Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Music

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the life and work of the esteemed "ultra-modern" American composer and pioneering folk music activist, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953).

Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds offers new perspectives on the life and pioneering musical activities of American composer and folk music activist Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Ruth Crawford developed a unique modernist style with such now-esteemed works as her String Quartet 1931. In 1933, after marrying Charles Seeger, she turned to the work of teaching music to children and of transcribing, arranging, and publishing folk songs.
Thiscollection of studies by musicologists, music theorists, folklorists, historians, music educators, and women's studies scholars reveals how innovation and tradition have intertwined in surprising ways to shape the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America.

Contributors: Lyn Ellen Burkett, Melissa J. De Graaf, Taylor A. Greer, Lydia Hamessley, Bess Lomax Hawes, Jerrold Hirsch, Roberta Lamb, Carol J. Oja, Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Joseph N. Straus, Judith Tick.

Ray Allen (Brooklyn College) is author of Singing in the Spirit: African-American Sacred Quartets in New York City.
Ellie M. Hisama (Columbia University) is author of Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon.