...of Dark & Bright Preview: Ruth Crawford Seeger

Did you know that composer Ruth Crawford Seeger is one of the premier voices in American modernism? She was the first woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, traveling to Europe, where she composed her most famous work, her string quartet.

Our …of dark and bright program includes her Andante for Strings, which is an expansion of the slow movement of that earlier string quartet.

Born in Ohio in 1901, Seeger was an American folk music expert who was highly prolific from the 1920s until her death in 1953. With a flair for the mystical (she was heavily influenced by the music of Alexander Scriabin and a metaphysical movement known as Theosophy),

The matriarch of a musical family, the majority of Seeger’s children have also enjoyed well-established careers as folk musicians, perhaps most notably her eldest stepson, American singer and activist Pete Seeger.

Learn more about Ruth Crawford Seeger from “The Classical Nerd”

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group Crawford Seeger: Andante for Strings · The Cleveland Orchestra · Christoph von Dohnányi