Charles Seeger - Biographical sketch

   Seeger, Charles Louis, 1886-1979.  Charles Seeger, composer and 
musicologist, was born 14 December, 1886 in Mexico City, Mexico.  He 
was married three times; his first wife, Constance Edson was a 
violinist whom he often accompanied.  They were married fron 
1911-1932 and had three children: Charles Seeger, III (1912), John 
Seeger (1914), and folksinger Peter Seeger (1919).  Seeger's second 
wife was the composer Ruth Crawford.  After their marriage in 1932 
they had four more children:  Michael Seeger (1933), Margaret (Peggy) 
Seeger (1935), Barbara Mona Seeger (1937), and Penny Seeger (1943).  
Seeger's third marriage to Margaret Adams Taylor in 1955 was brief, 
ending in 1960.  He died in Bridgewater, CT, on 7 February, 1979.  
   Seeger created a music department and served as instructor/lecturer 
at the University of California at Berkeley (1912-19). He also taught at 
Chicago's Institute of Musical Art (1921-33), the New School for Social 
Research (1931-35), the University of California at Los Angeles 
(1960-70), and Harvard (1972).  In addition to his teaching posts, 
Seeger acted as technical advisor in Roosevelt's Resettlement 
Administration (1935-8), deputy director of the Federal Music Project 
of the WPA (1938-41), and chief of the music division of the Pan 
American Union (1941-53).
   Having lost several compositions in a fire in 1926, Seeger's 
achievements in composition are secondary to the advancements he 
made in the fields of musicology and ethnomusicology. He was 
dissatisfied with the manner in which music history was taught, and 
worked to include folk music in music curriculums.  Seeger and John 
Lomax traveled around the country recording American folk music, then 
assembling the songs into collections.  He was responsible for the first 
American classes taught in musicology at the University of CA, Berkeley, 
in 1916, as well as the first classes in ethnomusicology at the New 
School for Social Research with Henry Cowell. In 1930 he founded the 
New York Musicological Society, which, in 1934, evolved into the 
American Musicological Society. Seeger was a member of numerous other 
music organizations including the American Society for Comparative 
Musicology, the International Society for Music Educators, and the 
College Music Society. He was founder of the Society for Ethno-
Musicology in 1956.
   Seeger is responsible for the invention of a device known as the 
melograph (1956).  Its purpose was to record musical performances, 
and it was particularly useful for the analysis of non-Western music. 
The device was partially funded and used extensively by the Institute
of Ethnomusicology at UCLA.  
   In promoting the development of the field of ethnomusicology, Seeger 
wrote many critical essays.  He believed all music should not be 
evaluated in terms of Western art music, and addressed the problems 
of discussing music through the distorting medium of speech. A member 
of the Composers Collective of New York, he also voiced his opinions 
about society in general in the Daily Worker under the pseudonym, "Carl 
Sands."

LK - 4/95