{"id":17165,"date":"2024-10-08T10:15:16","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T14:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/?p=17165"},"modified":"2024-11-06T15:23:26","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T20:23:26","slug":"arthur-farwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/2024\/10\/arthur-farwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Farwell at the Vanguard of American Musical Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0More Displays<\/a><\/p>\n

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Online exhibit from the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections; curated by Gail E. Lowther.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Today, the composer Arthur Farwell (1872\u20131952) is best remembered as a leading figure in the \u201cIndianist\u201d movement in American classical music (ca. 1890\u20131920). Certainly, Farwell held an important role as an advocate for Amerindian music in the early 20th century, given his ethnographic interest in Indigenous music and culture, his use of Amerindian music as source material in several of his own compositions, and his promotion of the genre via a series of cross-country lecture-recitals in the 1900s and his music publishing firm, the Wa-Wan Press. Yet, as several scholars have noted, Farwell\u2019s \u201cIndianist\u201d works comprise only a small fraction of his oeuvre, and the remainder of his compositions and musical activities span an extraordinary and quite eclectic range of interests and influences, including turn-of-the-century Symbolism, American nationalism, community music-making, civic pageantry, harmonic experimentation, and Western Esoteric religious philosophies like Spiritualism, Theosophy, and New Thought. Traces of these diverse movements are evident throughout Farwell\u2019s compositions and professional activities, with multiple influences often overlapping within specific works or projects.<\/p>\n

This curated exhibit takes a look through the scores, photographs, and papers in the Arthur Farwell Collection at Sibley Music Library\u2014the principal repository for Farwell\u2019s manuscripts and papers[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u2014with the aim of revealing these diverse influences and positioning them in the context of larger cultural movements to offer a kaleidoscopic view of turn-of-the-century American music making.<\/p>\n

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1.<\/a> 2<\/a>. 3.<\/a> 4.<\/a> 5.<\/a> 6.<\/a> 7.<\/a> 8.<\/a> 9.<\/a> 10.<\/a> 11.<\/a> 12. <\/a>13.<\/a> 14<\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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1<\/h3>\n

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Arthur Farwell launched his professional career in music in 1899 after several years of serious study in Boston (1893\u20131897, with George Whitefield Chadwick and Homer Norris) and Europe (1897\u20131899, with Engelbert Humperdinck, Hans Pfitzner, and Alexandre Guilmant). His first published composition, Tone Pictures After Pastels in Prose<\/em>, op. 7 (1895)\u2014which he completed while studying composition with Chadwick\u2014was a series of nine short pieces for solo piano, each inspired by and prefaced with a prose poem. After returning from his European training, Farwell continued exploring his interest in literature in a series of piano and orchestral compositions that he titled \u201cSymbolistic Studies\u201d in reference to the late 19th-century Symbolist movement. This aesthetic movement was initially conceived of and developed by a group of French poets as a reaction against a contemporary focus on artistic naturalism and realism. Instead of representing reality in their art, Symbolist poets like Charles Baudelaire, St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9, and Paul Verlaine sought to convey abstract truths, spiritual meaning, and inner emotions through symbolism, metaphor, and imagery. By the 1890s, the Symbolist aesthetic had spread beyond poetry and literature to influence painters, dramatists, and composers as well.<\/p>\n

Given Farwell\u2019s upbringing and penchant for the metaphysical, it is unsurprising that he was drawn to the Symbolist aesthetic. His mother, Sara Wyer Farwell, had studied astrology, Hinduism, Theosophy, and New Thought philosophies. As a child, Farwell learned to value visions, dreams, and other spiritual experiences; as an adult, Farwell regularly used techniques of meditation and visualization to access his inner, intuitive thoughts and creativity. The Symbolist aesthetic, in seeking to evoke the artist\u2019s inner world, likely resonated with Farwell in his ongoing efforts to explore his own spiritual and artistic intuition.<\/p>\n

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2<\/h3>\n

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Between 1901 and 1912, Farwell began six \u201cSymbolistic Studies,\u201d but he completed only four. The first two\u2014Symbolistic Study No. 1, Toward the Dream<\/em>, op. 16 (1901), and Symbolistic Study No. 2, \u201cPerhelion<\/em>,\u201d op. 17 (1904)\u2014were for solo piano, though unfinished sketches indicate that he began reworking the second solo for orchestra. The third study, subtitled \u201cOnce I Passed Through a Populous City<\/em>\u201d after Walt Whitman\u2019s eponymous poem, is for orchestra (1908, re-orchestrated 1921). As Farwell explained, in his series of symbolistic studies, he aimed to \u201cuse the obvious symbolic power of music\u201d to express the ideas and themes of his source material without an explicit musical program.[2]<\/a><\/sup> He further elaborated on his approach in the composer\u2019s notes for Symbolistic Study No. 3<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The term \u201cSymbolistic Study\u201d was employed by me for a series of works begun in 1901, when the symbolistic movement in literature was at its height. In these works I was using music frankly as a symbol of specific ideas, but avoiding all close following of a program and letting the music rest on thematic presentation and development. The Whitman poem presents two sharply contrasted pictures, one on the material plane\u2014the imposing city\u2014and one on the psychic\u2014the memory of an emotional experience. To this extent, being in fact two compositions, separated in time by a mere instant\u2019s pause, but in level by the distance between the material and the psychic. The second part however contains a momentary and shadowy memory of the city, as something remote and unreal from the standpoint of the emotional experience.<\/p>\n

Farwell began sketches for a fourth and fifth study, for solo piano and orchestra, respectively, but those works were not completed. His last effort in this project was Symbolistic Study No. 6, Mountain Vision<\/em>, op. 37, which was written initially for solo piano (1912) and then reworked for two pianos and string orchestra (1931). Unlike Farwell\u2019s earlier symbolistic studies, this piece was not based on a pre-existing literary work; rather, Farwell applied a similar symbolic approach to evoke a psychological program of struggle inspired by mountain scenery. In several later works, such as his piano suite In the Tetons<\/em> (1930) and the five-movement \u201csymphonic song ceremony\u201d Mountain Song<\/em> (1931), Farwell also turned to nature for inspiration, attempting to capture its beauty and grandeur through musical \u201cnature-painting.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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3<\/h3>\n

