Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on December 24, 1881. As a boy he played the organ in a church near Pittsburgh, and wrote a march that was published. His main music study took place with private teachers: Leo Oehmler, Luigi von Kunits, and Emil Paur. From 1908 to 1910 he was the music critic of the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Meanwhile, a meeting in 1902 with the lyric writer Nellie Richmond Eberhart, turned him to the writing of songs in which he achieved his initial outstanding successes as composer. Some of these were inspired by the American Indian. Later researches in the field of American-Indian ceremonials and music led him to write his opera Shanewis, produced by the Metropolitan Opera in 1918, as well as several significant instrumental works including the Thunderbird Suite and To a Vanishing Race. From 1917 until his death he lived in California where he wrote several major orchestral and chamber-music works, but none in the American-Indian idiom with which he became famous. He died in Los Angeles on December 30, 1946.
The American Suite, for strings (1938), is an engaging piece of music in which Cadman makes use of several different American folk idioms. In the first movement he borrows his melodies from the tribal music of Omaha Indians. In the second movement we hear Negro folk tunes indigenous to South Carolina. And in the third movement, two old fiddle tunes are effectively employed, “Sugar in the Gourd,” and “Hoop-de-den-do.”
“At Dawning” is one of Cadman’s two most famous songs. It sold millions of copies of sheet music and records, and has been translated into many languages. Though originally published in 1906, it reposed forgotten and unknown on the shelves of the publisher (Oliver Ditson) until John McCormack sang it at one of his recitals in 1909 and was given an ovation. “At Dawning” was transcribed for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler.
Dark Dancers of Mardi Gras, for orchestra with piano, (1933), is one of Cadman’s most popular symphonic compositions. The composer explains: “The work takes its name from the Negro side of the Mardi Gras, though no Negro themes are used. The Negroes of New Orleans have a Mardi Gras of their own. The fantasy is supposed to reflect the fantastic, the grotesque, the bizarre spirit of the carnival. The original theme goes into a major key in the central section, and might represent the romantic feeling of the King and Queen, and the Court in carnival fashion.”
“From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water” is the second of Cadman’s two outstandingly successful songs. It is one of four songs with lyrics by Nellie Richmond Eberhart appearing in American-Indian Songs, op. 45, a cycle which was published in Boston in 1909 and in the same year received a prize in a contest sponsored by the Carnegie Institute. This song was first swept to national fame by the prima donna, Lillian Nordica, in her song recitals. It soon entered the repertory of virtually every leading concert singer in America. Fritz Kreisler transcribed it for violin and piano.