Christmas with the Seegers, Plus Bonuses

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-53) had an usual career, first as an avant-garde composer then as an expert on folk music who produced several compilations of those works. 

Ruth Crawford was the second wife of Charles Seeger, a musicologist who with his first wife, Constance de Clyver Edson, was the father of perhaps the best known member of the family, Pete. Ruth was the mother of two other notable folk singers: Peggy, and Mike of the New Lost City Ramblers.

The Seeger family, circa 1940s

Shortly before her death, Scholastic published Ruth's anthology of Christmas folk songs. Four years later, her daughters Peggy, Penny and Barbara issued a charming album of some of these songs, with the aid of a children's choir. This LP forms the first part of today's post. For the second, I've included an 1957 album with one of Ruth's best known classical compositions (relatively speaking), the String Quartet 1931. The excellent LP also includes Ross Lee Finney's atmospheric Piano Quintet.

Finally, we have one of David Federman's always-welcome anthologies, on the theme of Christmas, I hardly need to add. Details below.

American Folk Songs for Christmas

Most of the material contained on American Folk Songs for Christmas was unfamiliar to me. Among the exceptions are "Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow" and "The Cherry Tree Carol." All the songs are very well performed by the Seeger sisters and the children from the South Boston Music School. The documentation includes the stories of each song, extracted from Ruth Crawford Seeger's book.

Peggy Seeger

The best-known Seeger sister is Peggy, who has had a long career in folk music as composer and performer. She often appeared with her husband, Ewan MacColl, before his death in 1989.

The LP is a splendid tribute to Ruth Seeger, who had worked with John and Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song in the 1940s, and who published several anthologies similar to the Christmas collection.

Chamber Music by Ruth Crawford Seeger and Ross Lee Finney

Ruth Crawford Seeger's own compositions are quite a contrast to the folk anthologies mentioned above. Almost all of them come from 1930-33, with the best known being her String Quartet 1931, which was well ahead of its time. In it, she applies serial techniques to other aspects of music besides pitch, a procedure she had developed with Charles Seeger. 

Ruth Crawford Seeger

In doing so, she anticipated practices that would not come into common use until the 1950s, as Eric Salzman noted in his highly positive review of the LP for the New York Times, adding that "the piece is astonishingly imaginative and expressive, too." The Amati Quartet performs the work for this Columbia Modern Music Series album.

Please see this 2017 Times portrait of Crawford Seeger for more on this remarkable composer.

Ross Lee Finney

The LP also includes another impressive work, the Piano Quintet of Ross Lee Finney (1906-97), here performed by the Stanley Quartet of the University of Michigan and the excellent pianist Beveridge Webster. 

Finney, who taught at Michigan for many years, was another composer who used serial techniques. His music, even so, was Romantic: Salzman calls it "a kind of free adaptation of Brahms and Bruckner into a contemporary idiom." That may be overstated, but it does contain a element of truth.

The early stereo recordings are excellent.

Both LPs above were cleaned up from lossless needle drops found on Internet Archive.

A Mix for Christmas

David F.'s typically generous and enterprising Christmas mix this year includes a bountiful 37 tunes. David calls it "An End-Times Christmas Eve and Morning," noting of its contents, "Christmas morning I wanted to make as beautiful and benevolent as possible. When I first listened to 'Above My Head I Hear Music' and 'Winter Will Soon be Over, Children,' I heard a music born of indestructible fortitude and hope in the face of what is for me unimaginable suffering."

The music is well-chosen and programmed (I think they call it "curated" these days), and I commend it to everyone. The link is in the comments, as always.