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It was during this same period\u2014the 1900s and 1910s\u2014that Farwell produced the bulk of his \u201cIndianist\u201d music, that is, pieces of Western art music that were based on Amerindian melodies. In this effort, Farwell was joined by several other American composers, including Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881\u20131946), John Comfort Fillmore (1843\u20131898), Henry F. Gilbert (1868\u20131928), and Amy Beach (1867\u20131944), who similarly looked to Amerindian music as source material for a new nationalistic style of American art music. From about 1890 to the 1920s, these composers incorporated \u201cIndian\u201d elements\u2014from narratives and myths to isolated rhythmic features to whole melodies\u2014into new compositions that otherwise relied on the structure and form of traditional Western art music. This impulse to look to ethnic folk music as source material mirrored nationalistic movements that emerged across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, as Tara Browner has observed, compared to European nationalist composers, who predominately used music from their own cultural heritage, the Indianists were unique in coopting Indigenous music as \u201cnationalist by geography\u201d; none of the participating composers claimed Amerindian heritage but rather saw Native musics as a representative and ethnically unique stand-in for \u201cAmerican\u201d culture and its citizens\u2019 mixed ethnic origins.[4]<\/a><\/sup> Moreover, most of these composers encountered the source material second-hand through published, Westernized transcriptions by ethnologists like Alice Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche.<\/p>\n

Farwell was among the most ardent advocates for Amerindian music and its incorporation into American art music. He believed it could revitalize the American musical aesthetic and establish a distinct musical style that would stand out from the music of European composers. In 1901, he founded a music publishing firm\u2014the Wa-Wan Press\u2014which was specifically devoted to publishing serious compositions by American composers, including \u201cworthwhile work done with American folk material as a basis.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/sup> Farwell articulated this vision in over a dozen essays for professional journals, popular magazines, and his newsletter The Wa-Wan Press Monthly<\/em>. He further complemented his writings with a series of transcontinental lecture-recitals on \u201cMusic and Myth of the American Indians, and Its Relation to American Composers\u201d (1903\u20131904) and \u201cA National American Music\u201d (1906\u20131907). In a 1904 article for Out West Magazine<\/em>, Farwell explained his aims thus:<\/p>\n

The Indian music is now promising to be one of the most important factors [in American music]. This is due to its intrinsic force and beauty, and to the intimacy of the Indian’s relation to the history of all parts of these states, as well as to the powerful and suggestive mythology supporting it. In the still largely unrevealed subjective life of the Indian the ethnologist has found another world, rich in poetry, mystery, elemental philosophy, mythic lore, close to our own, yet generally unperceived by us in its true fullness and significance. Science has discovered this world: but the opportunity\u2014the privilege\u2014the need\u2014of its ideal representation in terms comprehensible to all, falls to art. And since the Indian has entrusted so large a share of his own expression of his life and thought to music, the unearthing of this music and bringing it into the open of our musical life is one of the greatest and most obvious musical tasks before America at the present moment.[6]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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4<\/h3>\n

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In the early 1900s, Farwell took up his own call to incorporate Amerindian music, beginning with a set of American Indian Melodies<\/em>, op. 11 (1900), for solo piano. For this collection, he selected ten melodies from Alice C. Fletcher\u2019s Indian Story and Song from North America<\/em> (with songs harmonized by John Comfort Fillmore) and presented the tunes with little deviation from Fletcher\u2019s transcriptions.<\/p>\n

Farwell appears to have been particularly taken with the melody he used in the second piece in the series: an Omaha song, published in Fletcher\u2019s anthology as \u201cThe Old Man\u2019s Love Song.\u201d Farwell returned to this song again and again in his Indianist compositions. Beth Levy has noted how Farwell consistently preserved the melody in his settings\u2014from the original version for solo piano (1900) to later works for solo voice (1908) and a cappella chorus (1901, 1937)\u2014suggesting a \u201creverence for the source text.\u201d[7]<\/a> <\/sup>However, in all of his arrangements, Farwell rejected Fillmore\u2019s simplistic, functional harmonization in favor of chromatic, Wagnerian-inspired harmonies. The tune also appears in an extended version in the piano solo Dawn<\/em>, op. 12 (and the companion orchestral version), in which the Farwell alternates the Omaha melody with a simple Otoe song in a loose ABA\u2019B\u2019 structure.<\/p>\n

By 1912, Farwell had largely moved on from Indianist music in favor of other projects. In the 1920s and 1930s, he produced only a few Indianist-inspired compositions, and most of those were revisions of earlier compositions. (The most notable exception to this is the Hako<\/em> String Quartet, op. 65, a musical interpretation of the Pawnee Hako ceremony in sonata form, which Farwell completed in 1922.) Instead, Farwell\u2019s interests turned increasingly to other forms of American folk music for inspiration, including cowboy songs, spirituals, and\u2014after Farwell moved West in 1918\u2014\u201cSpanish Californian\u201d songs. Although his source for this folk material had changed, he remained faithful to the same impetus that had originally spurred his interest in Amerindian music, that is, to create a national style of music that would reflect American life and character.<\/p>\n

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5<\/h3>\n

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During his \u201cIndianist\u201d period (ca. 1900\u20131912), Farwell also wrote and lectured extensively about his concerns for contemporary American music and his hope for establishing a uniquely American style of art music. Further, his interest in the future of American music drove him to seek out ways to support American composers by publishing and performing their music. The Wa-Wan Press, in publishing music by American composers, fulfilled one of those aims. To promote the study and performance of these new American compositions, Farwell turned to music clubs. In April 1905, he founded the American Music Society in Boston, a local music club with monthly meetings at which members would discuss, study, and perform music by American composers. In 1907, building on his previous work in Boston and with the Wa-Wan Press, Farwell founded the National Wa-Wan Society, which he described as \u201ca national organization for the advancement of the work of American composers, and the interests of the musical life of the American people.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/sup> Six \u201cCenters\u201d for the Society were established in cities across the United States, from Rochester, NY, to San Diego, CA. The next year, in 1908, Farwell combined the two groups as a national American Music Society, with centers in at least 12 cities, including New York City. Although Farwell\u2019s American Music Society appears to have been short-lived\u2014his biographer, Evelyn Davis Culbertson, only traces activity through 1911[9]<\/a><\/sup>\u2014the organizational structure Farwell established in the Society\u2019s centers served as a model for new music clubs and organizations in the 1920s and beyond.<\/p>\n

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6<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602027764{margin-right: 5px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663601996525{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”18446,17200,17201,17202,17203″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964023920{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1702050861714{margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

