RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER (1901 - 1953): The great American folk music specialist but also a visionary modernist, first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for her composing and a member of star-studded group of composers that included Varèse, Copland and Cowell.
It was study in Chicago that started it all off, seeing an orchestra for the first time and falling in love with Scriabin and poetry and song. The Guggenheim fellowship was awarded in 1930, on the strength of her Sandburg songs, and using the money to travel to Europe she represented America at the ISCM festival, travelling as far as Budapest to meet Béla Bartók, that other great (Hungarian) folk music specialist.
Later, she went on to marry Charles Seeger, the ethno-musicologist, and that’s when she began to concentrate on American folk music and her enormously important collections. Pete Seeger is her step-son
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
