American composer (1876?1971)
Carl Ruggles
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Ruggles_1911.jpg/220px-Ruggles_1911.jpg) Detail from a portrait of Ruggles taken in
Minnesota
,
c.
1911
|
Born
| (
1876-03-11
)
March 11, 1876
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Died
| October 24, 1971
(1971-10-24)
(aged 95)
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Occupations
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Notable work
| Men and Mountains
(1924)
Sun-Treader
(1926?31)
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Spouse
|
Charlotte Snell
(
m.
1906; died 1957)
|
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Children
| 1 (Micah Ruggles)
|
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|
![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Carl_Ruggles_Signature.png/150px-Carl_Ruggles_Signature.png) |
Carl Ruggles
(born
Charles Sprague Ruggles
; March 11, 1876 ? October 24, 1971) was an American
composer
,
painter
and
teacher
. His pieces employed "
dissonant counterpoint
", a term coined by fellow composer and
musicologist
Charles Seeger
to describe Ruggles' music. His method of
atonal
counterpoint was based on a non-
serial
technique of avoiding repeating a
pitch class
until a generally fixed number of eight pitch classes intervened. He is considered a founder of the ultramodernist movement of American composers that included
Henry Cowell
and
Ruth Crawford Seeger
, among others. He had no formal musical education, yet was an extreme perfectionist?writing music at a painstakingly slow rate and leaving behind a very small output.
Famous for his prickly personality, Ruggles was nonetheless close friends with Cowell, Seeger,
Edgard Varese
,
Charles Ives
, and the painter
Thomas Hart Benton
. His students include the experimental composers
James Tenney
and
Merton Brown
.
Conductor
Michael Tilson Thomas
has championed Ruggles' music, recording the complete works with the
Buffalo Philharmonic
and occasionally performing
Sun-Treader
with the
San Francisco Symphony
. Especially later in life, Ruggles was also a prolific painter, selling hundreds of paintings during his lifetime.
Early life
[
edit
]
Childhood
[
edit
]
Carl Ruggles was born in
Marion
,
Massachusetts
on March 11, 1876.
[1]
His surname comes from the town of
Rugeley
in
Staffordshire, England
, whose various inhabitants emigrated to
Boston
in the year 1637. Many of Ruggles' ancestors served important
military
and
political
positions in the early Massachusetts colony, including generals and captains, as well as Micah Haskell Ruggles, a former representative to the
Massachusetts General Court
(1833?38).
He was born to parents Nathaniel Ruggles and Maria Josephine Ruggles (
nee
Hodge), a native of
New Hampshire
and step-cousin of former
U.S. president
Franklin Pierce
. The young Carl developed an interest in music early on, crafting his own
violin
from a
cigar box
at age six. He recalled his mother, Maria, singing him traditional songs from
Stephen C. Foster
and other folk hymns. Ruggles would receive a quarter size violin from a local
lighthouse keeper
, and continued learning to play by ear. According to Ruggles, "I began to play
hornpipes
and
jigs
by ear?I couldn't read a
note
?people would come for miles to hear me play those hornpipes."
In 1885, when then-president
Grover Cleveland
spent a summer at Marion, he would attend one of Ruggles' roadside performances, and the nine year-old Carl played a series of violin duets with
first lady
Rose Cleveland
.
Ruggles' mother Maria died when he was fourteen years old, and was thereafter raised by his father and grandmother in nearby
Lexington
. Ruggles' father became an
alcoholic
after his wife's death, and was rumored to have a
gambling addiction
that cost most of the family's inherited wealth.
Ruggles was never very close to his father and did not see him from the age of 29 onwards. He modified his given name
Charles
to the more Teutonic
Carl
at an early age, partially due to his great admiration for
German
composers, especially
Richard Wagner
and
Richard Strauss
. Though he never legally changed it, he signed all documents and works in his adult life "Carl Ruggles". He was appointed director of the
YMCA
orchestra in 1892. A reviewer wrote: "A musical program of entertainment was rendered in the church, each number of which received hearty applause. Master Charles Ruggles' violin selections were rendered with much feeling and delicacy. He captivated the audience by his manly bearing, and is evidently at home in the concert room."