Over the next two decades\u2014from about 1908 to the 1930s\u2014Farwell\u2019s concern for American musical life and social reform drove him into a new realm: that of community music making. In this, he joined a group of other music educators, composer\/musicians, and community activists who promoted a philosophy of \u201csocial improvement through art\u201d via public concerts, amateur music-making, and community music education. These community music activists were motivated in part by a larger aim to rebuild the sense of community and social cohesion that they felt had been lost in modern life due to urbanization and the Industrial Revolution. In many ways, the movement\u2019s ideals mirrored and built off those of the contemporaneous Arts and Crafts movement and the Settlement House Movement, which similarly sought to achieve Progressive social reform through art. Across the United States, community music activists like Peter Dykema (1873\u20131951) and Edgar B. Gordon (1875\u20131961), both early presidents of the Music Supervisors\u2019 National Conference (now National Association for Music Education, or NAfME), promoted group music making by founding amateur singing groups, publishing song books and instruction manuals, organizing community \u201csings,\u201d and expounding the social benefits of community music making in articles and lectures.<\/p>\n

Beginning around 1908, Farwell, still a prolific writer, gradually turned his focus away from Amerindian music and musical nationalism to promote and develop his views on community music. After becoming chief music critic for Musical America<\/em> in 1909, Farwell used his weekly essays and reviews in the newspaper to bring national attention to community music projects in New York City and elsewhere, including many of his own. From 1910\u20131913, Farwell served as Supervisor of Municipal Concerts in New York City, where he organized summer concerts in the city\u2019s parks and recreational piers, and from 1915\u20131918, he served as director of the Third Street Music School Settlement (founded 1894). These roles gave Farwell ample opportunities to experiment with community music projects and refine his philosophy, which he termed the \u201cNew Gospel of Music.\u201d In a two-part article for Musical America<\/em>, Farwell summarized this \u201cGospel\u201d thus:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat the message of music at its greatest and highest is not for the few, but for all; not sometime, but now; that it is to be given to all, and can be received by all.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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7<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602574914{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”18447″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”img_link_large” css=”.vc_custom_1710953414479{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964039285{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”18448″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”img_link_large” css=”.vc_custom_1710953422916{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1701879608020{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”17207″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”img_link_large” css=”.vc_custom_1710953430939{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1702051280474{margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

During this same period, the country was experiencing what has since been described as a \u201cpageantry craze\u201d[11]<\/a><\/sup>\u2014another community-focused artistic movement that was fueled by several of the same Progressive impulses and ideals that inspired the Community Music Movement. Between 1905 and 1935, hundreds of towns across the United States mounted large historical pageants as part of local civic celebrations and community entertainments. These presentations were an outgrowth of 19th-century dramatic forms like the tableaux vivant, combined with a Progressive Era focus on civic regeneration. In pageants, performers reenacted a series of important episodes from local history in static tableaux or dramatic scenes with dialogue, which they embellished with oratory, patriotic songs and choruses, musical interludes, and dances. As the genre evolved through the 1910s, pageants increasingly incorporated social and political agendas through spectacle and allegory, from women\u2019s suffrage to labor reform and wartime mobilization during World War I. By 1913, an official American Pageant Association (APA) had been formed with an eye toward codifying a unifying philosophy for pageant organizers and formulating concrete guidelines for the emerging genre.<\/p>\n

Farwell joined the pageant movement almost on the ground floor. He was known by several leading pageant organizers, including the APA\u2019s first president William Chauncy Langdon (1831\u20131895), through his lectures to the Twentieth Century Club of Boston, and he collaborated with others involved in the movement in his role as Supervisor of Municipal Concerts for New York City (1910\u20131913). Thanks to these associations, his extensive musical network, and his well-publicized interest in community music, Farwell was invited to become a charter member of the APA\u2019s Board of Directors, and he joined the organization\u2019s initial advisory committee of specialists as a musical advisor. Farwell also composed and conducted music for several pageants, including Langdon\u2019s historical pageants for the towns of Meriden, New Hampshire (June 1913), and Darien, Connecticut (August 1913), as well as Percy MacKay\u2019s masque Caliban by the Yellow Sands<\/em> in St. Louis, which celebrated the Tercentenary of Shakespeare\u2019s death (May 1916).<\/p>\n

Farwell also promoted pageantry in articles and lectures to professional associations in which he articulated the movement\u2019s aims and offered advice to pageant composers and organizers. In an article for the APA\u2019s Bulletin<\/em>, Farwell summarized his idealistic vision, which was grounded in his artistic philosophy of social reform:<\/p>\n

We are to look at pageant music not as an off-shoot from the world of music in general, but as something more vital and creative than most of that which arises otherwise. For it marks a departure from the artificialities and decadent importations which constitute much the greater part of the affairs of our musical world, and fills a distinct need of the people for something which is appropriate and belongs to them.[12]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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8<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602665597{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”17213″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_outline” onclick=”img_link_large” css=”.vc_custom_1710953619667{padding-top: 40px !important;padding-left: 10px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964050287{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17209,17210,17211,17212″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1702051601145{margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

A key component of Farwell\u2019s community music philosophy was a theory of communal aesthetic experience that he termed \u201cmass appreciation.\u201d In his 1914 article on \u201cThe New Gospel of Music,\u201d Farwell defined this as \u201cthe spontaneous response of the human mass to the substantive reality in all music, however great, without previous education in musical appreciation.\u201d In other words, Farwell proposed that music\u2014and community music making in particular\u2014could inspire a deep aesthetic response in even untrained audiences: one did not need to understand the music intellectually or analytically to gain the \u201cfull measure of spiritual nourishment\u201d from the aesthetic experience. According to Farwell, audiences so affected by \u201cmass appreciation\u201d would be overcome with a \u201cspontaneous and glowing sense of joy, universally felt\u201d as \u201ca reaction to sheer beauty.\u201d[13]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In his pageants, Farwell sought to inspire \u201cmass appreciation\u201d through musical drama and spectacle. In New York in 1915\u20131918, he approached it through another, radical experiment: a public festival that would link community song with elaborate ornamental lighting for maximum effect.<\/p>\n

