music from gen- eration to generation or from place to place. She noted the freedom to experiment that is inherent in the folk music tradition and how those who perform it are invited to leave personal imprints on the songs. In her opinion, this experimental nature may have an important place in the music classroom and may lead to a “belief in our own worthiness and ability to make our own music [which] is a thing to be nurtured, a thing too often lost early in education.”85 Crawford valued the improvisatory aspect of folk music in the teaching of children, too, when she stated that children's play- ful changes to songs, even by changing words to the song texts, are important indi- cations that they may feel “free enough with music itself to make their own music. ”86 Teachers may benefit from Crawford's example, striking a balance between honor- ing the music in its original context and allowing children the freedom to use folk music as a point of departure for their own improvisatory and expressive endeavors. As much the educator as she was the maker of music, the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger is both her compositional output and her contributions to music education. Her engagement as teacher had begun early, in her first employment as a piano teacher, and was renewed when, as a mother of young children, she had enthusiastically committed 251 herself to teaching American folk songs to children. She knew music and the teaching act from first-hand experience, but her greatest influence was in the music she made available to teachers and their young students. She was a passionate advocate of children's education in and through music and a rich resource for teachers through her painstaking efforts to notate and then publish her transcriptions of American folk songs. She was principled in her belief that music is a bridge over which history and heritage may pass, from rural to urban settings and from living singers and instrumentalists, to those who have lost but wish to regain the music of their national, regional, and local communities. Her concentrated efforts to preserve music of the nation's heritage were certainly a departure for Americans at mid-century who were enamored of European songs to the exclusion of their own. Yet, Ruth Crawford Seeger persevered, and for this untiring effort to preserve and transmit music, she is celebrated. Through her efforts to safeguard the folk musics of America, she contributed to American music as it gained a toehold—and eventually a solid foundation—in the repertoire that is taught and learned in the music education of American children. Notes 1. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama, eds., Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007); Ellie M. Hisama, “In Pursuit of a Proletarian Music: Ruth Crawford's `Sacco, Vanzetti,'” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 73—93; and Joseph N. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 2. Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); and Taylor A. Greer, “The Dynamics of Dissonance in Seeger's Treatise and Crawford's Quartet,” in Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in American Musicology, ed. B. Yung and H. Rees (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 13—28. 3. Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 4. Lyn Ellen Burkett, “Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 57—72; S. C. Cook and Judith S. Tsou, eds., Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); and M. J. DeGraaf, “Documenting Music in the New Deal: The New York Composers' Forum Concerts, 1935—1940 (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2005). 5. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 6. Ray Allen, “Performing Dio's Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 224—51. 7. Robert L. Miller, Researching Life Stories and Family Histories (London: Sage, 2000). 8. Prue Chamberlayne, Joanna Bornat, and Tom Wengraf, The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science: Comparative Issues and Examples (London: Routledge, 2000). 9. Patricia Shehan Campbell, “How Musical Are We: John Blacking on Music, Education, and Cultural Understanding,” Journal of Research in Music Education (2000), 336—59; Carolyn Livingston, Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003); and Marie McCarthy, “On `American Music for American Children': The Contribution of Charles L. Seeger,” Journal of Research in Music Education (1995), 270—87. 252 10. DeGraaf, “Documenting Music”; and Nancy Y. Rao, “Partnership in Modern Music: Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford, 1929-1931,” American Music (1997), 352—80. 11. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 12. Matilda Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1986). 13. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 14. Ibid. 15. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. 16. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 17. R. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger: An Interview with Charles and Peggy Seeger,” American Music (1988), 442—54. 18. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 19. Ibid., 16. 20. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 21. Ibid.; Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 22. Ibid. 23. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 17. 24. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 25. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 26. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 27. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 28. Matlida Gaume, “Ruth Crawford Seeger: Her Life and Works (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1973); Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 29. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 30. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 31. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 32. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 33. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 49. 34. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 35. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 36. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 37. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. 38. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 39. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 40. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 41. Rao, “Partnership in Modern Music,” 352. 42. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 43. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 44. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 223: “Composing babies” was Ruth Crawford Seeger's humorous way of indicating that for a time in her life, her creative output took place in the form of giving birth to children, rather than musical compositions. 45. Ruth Crawford took her husband's last name upon marriage, she will be referred to as “Crawford” throughout this article for clarity and consistency. 46. Gaume, “Ruth Crawford Seeger: Her Life and Works.” 47. Mike Seeger, “Thoughts of Silver Spring, 1938,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter (2001), 1. 48. Peter Thomas Bartis, “A History of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress: The First Fifty Years” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1982). 253 49. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 50. Bess Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscing on Ruth,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter (2002), 4—5, 15; Bess Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscences on Our Singing Country: The Crawford Seeger/Lomax Alliance,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 148—52; and Marie McCarthy, “On `American Music for American Children': The Contribution of Charles L. Seeger,” Journal of Research in Music Education (2000), 270—87. 