Career
[
edit
]
In 1899, C.W. Thompson & Co. published Ruggles' first compositions, three songs titled
How Can I Be Blythe and Glad
,
At Sea
and
Maiden with Thy Mouth of Roses
. The first song is one of two surviving compositions from his early days; all others are presumed to have been destroyed by Ruggles himself. Eventually Ruggles had to work to support himself as his family's financial situation worsened. He worked a number of odd jobs and started to teach violin and music theory privately, though teaching did not provide much income or success. In 1902 he started writing music criticism for the
Belmont Tribune
and the
Watertown Tribune
. This continued until July 1903. Ruggles' reviews are characteristically brash. He did not hesitate to express his opinion, laudatory or not.
In 1906, he met Charlotte Snell, a
contralto
. Ruggles began a search for steady employment so that he and Charlotte could marry. This led him to
Winona, Minnesota
, to work for the Mar D'Mar School of Music as a violin teacher. He became active as a soloist as well, eventually directing the Winona Symphony Orchestra. Charlotte joined him as a vocal teacher at Mar d'Mar. Ruggles continued to direct the symphony after the music school closed. Charlotte then was a choir mistress at the First Baptist Church and Ruggles was hired to conduct the YMCA orchestra and
glee club
. They also took private students.
In 1912 Ruggles moved to
New York
and began writing an
opera
based on the German play
The Sunken Bell
by
Gerhart Hauptmann
. Due to both his sluggish composing pace and
anti-German sentiment
as a result of
World War I
, he never finished the opera, though he submitted a version to the Metropolitan Opera. He destroyed what he had written after he decided he lacked the instinct required for the stage.
[1]
Ruggles continued to compose, supplementing his income by giving composition lessons. For his son's fourth birthday in 1919 he wrote
Toys
for soprano and piano, his first composition in his
atonal
,
contrapuntal
style.
Later life and death
[
edit
]
He continued to live and compose in New York until 1938, when he began teaching composition at the
University of Miami
, where he remained until 1943. He then moved to a converted
one-room school
in
Vermont
where he spent his time revising compositions and painting. He also painted hundreds of paintings over the course of his lifetime and he was offered the opportunity to have one-man shows.
He was elected to membership in the
National Institute of Arts and Letters
in 1963.
[1]
According to Donal Henahan, Ruggles "spoke with an earthiness that shocked many people. He smoked cigars and told dirty stories. He attacked his fellow composers, sneering at almost everyone but Ives. He refused to play the part of the genteel artist."
[1]
Known for his profanity, Ruggles was also
antisemitic
. For example, he wrote to
Henry Cowell
about, "that filthy bunch of Juilliard Jews ... cheap, without dignity, and with little or no talent," especially targeting
Arthur Berger
.
[4]
His friend
Lou Harrison
dissociated himself from Ruggles after the 1949 performance of
Angels
because of the older composer's
racism
, noting specifically a luncheon at
Pennsylvania Station
in New York at which Ruggles shouted anti-black and antisemitic slurs.
Death
[
edit
]
Ruggles' wife died in 1957. They had one son, Micah. Ruggles died in
Bennington, Vermont
, on October 24, 1971, after a long illness.
[1]
Music
[
edit
]
Overview
[
edit
]
Ruggles' compositional style was "trial and error. He sat at the piano and moved his fingers around, listened hard to the sounds... shouting out some of the lines."
According to Ruggles himself, he never learned any
music theory
and never analyzed other composers' pieces. The majority of his early works (before
Toys
) were destroyed, leaving their compositional style a matter of speculation. Reviews suggest similarities to late 19th-century
romanticism
.
