Discipline: Music Composition

Charles Cadman

Discipline: Music Composition
MacDowell Fellowships: 1934, 1937, 1940, 1943, 1945
Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881–1946) was one of the first American composers to become interested in the music and folklore of the indigenous peoples of North America. He showed early musical ability, and composed choral works, sonatas, vocal works, and works for diverse instruments including piano and organ. He was interested in Native American Indian music from a young age, and following a visit to an Omaha Indian reservation he began making recordings of Indian music. From 1909 to 1923 Cadman gave lecture-recitals with Tsianina Redfeather, an Indian singer, in both America and Europe. In 1917 he moved to California and in 1924 took a doctorate in music at the University of Southern California. His songs “At Dawning” (1906) and “From the Land of Sky-Blue Water” (1908) became highly popular. His 1918 opera Shanewis (The Robin Woman) was the first American opera to play two seasons at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Other works include the operatic cantata The Sunset Trail (1925) and the operas A Witch of Salem (1926) and The Willow Tree (1931), the first American opera written for radio; the American Suite for strings; the Thunderbird Suite for piano; and the cantata The Vision of Sir Launfal.

Studios

Monday Music

Charles Cadman worked in the Monday Music studio.

Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was rebuilt without the dormer. The interior…

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