The resulting Song and Light Festival was the brainchild of three visionaries: Arthur Farwell, the community music organizer Harry H. Barnhart (1874\u20131948), and the modernist architect and designer Claude Bragdon (1866\u20131946). Farwell had met Harry Barnhart\u2014a classically trained baritone and choral director\u2014in Los Angeles in 1904 during a stop on one of the composer\u2019s lecture-recital circuits. By 1909, Barnhart had relocated to New York, where, beginning in 1914, he founded a series of Community Choruses in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, New York City, and New Jersey that were based on his and Farwell\u2019s principles for community music making.[14]<\/a><\/sup> In September 1915, to close the Rochester Community Chorus\u2019s first season, Barnhart organized an ambitious song festival in Rochester\u2019s Highland Park, with intricate lighting designs provided by his friend, Claude Bragdon. The effect was electrifying.<\/p>\n

The team mounted several subsequent Song and Light events between 1915 and 1918, including a massive festival in Central Park with the New York Community Chorus, a 65-member orchestra, and two newly composed patriotic songs by Farwell that incorporated audience participation (\u201cMarch! March!\u201d and \u201cJoy! Brothers, Joy!\u201d).<\/p>\n

Bragdon\u2019s ornamental lighting for these events was spectacular. He designed an elaborate set of light screens, decorative lanterns, and proscenium lights based on a complex synthesis of formal, mathematic, and symbolic principles. In his designs, Bragdon combined the theory of Pure Design with Western and Eastern architectural principles, natural harmonics, Theosophical doctrines (including four-dimensional geometry), and a symbolic color scheme that linked each individual color to a specific musical pitch for a synesthesia-like effect.[15]<\/a><\/sup> Bragdon\u2019s aim was to create a \u201ccathedral without walls\u201d that would have a deep psychological effect on the festival-goers that would be reminiscent of a religious or mystical trance, effectively heightening the experience of \u201cmass appreciation.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the United States\u2019 entry into World War I in 1917, the Song and Light Festivals took on more a patriotic and somewhat militaristic tone. Between August 1917 and September 1918, Farwell, Barnhart, and Bragdon staged three final Festivals\u2014one at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse and the last two in the City with the New York Community Chorus\u2014in collaboration with US Army administrators. Military bands performed alongside the community choruses, and the procession of soldiers and sailors gave the public opportunity to celebrate and bid farewell to local recruits leaving for training or deployment. Soon after, the Community Music Movement was coopted by military leaders to forge community among the armed forces, and Barnhart and Farwell, along with dozens of other community music organizers, were recruited to organize group singing in Army and Navy training camps.<\/p>\n

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9<\/h3>\n

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In the summer of 1918, Farwell and his family moved to California after the composer accepted a position at the University of California, initially to serve as a lecturer at UCLA\u2019s summer session (1918) and then as Associate Professor of Music and acting head of the music department at UC Berkley (1918\u20131919). After his contract at UC Berkeley ended, the Farwells moved to Santa Barbara, where the composer busied himself with community music projects: he organized community choruses in Santa Barbara and Pasadena, composed and arranged music for the ensembles, prepared the original pageants La Primavera<\/em> (1920) and The Pilgrimage Play<\/em> (1921), and lectured on community music-drama and music-making. In these efforts, Farwell returned again and again to folk music, though now he favored cowboy tunes and Hispanic folk songs rather than Amerindian melodies. His arrangements of \u201cSpanish California\u201d songs for the Santa Barbara Community Chorus were audience favorites, and in 1923, he prepared fourteen of these arrangements for publication in the collection Spanish Songs of Old California<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 1924\u20131925, Farwell\u2019s interest in community music reached a peak, both literally and figuratively, as artistic director for the short-lived \u201cTheater of the Stars,\u201d an outdoor theater at Fawnskin, CA, a resort community in the San Bernardino Mountains. In building the theater, Farwell and the other developers took advantage of the large canyon\u2019s natural amphitheater and picturesque forest background. The main stage was set on the floor of the canyon, and additional performance areas were scattered across the surrounding forest, extending up nearly 450 feet to the canyon rim. The stirring effect of the theater\u2019s natural setting was further enhanced with dramatic, multicolored theatrical lighting. As one reviewer described: \u201cThe theatre is set among boulders and lofty evergreens in a canyon upon the heights of a mountain range. It is lighted below by camp fires and above not only by the stars but by lights of various hues, the colors changing in keeping with the moods of the music.\u201d[16]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Though Farwell was involved only for one season\u2014his plans for the 1926 were cancelled when the theater\u2019s funding was pulled\u2014he mounted an ambitious schedule of performances for 1925 that closed with Farwell\u2019s own The March of Man<\/em> (1925), an allegorical masque that decried violence against nature and the destruction of the environment. Although little music from the production survives, the libretto and production material (including 12 photographs of the performance) are preserved in the Arthur Farwell Collection.<\/p>\n

As the composer\u2019s biographer, Evelyn Culbertson Davis, summarized, Farwell\u2019s community music projects\u2014and particularly his work in pageantry\u2014were in many ways a \u201cculmination of all Farwell had striven for in his crusade for American music. This was a vehicle for the people, of the people, and by the people. It was Democracy in action!\u201d[17]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Polytonal Studies” tab_id=”1629728159445-59d643ee-6db9″][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602772871{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713880412972{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: -10px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: -20px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

10<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”top” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602936225{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17222,17223,17224″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964095465{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17219,17220,17221″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713294416539{margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]In 1927, Farwell was recruited to help establish a new Institute of Music and Allied Arts at Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (now Michigan State University) as the head of the music theory and composition division. After spending decades of cobbling together a livelihood from various freelance and short-lived projects, often with tenuous financial outlooks, he was attracted by the financial stability a faculty position offered. Yet Farwell soon found that the professorship, with what he described as a burdensome teaching load, was a poor fit for him.[18]<\/a><\/sup> He even attempted to resign in 1932, but the administration would not accept his resignation. Ultimately, he stayed at Michigan State until 1939, when a new policy at the college forced his retirement at the age of 67.<\/p>\n

Farwell spent his last years in New York City, where he divided his time between his family\u2014his second wife gave birth to his last (seventh) child in 1941\u2014and ongoing professional activities: composing, self-publishing his music (on his own lithograph press), some ASCAP committee work, and writing a monograph on his artistic process and philosophy.<\/p>\n

