80 Pp. Black Cloth, Stamped In Gilt. First Edition Stated, Dust Jacket Priced $2.50 (There Was At Least One Later Printing, Without The First Edition Statement, And With Dust Jacket Priced $1.75). Book Near Fine, Slight Usage, Gilt Bright, Gift Inscription Dated December 1951. Dust Jacket Worn, With Small Chips And Tears. Per Wikipedia, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901 –1953) Was An American Composer And Folk Music Specialist. Crawford Moved To Chicago In 1921 Where She Enrolled At The American Conservatory Of Music. Crawford's Focus At The Conservatory Quickly Shifted From Piano Performance To Composition. During Her Second Year There, She Began Composition And Theory Studies With Adolf Weidig And Wrote Several Early Works, Including A Nocturne For Violin And Piano (1923) And A Set Of Theme And Variations For Piano (1923). While Crawford Continued To Study Theory And Composition With Weidig At The American Conservatory Of Music Through 1929, In 1924 She Also Began Private Piano Lessons With Djane Lavoie-Herz. Herz, One Of The Most Prestigious Piano Teachers In Chicago At The Time, Had A Profound Impact On Crawford's Intellectual And Musical Life. During This Time, Crawford Met The Leading Chicago Poet Carl Sandburg, Whose Writings She Eventually Set To Music. In 1925, She Composed “The Adventures Of Tom Thumb,” An Experiment Which Combined The Spoken Word With Music. Crawford Spent The Summer Of 1929 At The Macdowell Colony 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. In The Fall Of That Year, Crawford Moved Into The New York Home Of Music Patron Blanche Walton And Began Studying Composition With Charles Seeger (Father Of Pete Seeger). In 1930, She Became The First Female Composer To Receive The Guggenheim Fellowship And Went To Berlin And Paris. Crawford Subsequently Travelled To Vienna And Budapest To Meet Composers Alban Berg And Béla Bartók To Discuss Her Music And Gain Support For Publication. Though Surrounded By Exponents Of German Modernism, She Chose To Study And Compose Alone. Seeger's Ideas, Communicated By Letter, Were Crucial To The Development Of Her Style And Selections. She And Charles Seeger Married In 1932 After Her Subsequent Trip To Paris. At The International Society For Contemporary Music Festival In Amsterdam (1933), Her Three Songs For Voice, Oboe, Percussion And Strings Represented The United States. Crawford Seeger And Her Family Moved To Washington, D.C., In 1936 After Charles' Appointment To The Music Division Of The Resettlement Administration. There Crawford Seeger Worked Closely With John And Alan Lomax At The Archive Of American Folk Song At The Library Of Congress To Preserve And Teach American Folk Music. Crawford Seeger's Reputation As A Composer Rests Chiefly On Her New York Compositions Written Between 1930 And 1933, Which Exploit Dissonant Counterpoint And American Serial Techniques. During These Years Crawford Began To Incorporate Polytonality And Tone Clusters Into Her Compositions. She Was One Of The First Composers To Extend Serial Processes To Musical Elements Other Than Pitch And To Develop Formal Plans Based On Serial Operations. Her Technique May Have Been Influenced By The Music Of Schoenberg, Although They Met Only Briefly During Her Studies In Germany. Many Of Her Works From This Period Employ Dissonant Counterpoint, A Theoretical Compositional System Developed By Charles Seeger And Used By Henry Cowell, Johanna Beyer, And Others. String Quartet 1931, Particularly The Third Movement, Is Crawford Seeger's Most Famous And Influential Work.
