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Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music

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Judith Tick does an indispensable service here in writing the first full-length biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger. And it is a damn shame that Seeger was takened in 1951 an early age for someone with a consummate gift for composition. Tick traverses her entire life down to the walks from one library to another to concerts in Chicago, along Michigan Avenue. Infrequently we never read about Seeger's radicalism, her days, as most artists with the Labour Movement in the United States throughout the early part of this century. Tick makes us believe Seeger's understanding of this,not only in writing politically progressive music, music which identifies with the exploited, but how these experiences in facing these dark times informed her more abstract music. Tick gives a great narrative on these pre-McCarthy Era times,placing Seeger's work in a context,in fact so much so that her creativity suffered under too much involvement.