Although Farwell described himself as a Romantic composer, several of his late works feature harmonic experimentation that pushes against the boundaries of 19th-century functional tonality. Around 1940, he began planning a series of polytonal piano studies, for which he constructed a series of meticulous charts outlining their intended harmonic structures. Of the 46 studies he originally planned, Farwell completed only 23 before his death in 1952. Each study juxtaposes two keys\u2014one in the treble clef, another in the bass clef\u2014and at the top of each score, he indicates the relationship between the two keys using Roman numerals. For example, Polytonal Study, No. 1<\/em>, labeled \u201cI7<\/sup> \u2013 V7<\/sup>, C \u2013 G,\u201d juxtaposes C major seventh-chord harmonies in the bass against harmonies built on a G major seventh-chord in the treble. Theorists and pianists have responded to these studies with mixed criticism: Edgar Kirk observed that the studies are \u201coften questionable\u201d and the \u201cpolytonal\u201d effect is generally lost in hearing the music [19]<\/a><\/sup>, while Bruce Neely has praised the most effective of these studies as being \u201camong his [Farwell\u2019s] most original and beautiful works\u201d[20]<\/a><\/sup>. Regardless, Farwell\u2019s harmonic experimentation in the Polytonal Studies<\/em> appears to have informed his one-movement Piano Sonata, op. 113 (1949), which features complicated chromaticism and intense technical challenges that, according to Neely, seem to push the instrument to its limits.[21]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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11<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663690477801{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”19477,19478″ img_size=”full” css=”.vc_custom_1713293724532{border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964132360{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”19475,19476″ img_size=”full” css=”.vc_custom_1713293736032{border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″ css=”.vc_custom_1702053651572{margin-top: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1663690477801{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713294346869{margin-right: 15px !important;margin-left: 15px !important;}”]The extended harmonic language featured in Farwell\u2019s late piano works also makes an appearance in some of the composer\u2019s vocal music from the same period, most notably in his settings of Emily Dickinson poems in Op. 108 (Ten Emily Dickinson Songs, <\/em>1944) and Op. 112 (Three Emily Dickinson Songs, <\/em>1949).<\/p>\n

Throughout his life, Farwell turned frequently to Emily Dickinson\u2019s poems and ultimately set 39 of her texts for solo voice and piano, composed individually or in various groups. His preference for her poetry was significant: the only other authors he returned to\u2014William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley, for example\u2014inspired at most five songs each. Moreover, Farwell was among the earliest composers to use her poetry, completing his The Sea of Sunset<\/em>, op. 26 (1907), just 17 years after the Boston publishing firm Roberts Brothers issued the first collection of Dickinson\u2019s work, albeit in highly edited form (Emily Dickinson, Poems, <\/em>1890). Farwell\u2019s other early Dickinson settings in the 1920s\u2014Op. 66 (Two Poems by Emily Dickinson, <\/em>1923) and Op. 73 (Two Emily Dickinson Poems, <\/em>1926)\u2014formed what Gerald Holmes called a \u201c\u2018trickle\u2019 of early, obscure, unrecorded settings\u201d of her poems that quickly \u201creached flood level after settings by Elliott Carter, Ned Rorem, and Aaron Copland entered the canon\u201d in the 1950s and 1960s.[22]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Although Farwell\u2019s early Dickinson songs were published by G. Schirmer in the 1920s, the firm declined to issue his later settings and, in the late 1940s, even destroyed the remaining copies of Farwell\u2019s other songs in their catalog when sales dwindled.[23]<\/a><\/sup> Years after Farwell\u2019s death, his Dickinson songs were rediscovered by tenor Paul Sperry, who championed them in recitals, recordings, and (finally) a 2-volume edition with 33 of Farwell\u2019s previously unpublished Dickinson songs (Boosey & Hawkes, 1983).<\/p>\n

Recent analyses and critiques of Farwell\u2019s late Dickinson songs count them among the best of the composer\u2019s works, with critics highlighting in particular the expressive conviction and harmonic originality in his settings. He employs colorful chromaticism, opulent harmonies, chains of extended and secondary chords, even moments of (what Neely Bruce has called) \u201cnon-simultaneous polytonality\u201d to evoke the tension, movement, and emotional depth of Dickinson\u2019s texts.[24]<\/a><\/sup> The first song of Op. 112, \u201cWild Nights! Wild Nights!,\u201d is a prime example of Farwell\u2019s approach: the ascending chromaticism of the opening bass line, combined with the rhythmic juxtaposition of triple and duple figures, evokes the underlying agitation of Dickinson\u2019s evocative text. As the speaker\u2019s desire grows, the vocal line continues to rise against an increasingly frantic accompaniment that builds to a dramatic, fortissimo climax at the poem\u2019s passionate denouement\u2014\u201cmight I but moor tonight in thee!\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly, Farwell\u2019s experimentation in these works\u2014and across his oeuvre\u2014pales in comparison with that of avant-garde modernists like Arnold Schoenberg (1974\u20131951), Edgard Var\u00e8se (1883\u20131965), and Henry Cowell (1897\u20131965). Farwell himself often remarked that he felt disconnected from his contemporaries, which is unsurprising given his anti-establishment views, preference for Romantic-style harmonies, and general gravitation toward musical populism.[25]<\/a><\/sup> Nevertheless, recent assessments of Farwell\u2019s music and impact have highlighted the ways in which he prefigured various trends and developments in American composition and musical life at large.[26]<\/sup><\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Intuition 1″ tab_id=”1629727720582-605d78b1-fcde”][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602772871{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713880459332{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: -10px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: -20px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

12<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”top” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663603289717{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17226,18449,17228,18450,18451,17231,17232″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964104263{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713295446953{margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]Farwell\u2019s other major retirement project was a book on \u201cintuition,\u201d a philosophical concept that was central to the composer\u2019s creative process. In an article for Tomorrow<\/em> magazine[27]<\/a><\/sup>, Farwell explained that intuition, or the \u201cimmediate insight into truth,\u201d comes in many different forms\u2014\u201cthe \u2018hunch,\u2019 the sudden flash of insight, the \u2018inspiration\u2019 of one kind or another, the symbolic dream, and other related phenomena.\u201d As a subjective feeling, impulse, or perception, intuition occurred \u201cwithout an immediate process of reason, revealing the inward nature and sometimes the solution of life-problems.\u201d The knowledge derived from intuition was \u201centirely beyond the reach of the ordinary waking mind,\u201d but an individual could train themselves to perceive their intuitive consciousness and access these otherwise hidden thoughts and inspirations.[28]<\/a><\/sup> One could even inspire intuitive visions and dreams through focused meditation. In this, Farwell was influenced by Transcendentalism, which similarly emphasized subjective intuition over logical reasoning, as well as principles from Theosophy and the New Thought movement, which also elevated intuition as a means of accessing otherwise unknowable, inner truths.[29]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In the Tomorrow<\/em> article, Farwell describes firsthand how he was able to channel intuition in his compositional process:<\/p>\n