His
dissonant
,
contrapuntal
style is similar to
Arnold Schoenberg
's, although he did not employ the same
twelve-tone system
. He used a method similar to and perhaps influenced by
Charles Seeger
's dissonant counterpoint, and generally avoided repeating a
pitch class
within eight notes. He also never used
sprechstimme
in any vocal works, although he admired Schoenberg's
Pierrot Lunaire
. He only completed ten pieces due to his lengthy process of composition and revision.
Sun-Treader
, his best known work, is scored for a large
orchestra
. It was inspired by the poem "Pauline" by
Robert Browning
, particularly the line "Sun-treader, light and life be thine forever!". The most common intervals in the piece are
minor seconds
,
perfect fourths
and
augmented fourths
. One group of intervals he uses are fourths in sequence where the respective notes are either 13 or 11 semitones apart;
[
clarification needed
]
the other is three notes which are chromatically related, though often separated by an octave. Another distinctive feature of
Sun-Treader
is the presence of "waves", both in dynamics and pitch. Pitches will start low, then rise up to a climax, then descend again. Within the ascent (and descent) there are small descents (and ascents) leading to a self-similar (
fractal
) overall structure.
Sun-Treader
premiered in Paris on February 25, 1932.
Jean Martinon
conducted the
Boston Symphony Orchestra
in its U.S. premiere in Portland, Maine, on January 24, 1966, as part of a
Bowdoin College
tribute marking Ruggles' 90th birthday.
[7]
Ruggles is one of the composers, collectively known as The
American Five
alongside other American
modernist
composers
Charles Ives
(1874?1954),
John J. Becker
(1886?1961),
Wallingford Riegger
(1885?1961) and
Henry Cowell
(1897?1965).
[8]
[9]
Ruggles's music was published by
Theodore Presser Company
.
Complete list of compositions
[
edit
]
- Ich fuhle deinen Odem
(1901), song for soprano and piano (edited by
John Kirkpatrick
)
- Mood
(1918), for violin and piano (incomplete, ed. Kirkpatrick)
- Toys
(1919), song for soprano and piano
- Angels
(1921), for muted brass (originally for six trumpets; rescored for trumpets and trombones, 1940; transcribed for piano, 1946)
- Men and Angels
(1921), for orchestra
- Windy Nights
(1921), song for soprano and piano (ed. Kirkpatrick)
- Vox clamans in deserto
(1923), for soprano and chamber orchestra
- Men and Mountains
(1924), for orchestra
- Prayer
(1924), song for soprano and piano (ed. Kirkpatrick)
- Portals
(1925), for string orchestra
- Sun-Treader
(1926?31), for large orchestra ? at 16 minutes, Ruggles' longest and best-known work
- Evocations
(1934?43), a set of four pieces existing in two versions, one for solo piano (being revised till 1956) and one for orchestra
- Visions
(1935?50), for piano
- March
(1943?50), for piano (ed. Kirkpatrick)
- Valse Lente
(1945?50), for piano
- Parvum Organum
(1945?47), for piano (ed. Kirkpatrick)
- Organum
(1946), one version for two pianos, another for orchestra
- Exaltation
(1958), his last completed work, a hymn dedicated to the memory of his wife.
References
[
edit
]
Citations
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Henahan, Donal (October 26, 1971).
"Carl Ruggles, Composer, is Dead at 95"
(PDF)
.
New York Times
. Retrieved
June 13,
2013
.
- ^
Robert Morse Crunden,
Body & Soul: The Making of American Modernism
(2000), 42?3.
ISBN
978-0-465-01484-2
- ^
Strongin, Theodore (January 25, 1966).
"
'Sun-Treader' of Carl Ruggles Given First U.S. Performance"
(PDF)
.
New York Times
. Retrieved
June 13,
2013
.
- ^
Chase, Gilbert. "American Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present."
Music & Letters
, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Oct., 1988), pp. 542-545.
- ^
Antokoletz, Elliott (2014).
A History of Twentieth-Century Music in a Theoretic-Analytical Context
, p.166. Routledge.
ISBN
9781135037307
. "[Riegger and Becker] were grouped with Ives, Ruggles, and Cowell as the 'American Five'."
Sources
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
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