Discipline: Music Composition

Maurice Matteson

Discipline: Music Composition
MacDowell Fellowships: 1944
Maurice Matteson (1893-1964) was a folk song collector for part of his career. He was a classically trained singer and was chairman of the music program at the University of South Carolina (1921-1936). In 1932 he was in charge of the vocal work at the Southern Appalachian Music Camp held at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC. During a summer vacation near the camp, he met Mellinger Henry, a folk song collector, who convinced him to help him with the musical scores. He taught at State Teachers College in Frostburg from 1937 until June 1954. During this time his second and final short book, American Folk-Songs for Young Singers was published. He and his wife Augusta (piano) did "ballad bagging" concerts which he sang, sometimes accompanied by piano, dulcimer, zither, and "a one-stringed folk instrument, of Swedish origin," called a salmonikon. These programs were a combination of performance and lecture about collecting and the history of the ballads. He recorded four ballads in 1938 that can be purchased from the Library of Congress recorded at the National Folk Festival, Washington, D.C., in May 1938 by the U.S. Recording Company. He also published some arrangements of folk songs and wrote several original songs.

Studios

Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)

Maurice Matteson worked in the Van Zorn (formerly Kirby) studio.

Constructed thanks to a bequest from Sarah L. Kirby, Kirby Studio was the last new building to be erected during Mrs. MacDowell’s leadership (1907-1951). The load-bearing masonry walls were laid by local mason Augustus Beaulieu atop a fieldstone foundation. A 1995 renovation preserved the brick fireplace with wooden mantel and…

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