I conceived, in a half-fanciful way, that the universe must contain somewhere or somehow all the musical ideas which had never yet been thought of and written down. I believed that if I could find the right means of access to this universal store, I could put my hand at once on any musical themes I needed. To attempt this I thought of a \u2018place of music,\u2019 where the universe concentrated all these ideas, and where they could be had on application. I imagined a great assemblage of all possible means of producing music, a universal orchestra, including all instruments, and a chorus. \u2026 As definitely as possible, I then thought of the particular kind of theme I needed \u2026 I watched the musical equipment of the universal store I created \u2026 keeping out of my mind every thought except the one on which I had concentrated. It required only a moment before the appropriate theme spoke out from the appropriate instrument or instruments, apparently wholly by its own volition, and absolutely without any effort of composition on my part. \u2026<\/p>\n

I have continued to use this direct procedure for twenty years in the solution of difficult problems of life beyond the power of my reasoning faculty to answer, with highly successful and often astonishing results.[30]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”intuition 2″ tab_id=”1629727816112-f103354d-7c02″][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602772871{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713880493236{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: -10px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: -20px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

13<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663690345336{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17235,17236,17237,17238″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964112766{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”17234″ img_size=”full” onclick=”img_link_large”][vc_column_text]Farwell developed his theories about creative intuition over a lifetime. Through his mother, he was exposed to Theosophy and other esoteric philosophies as a child and young man, and as an adult, he was attracted to the teachings of New Thought authors like Thomas Troward (1847\u20131916). As early as 1913\u20131914, Farwell recommended Troward\u2019s writings in articles for Musical America<\/em> and acknowledged their influence on his own artistic philosophy.[31]<\/a> <\/sup>In Farwell\u2019s later years, he began gathering a collection of newspaper articles and book reviews related to intuition and psychology from both mainstream newspapers and some more esoteric sources (e.g., The American Theosophist<\/em>). [32]<\/a> <\/sup>He was especially interested in the experiences and writing of other writers, artists, and composers who adopted esoteric spiritual practices or had been influenced by dreams or visions as part of their creative process, such as William Blake (1757\u20131827) and Alexander Scriabin (1872\u20131915). Around 1930, while still teaching at Michigan State, Farwell began compiling his thoughts into a comprehensive treatise on intuition, which he titled \u201cIntuition in the World-Making.\u201d After his retirement, he prepared a new lecture on \u201cThe Science of Intuition,\u201d which was based on material from his book. The presentation also featured screen projections of original drawings and watercolors that depicted scenes from his own intuitive dreams and visions.[33]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

As Judith Tick has noted, Farwell\u2019s interest in Western esoteric philosophies and Troward\u2019s \u201cmental science\u201d was hardly unique among early 20th-century composers and artists. Beyond Farwell, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901\u20131953), Charles T. Griffes (1884\u20131920), and Henry Cowell (1897\u20131965), among others, embraced and were influenced by Theosophy, Eastern religion, and other esoteric philosophies.[34]<\/a><\/sup> More broadly, the late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed an increasing interest in occultism, mysticism, and the supernatural, which, as several cultural historians have noted, influenced the emergence and evolution of modernism across the arts in both the United States and Europe.[35]<\/a> <\/sup>A growing body of scholarship has analyzed traces of this \u201coccult modernism\u201d in the works of visual artists and writers like Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, and Ezra Pound.[36]<\/a><\/sup> Given Farwell\u2019s extensive writing on his philosophy of intuition and his statements on the central role it played in his artistic process, his oeuvre presents another rich field site for examining this cultural trend in early 20th-century American music.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”End” tab_id=”1629998881419-314b7df0-3b2c”][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″ css=”.vc_custom_1663602772871{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713880518117{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: -10px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: -20px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]<\/p>\n

