Robert McBride
Robert Guyn McBride was born in Tucson, Arizona, on February 20, 1911. As a boy he learned to play the clarinet and saxophone. He later played both instruments in various dance orchestras. In 1933 he was graduated from the University of Arizona, and a year after that received there his Master’s degree. Having studied the oboe in college, he played that instrument with the Tucson Symphony for several years. Then, after additional study of the piano, composition and voice, he joined the music faculty of Bennington College in Vermont in 1935, holding this post eleven years. During this period he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1942, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him a prize for creating a “new idiom in American music.” McBride has made successful use of jazz, popular and folk elements in serious chamber-music and orchestral compositions.
The Mexican Rhapsody (1936) is one of McBride’s best known works for orchestra. He wrote it in Arizona while studying at the University. It was first presented in Tucson in a two-piano arrangement, then in its definitive orchestral version, and finally as a choreographic presentation. McBride here makes a colorful and freshly conceived presentation of four Mexican folk songs familiar to many: “El Rancho Grande,” “Jarabe” (or “Hat Dance”), “Cuatro Milpas,” and “La Cucaracha.”
McBride has written several interesting compositions in a jazz style. One of the best is the Strawberry Jam (1942). This is a caricature of a jazzband jam session, but with the utilization of modern harmonies and symphonic orchestration. Stuff in G, for orchestra (1942), is in the racy, tuneful style of Tin Pan Alley, while Swing Stuff (1941) brings to the symphonic orchestra the improvisational devices and techniques and the beat of Swing music.