51. Bartis, “A History of the Archive of Folk Song.” 52. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1941), xviii. 53. Irwin Silber, “Peggy Seeger—The Voice of America in Folksong,” Sing Out (1962), 4—8. 54. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 249. 55. Allen, “Performing Dio's Legacy”; and Lydia Hamessley, “Peggy Seeger: From Traditional Folksinger to Contemporary Songwriter,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 252—87. 56. George Herzog, “Observations and Suggestion on Research in Primitive and Folk Music in the United States,” Southern Folklore Quarterly (1937), 25—27. 57. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 265. 58. Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscing on Ruth.” 59. Larry Polansky, ed., The Music of American Folk Song and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2001). 60. The 80 pages were later published in 2001 as The Music of American Folk Song and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music, edited by Larry Polansky with Judith Tick. 61. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 62. Ibid. 63. Marc Blitzstein, “Singing Country,” Modern Music (1942): 139—40. 64. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Best Loved American Folk Songs: Folk Song U.S.A. (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1947). 65. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 282. 66. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger,” 448. 67. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, 283. 68. Ruth Crawford Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers (New York: Oak Publications, 1948). 69. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers, 13. 70. M. Seeger, 1. 71. Wilding-White, 448. 72. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers, 21. 73. Ibid, 21. 74. Ruth Crawford Seeger, Animal Folk Songs for Children (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1950); Ruth Crawford Seeger, American Folk Songs for Christmas (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1953); and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Let's Build a Railroad (New York: Aladdin Books, 1954). 75. Lilla B. Pitts, “Music Education Advances to a New Front,” Music Educators Journal (1942), 9. 76. S. Thompson, ed., Four Symposia on Folklore (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953), 192—193. 77. Cantwell, 278. 78. James L. Mursell et al., Music for Living Series (Morristown, Silver Burdett Company, 1956). 79. Jerrold Hirsch, “`Cultural Strategy': The Seegers and B. A. Botkin as Friends and Allies,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 196-223. 254 80. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers (New York: Oak Publications, 1948), 7. 81. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 82. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children. 83. Jacob A. Evanson, “American Folk Songs,” Music Educators Journal (1951), 20—21; Vanette Lawler, “Animal Folk Songs for Children,” Music Educators Journal (1951), 54—55; and D. Garrett, “Ruth Crawford Seeger's `American Folk Songs for Children' at Fifty Years,” Kodaly Envoy (1998), 7—8. 84. Lomax and Lomax, Our Singing Country, xxxiii. 85. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music, 219; This position is aligned with the perspective of yet another Seeger, ethnomusicologist Anthony, who noted that every community has its historically traditional and authentic music as well as its nontraditional music that, although adapted and borrowed, is nonetheless “authentic” to those musicians who have embraced it. 86. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music, 220. Sarah H. Watts is a graduate teaching assistant in music education at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests include children's musical cultures and transgenerational musical play. Patricia Shehan Campbell is Donald E. Peterson Professor of Music at the University of Washington, Seattle. She writes on world music pedagogy and the musical cultures of children and youth. Submitted November 13, 2007; accepted June 14, 2008. 1. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama, eds., Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007); Ellie M. Hisama, “In Pursuit of a Proletarian Music: Ruth Crawford's `Sacco, Vanzetti,'” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds , ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 73—93; and Joseph N. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 2. Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); and Taylor A. Greer, “The Dynamics of Dissonance in Seeger's Treatise and Crawford's Quartet,” in Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in American Musicology , ed. B. Yung and H. Rees (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 13—28. 3. Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 4. Lyn Ellen Burkett, “Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds , ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 57—72; S. C. Cook and Judith S. Tsou, eds., Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); and M. J. DeGraaf, “Documenting Music in the New Deal: The New York Composers' Forum Concerts, 1935—1940 (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2005). 5. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 6. Ray Allen, “Performing Dio's Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds , ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 224—51. 7. Robert L. Miller, Researching Life Stories and Family Histories (London: Sage, 2000). 8. Prue Chamberlayne, Joanna Bornat, and Tom Wengraf, The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science: Comparative Issues and Examples (London: Routledge, 2000). 9. Patricia Shehan Campbell, “How Musical Are We: John Blacking on Music, Education, and Cultural Understanding,” Journal of Research in Music Education (2000), 336—59; Carolyn Livingston, Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003); and Marie McCarthy, “On `American Music for American Children': The Contribution of Charles L. Seeger,” Journal of Research in Music Education (1995), 270—87. 10. DeGraaf, “Documenting Music”; and Nancy Y. Rao, “Partnership in Modern Music: Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford, 1929-1931,” American Music (1997), 352—80. 11. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 12. Matilda Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1986). 13. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 14. Ibid. 15. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger . 16. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 17. R. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger: An Interview with Charles and Peggy Seeger,” American Music (1988), 442—54. 18. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 19. Ibid., 16. 20. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 21. Ibid.; Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 22. Ibid. 23. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 17. 24. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 25. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 26. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 27. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 28. Matlida Gaume, “Ruth Crawford Seeger: Her Life and Works (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1973); Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 29. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 30. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 31. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 32. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 33. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 49. 34. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 35. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 36. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 37. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger . 38. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger.” 39. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 40. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger ; and Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 41. Rao, “Partnership in Modern Music,” 352. 42. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 43. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger. 44. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 223: “Composing babies” was Ruth Crawford Seeger's humorous way of indicating that for a time in her life, her creative output took place in the form of giving birth to children, rather than musical compositions. 45. Ruth Crawford took her husband's last name upon marriage, she will be referred to as “Crawford” throughout this article for clarity and consistency. 46. Gaume, “Ruth Crawford Seeger: Her Life and Works.” 47. Mike Seeger, “Thoughts of Silver Spring, 1938,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter (2001), 1. 48. Peter Thomas Bartis, “A History of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress: The First Fifty Years” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1982). 49. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 50. Bess Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscing on Ruth,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter (2002), 4—5, 15; Bess Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscences on Our Singing Country: The Crawford Seeger/Lomax Alliance,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds , ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 148—52; and Marie McCarthy, “On `American Music for American Children': The Contribution of Charles L. Seeger,” Journal of Research in Music Education (2000), 270—87. 51. Bartis, “A History of the Archive of Folk Song.” 52. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1941), xviii. 53. Irwin Silber, “Peggy Seeger—The Voice of America in Folksong,” Sing Out (1962), 4—8. 54. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 249. 55. Allen, “Performing Dio's Legacy”; and Lydia Hamessley, “Peggy Seeger: From Traditional Folksinger to Contemporary Songwriter,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 252—87. 56. George Herzog, “Observations and Suggestion on Research in Primitive and Folk Music in the United States,” Southern Folklore Quarterly (1937), 25—27. 57. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 265. 58. Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscing on Ruth.” 59. Larry Polansky, ed., The Music of American Folk Song and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2001). 60. The 80 pages were later published in 2001 as The Music of American Folk Song and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music, edited by Larry Polansky with Judith Tick. 61. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 62. Ibid. 63. Marc Blitzstein, “Singing Country,” Modern Music (1942): 139—40. 64. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Best Loved American Folk Songs: Folk Song U.S.A. (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1947). 65. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 282. 66. Wilding-White, “Remembering Ruth Crawford Seeger,” 448. 67. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger , 283. 68. Ruth Crawford Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers (New York: Oak Publications, 1948). 69. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers, 13. 70. M. Seeger, 1. 71. Wilding-White, 448. 72. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers, 21. 73. Ibid, 21. 74. Ruth Crawford Seeger, Animal Folk Songs for Children (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1950); Ruth Crawford Seeger, American Folk Songs for Christmas (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1953); and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Let's Build a Railroad (New York: Aladdin Books, 1954). 75. Lilla B. Pitts, “Music Education Advances to a New Front,” Music Educators Journal (1942), 9. 76. S. Thompson, ed., Four Symposia on Folklore (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953), 192—193. 77. Cantwell, 278. 78. James L. Mursell et al., Music for Living Series (Morristown, Silver Burdett Company, 1956). 79. Jerrold Hirsch, “`Cultural Strategy': The Seegers and B. A. Botkin as Friends and Allies,” in Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds, ed. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 196-223. 80. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children in Home School and Nursery School: A Book for Children, Parents and Teachers (New York: Oak Publications, 1948), 7. 81. Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger . 82. Seeger, American Folk Songs for Children. 83. Jacob A. Evanson, “American Folk Songs,” Music Educators Journal (1951), 20—21; Vanette Lawler, “Animal Folk Songs for Children,” Music Educators Journal (1951), 54—55; and D. Garrett, “Ruth Crawford Seeger's `American Folk Songs for Children' at Fifty Years,” Kodaly Envoy (1998), 7—8. 84. Lomax and Lomax, Our Singing Country, xxxiii. 85. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music , 219; This position is aligned with the perspective of yet another Seeger, ethnomusicologist Anthony, who noted that every community has its historically traditional and authentic music as well as its nontraditional music that, although adapted and borrowed, is nonetheless “authentic” to those musicians who have embraced it. 86. Gaume, Ruth Crawford Seeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music, 220.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger grew into the role of music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage. This article examines the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education, principally through examination of primary and secondary sources and review of her published works. While historical in some of its methodological procedures, it is even more so a biographical study of a composer who was consumed with a passion to preserve and transmit American heritage music to children. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this research draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. The authors examine the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger as an educator, with particular emphasis on the manner in which music of the people was masterfully transcribed from recordings and prepared for children and their teachers in schools and preschools.
AB - American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger grew into the role of music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage. This article examines the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education, principally through examination of primary and secondary sources and review of her published works. While historical in some of its methodological procedures, it is even more so a biographical study of a composer who was consumed with a passion to preserve and transmit American heritage music to children. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this research draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. The authors examine the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger as an educator, with particular emphasis on the manner in which music of the people was masterfully transcribed from recordings and prepared for children and their teachers in schools and preschools.
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U2 - 10.1177/0022429408327176
DO - 10.1177/0022429408327176
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:60950685068
SN - 0022-4294
VL - 56
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EP - 254
JO - Journal of Research in Music Education
JF - Journal of Research in Music Education
IS - 3
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