Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 Writing the Music of Ruth Crawford into Mainstream Music History
- 2 Ruth Crawford’s Precompositional Strategies
- 3 Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford’s Piano Study in Mixed Accents
- 4 In Pursuit of a Proletarian Music: Ruth Crawford’s “Sacco, Vanzetti”
- 5 The Reception of an Ultramodernist: Ruth Crawford in the Composers’ Forum
- 6 Ruth Crawford’s Imprint on Contemporary Composition
- 7 Reminiscences on Our Singing Country: The Crawford Seeger/Lomax Alliance
- 8 Philosophical Counterpoint: A Comparison of Charles Seeger’s Composition Treatise and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Folk Song Appendix
- 9 Composing and Teaching as Dissonant Counterpoint
- 10 “Cultural Strategy”: The Seegers and B. A. Botkin as Friends and Allies
- 11 Performing Dio’s Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival
- 12 Peggy Seeger: From Traditional Folksinger to Contemporary Songwriter
- Selected Discography
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
3 - Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford’s Piano Study in Mixed Accents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 Writing the Music of Ruth Crawford into Mainstream Music History
- 2 Ruth Crawford’s Precompositional Strategies
- 3 Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford’s Piano Study in Mixed Accents
- 4 In Pursuit of a Proletarian Music: Ruth Crawford’s “Sacco, Vanzetti”
- 5 The Reception of an Ultramodernist: Ruth Crawford in the Composers’ Forum
- 6 Ruth Crawford’s Imprint on Contemporary Composition
- 7 Reminiscences on Our Singing Country: The Crawford Seeger/Lomax Alliance
- 8 Philosophical Counterpoint: A Comparison of Charles Seeger’s Composition Treatise and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Folk Song Appendix
- 9 Composing and Teaching as Dissonant Counterpoint
- 10 “Cultural Strategy”: The Seegers and B. A. Botkin as Friends and Allies
- 11 Performing Dio’s Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival
- 12 Peggy Seeger: From Traditional Folksinger to Contemporary Songwriter
- Selected Discography
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Tradition and Experiment in (the New) Music (TENM), Charles Seeger's treatise on dissonant counterpoint, is the product of an intense period of collaboration between Seeger and Crawford from the summer of 1930 through September of 1931. The treatise is best understood not as a finished document, but as a glimpse into Seeger and Crawford's thoughts on experimental music at the time it was written. Nancy Yunhwa Rao traces the development of Seeger's ideas with a focus on his conception of the neume—Seeger's term for a specific type of musical motive—and its relationship to phrase, form, modes, and scales in various drafts of the treatise; she proposes understanding TENM “not as a self-contained compositional theory but rather as a thinking and working process in which the focus was significantly modified over the period encompassing Crawford's involvement.” This chapter draws on an understanding of TENM in this manner, with a focus on processes of dissonation as Crawford applied them to the materials of traditional tonal and pretonal practice in her Piano Study in Mixed Accents (PSMA) of 1930.
Recognizing Crawford's involvement in TENM is important for a number of reasons. In his book The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Joseph N. Straus remarks:
Crawford actively assisted in preparing the treatise for eventual publication, although that did not take place in her, or [Seeger’s], lifetime. She acted as a sounding board for Seeger's voice, and as such shaped the treatise, amplifying some aspects and muting others. Indeed, Crawford was so immersed in the preparation of the treatise that Seeger offered to name her as its coauthor, an honor she declined. Instead, Seeger dedicated the treatise “to Ruth Crawford, of whose studies these pages are a record and without whose collaboration and inspiration they would not have been written.” … [I]t should be clearly understood from the outset that [TENM] embodies Crawford's ideas as well [as Seeger’s], and that it would not have taken its present form and, indeed might not have been written at all, without her.
Crawford's dual contributions to TENM—“collaboration and inspiration”— need to be evaluated in the context of traditional views of women and creative endeavors.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ruth Crawford Seeger's WorldsInnovation and Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Music, pp. 57 - 72Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007