14<\/h3>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/5″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663690477801{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17240″ img_size=”full” css=”.vc_custom_1710953761352{border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1663964132360{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_gallery interval=”15″ images=”17241″ img_size=”full” css=”.vc_custom_1710953772681{border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” gap=”10″ css=”.vc_custom_1702053651572{margin-top: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1663690477801{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1713295150487{margin-right: 15px !important;margin-left: 15px !important;}”]Farwell remained active as a composer and teacher until his death on January 20, 1952, a few months before his 80th birthday. He left behind an eclectic legacy represented not only in his own compositions and writings but also through his wide-ranging involvement in diverse artistic and cultural movements, organization of innovative public performances and performance spaces, and leadership in various music and performing arts organizations. For much of his life, Farwell was constantly on the move, working tirelessly on one project or another. Yet, as Beth Levy remarked, \u201cFarwell was better at beginning projects than continuing them,\u201d noting that most of his numerous endeavors\u2014from music publishing to community choruses and pageants\u2014were short-lived, in part due to ever-present financial constraints and Farwell\u2019s ongoing family obligations.[37]<\/a> <\/sup>Nevertheless, he persisted in his vision for a robust, modern American musical landscape that would stand apart from European, and specifically Germanic, musical trends and styles. Tracing Farwell\u2019s career, including his compositions, writings, and professional projects, highlights how the composer reacted to and embraced the whirlpool of artistic, socio-cultural, political, and religious influences that cut across American society in the early 20th century.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_tta_section][\/vc_tta_pageable][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner offset=”vc_hidden-xs”][vc_empty_space css=”.vc_custom_1663697323893{margin-bottom: 40px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_media_grid style=”pagination” items_per_page=”6″ element_width=”2″ gap=”0″ arrows_design=”vc_arrow-icon-arrow_06_left” arrows_color=”black” paging_design=”square_dots” loop=”yes” item=”8022″ css=”.vc_custom_1713544379748{padding-top: 5px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;}” initial_loading_animation=”none” grid_id=”vc_gid:1713880613426-371d7dc4-e22f-10″ include=”17166,18431,18432,18433,18434,17174,17177,18435,18436,18437,18438,17183,17184,18439,18440,18441,18442,18443,18445,18444,18446,17200,17201,17202,17203,18447,18448,17207,17213,17209,17210,17211,17212,17215,17216,17217,17222,17223,17224,17219,17220,17221,19478,19477,19476,19475,17226,18449,17228,18450,18451,17231,17232,17235,17236,17237,17238,17234,17240,17241″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” equal_height=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1702058166082{margin-top: 40px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;background-color: #f4f4f4 !important;}”][vc_column width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1702053783792{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/a>[1] A small collection of manuscript scores by Arthur Farwell (totaling 19 scores) is kept at the New York Public Library.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[2] Farwell, quoted in Evelyn Davis Culbertson, He Heard America Singing: Arthur Farwell, Composer and Crusading Music Educator (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 657. Call number: ML410.F247 C96 1992.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[3] For more on Farwell\u2019s musical evocations of the American landscape, and particularly the American West, see Beth Levy, \u201cThe Wa-Wan and the West,\u201d chap. 1 in Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). Call number: ML200.5.L6682 F93 2012<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[4] Tara Browner, \u201c\u2018Breathing the Indian Spirit\u2019: Thoughts on Musical Borrowing and the \u2018Indianist\u2019 Movement in American Music,\u201d American Music, vol. 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 266. Available via JSTOR.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[5] Farwell, quoted in Edward N. Waters, \u201cThe Wa-Wan Press: An Adventure in Musical Idealism,\u201d in A Birthday Offering to [Carl Engel], ed. Gustave Reese (New York: G. Schirmer, 1943), 219. Call number: ML55.E5 R329<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[6] Arthur Farwell, \u201cToward American Music,\u201d Out West, vol. 20, no. 5 (May 1905): 457; reprinted in “Wanderjahre of a Revolutionist” and Other Essays on American Music, ed. Thomas Stoner (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 188\u2013189. Call number: ML410.F247 A3 1995<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[7] Levy, Frontier Figures, 31.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[8] From the organization\u2019s mission statement, as printed in The Wa-Wan Press Monthly, vol. 6, no. 43 (March 1907): 1; reprinted in The Wa-Wan Press, 1901\u20131911, ed. Vera Brodsky Lawrence, vol. 4 (New York: Arno Press, 1970), 29\u201330. Call number: M2 .L423W<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[9] The history of the individual centers, and the life span of the Society, is difficult to track after the dissolution of the short-lived Bulletin of the American Music Society, which replaced the Wa-Wan Press Monthly in 1908; the Bulletin only produced four issues, the last printed in March 1909. However, Evelyn Davis Culbertson notes that the American Music Society grew to about 20 centers by 1909 (according to Farwell). Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 139\u2013146, 791n16<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[10] Arthur Farwell, \u201cThe New Gospel of Music \u2013 I<\/a>,\u201d Musical America, no. 19 (April 4, 1914), 32; reprinted in “Wanderjahre of a Revolutionist” and Other Essays on American Music, 222\u2013226.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[11] David Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 1. Call number: PS338.H56 G5 1990<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[12] Arthur Farwell, \u201cPageant Music,\u201d Bulletin [of the American Pageant Association], no. 43 (December 1, 1916): 1. Available via HathiTrust<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[13] Arthur Farwell, \u201cThe New Gospel of Music,<\/a>\u201d Musical America, vol. 19 (April 4, 1914): 32; reprinted in “Wanderjahre of a Revolutionist” and Other Essays on American Music, 222\u2013226.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[14] Notably, Barnhart and Farwell collaborated closely in the organization and direction of the New York Community Chorus, with Barnhart serving as its director and Farwell as its first president.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[15] Claude Bragdon, \u201c \u2018Song and Light\u2019; A Description of an Outdoor Festival Given at Highland Park, Rochester, NY, September 30, 1915,\u201d Architectural Review, vol. 4, no. 9 (September 1916): 169\u2013171. Available via HathiTrus<\/a>t.\u00a0 See also Jonathan Massey, \u201cOrganic Architecture and Direct Democracy: Claude Bragdon\u2019s Festivals of Song and Light,\u201d Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 65, no. 4 (December 2006): 578\u2013613. Available via JSTOR<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[16] \u201cWhere the Arts Combine,\u201d The Playground, vol. 19, no. 12 (March 1926): 675. Available via HathiTrust<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[17] Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 625<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[18] Culbertson quotes from multiple letters from Farwell in which he complains about his course load at Michigan State. See Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 232\u2013235<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[19] Edgar Lee Kirk, \u201cToward American Music: A Study of the Life and Music of Arthur George Farwell\u201d (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1958), 143. Call number: ML95.3.K59<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[20] Gilbert Chase, revised by Neely Bruce, \u201cFarwell, Arthur,\u201d Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, January 20, 2001<\/a>,.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[21] Quoted in Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 521<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[22] Gerald Holmes, \u201c\u2018Invisible, as Music\u2013\u2019: What the Earliest Musical Settings of Emily Dickinson\u2019s Poems, Including Two Previously Unknown, Tell Us about Dickinson\u2019s Musicality,\u201d Emily Dickinson Journal, vol. 28, no. 2 (2019): 101. Available via Project MUSE<\/a><\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1702053793720{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/a>[23] In a May 26, 1948, letter to Noble Kreider, Farwell lamented, \u201cNone of the current generation of artists ever heard of me, especially as the leading orchestra conductors will no longer play anything of my generation. And now Schirmer is going to destroy the bulk of the plates of my songs which they publish, unless I will buy them from them, (which I can\u2019t do), and the few remaining copies. \u2026 Yet I feel that they represent a lot of my finest work, and in the long run would prove a real contribution to American song literature.\u201d Quoted in Culbertson, page 445\u2013446.<\/a> Original in the Arthur Farwell Collection, Box 37\/27<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[24] Neely Bruce, review of Thirty-Four Songs on Poems of Emily Dickinson, Notes, vol. 42, no. 2 (December 1985): 409. Available via JSTOR <\/a> .<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[25] Farwell wrote at length about his dissatisfaction with the contemporary trends in American composition and the music industry at large in articles, lectures, and private writings; he even composed a satirical opera, Cartoon or Once upon a Time Recently (1948), that explicitly critiques European modernism through musical satirizations of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. See, for example, a lengthy letter Farwell wrote to his student, Roy Harris, which Culbertson printed in her biography. Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 262\u2013269<\/a>. Original in Farwell Collection, Box 34, Folder 4.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[26] See, for example, Chase, rev. Bruce, \u201cFarwell, Arthur,<\/a>\u201d ; Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 350\u2013355<\/a> ; Thomas Stoner, \u201c\u2018The New Gospel of Music\u2019: Arthur Farwell\u2019s Vision of Democratic Music in America,\u201d American Music, vol. 9, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 184. Available via JSTOR<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[27] Tomorrow magazine was an American literary journal that specialized in articles on parapsychology and the paranormal. It was founded by parapsychologist and medium Eileen J. Garrett and published through Garrett\u2019s Creative Age Press and the Parapsychology Foundation during the 1940s\u20131960s.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[28] Arthur Farwell, \u201cScience and Intuition,\u201d Tomorrow, vol. 1, no. 8 (April 1942): 20\u201321. Arthur Farwell Collection, Box 24, Folder 16<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[29] Specifically, Farwell was deeply inspired by the writings of New Thought pioneer Thomas Troward, particularly those on \u201cmental science\u201d and the creative process. According to Thomas Stoner, Farwell likely came across Troward\u2019s writings in 1911, and Farwell referenced Troward\u2019s writings in several articles for Musical America in 1913 and 1914. Stoner, \u201c\u2018The New Gospel of Music<\/a>\u2019\u201d: 189\u2013190.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[30] Arthur Farwell, \u201cScience and Intuition,\u201d Tomorrow, vol. 1, no. 8 (April 1942): 23\u201324. Arthur Farwell Collection, Box 24, Folder 16<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[31] Stoner, \u201c\u2018The New Gospel of Music<\/a>\u2019\u201d: 205.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[32] Farwell\u2019s collection of newspaper clippings related to intuition is preserved in the Arthur Farwell Collection, Box 24, Folder 10.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[33] Between 1943 and 1949, Farwell produced multiple complete and partial drafts of his book on intuition, several of which are preserved in the Arthur Farwell Collection, Boxes 25\u201328. Farwell\u2019s efforts during his life to find a publisher for the treatise proved unfruitful, as did those of his wife, Betty Richardson Farwell, in the years immediately following her husband\u2019s death. However, Farwell\u2019s treatise may yet be published: an edition of Farwell\u2019s Intuition in the World-Making is currently being prepared by Dr. Matt Marble under commission by the composer\u2019s son, Jonathan Farwell.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[34] Judith Tick, \u201cRuth Crawford: Modernist Pioneer,\u201d in Ruth Crawford, Music for Small Orchestra (1926) [and] Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano (1929), vol. 1 of Music of the United States of America (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1993), xvii. Call number: M 2 .R2947A v.19<\/a>.\u00a0 See also Judith Tick, \u201cRuth Crawford\u2019s \u2018Spiritual Concept\u2019: The Sound-Ideals of an Early American Modernist, 1924\u20131930,\u201d Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 44, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 221\u2013261. Available via JSTOR<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[35] For more on the intersections between occultism, esoteric practices, and modernism, see Tessel M. Bauduin and Henrik Johnsson, eds., The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Call number:; Roger Lipsey, An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art (Boston: Shambhala, 1988) Call number: N8248.S77 L56 1988<\/a> ; Maurice Tuchman, Judi Freeman, and Carel Blotkamp, eds., The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890\u20131985, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986) Call number: ND192.A25 S6 1986<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[36] Tessel M. Bauduin, \u201cThe Occult and the Visual Arts,\u201d in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge (New York: Routledge, 2014): 429\u2013445. Ebook available<\/a>. ; Leon Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Pound, Yeats, Eliot and Occult Modernism (Montreal: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 1993). Call number: PN56.M54 S77 1993<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>[37] Levy, Frontier Figures, 81<\/a>.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” gap=”10″ equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”top” css=”.vc_custom_1664207792387{margin-top: 25px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;background-color: #f4f4f4 !important;}”][vc_column width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1664207666839{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Audio Excerpts” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1663765994543{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;border-left-color: #dddddd !important;border-left-style: solid !important;border-right-color: #dddddd !important;border-right-style: solid !important;border-top-color: #dddddd !important;border-top-style: solid !important;border-bottom-color: #dddddd !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

\u201cA Celebration of Arthur Farwell,\u201d concert by various ESM student and faculty performers (1997). Streaming audio available to UR\/ESM community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Farwell, A.: Piano Music, Vols. 1\u20133<\/em>, Lisa Cheryl Thomas, piano (Toccata Classics, 2012\u20132018). Streaming audio available via NAXOS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Farwell, A.: Songs, Choral and Piano Works (America\u2019s Neglected Composer), <\/em>Dakota String Quartet; William Sharp, baritone; University of Texas Chamber Singers; Emanuele Arciuli, piano (Naxos, 2021). Streaming audio available via NAXOS<\/a><\/p>\n

The Gods of the Mountains Suite, <\/em>Op. 52, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Krueger (Bridge Records, 2003). <\/em>Available via YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1664207678196{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”More from Sibley” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1664207613797{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;border-left-color: #dddddd !important;border-left-style: solid !important;border-right-color: #dddddd !important;border-right-style: solid !important;border-top-color: #dddddd !important;border-top-style: solid !important;border-bottom-color: #dddddd !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

He Heard America Singing: Arthur Farwell, Composer and Crusading Music Educator<\/em> by Evelyn Davis Culbertson. Call number: ML410.F247 C96 1992<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wa-Wan Press, 1901\u20131911, <\/em>modern edition of the music published by the Wa-Wan Press in 5 volumes, prepared by Vera Brodsky Lawrence. Call number: M2 .L423W<\/a><\/p>\n

Wanderjahre of a Revolutionist and Other Essays on American Music<\/em> by Arthur Farwell, edited by Thomas Stoner. Call number: ML410.F247 A3 1995<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Scores by Arthur Farwell in DiscoverUR.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1664207688648{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”External Links” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1664207629357{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;border-left-color: #dddddd !important;border-left-style: solid !important;border-right-color: #dddddd !important;border-right-style: solid !important;border-top-color: #dddddd !important;border-top-style: solid !important;border-bottom-color: #dddddd !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

\u201cArthur Farwell, American Pioneer,\u201d program 8 in Song of America Radio Series, <\/em>a project of the Hampsong Foundation, co-produced and syndicated by WFMT.\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFarwell, Arthur,\u201d by Gilbert Chase, revised by Neely Bruce, Grove Music Online.\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Imprints from the Wa-Wan Press available on IMSLP.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1702053307198{background-color: #f4f4f4 !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

For further information, please inquire at the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections department<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A full finding aid for the Arthur Farwell Collection<\/a> is available online.<\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arthur Farwell (1872\u20131952) is best remembered as a leading figure in the \u201cIndianist\u201d movement in American classical music (ca. 1890\u20131920)..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":18439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3],"class_list":["post-17165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-display"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17165"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esm4.esm.rochester.edu\/sibley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}