Arthur Farwell

Arthur Farwell (April 23, 1872 – January 20, 1952) was an American composer, conductor, educationalist, lithographer, esoteric savant, and music publisher. Interested in American Indian music, he became associated with the Indianist movement and founded the Wa-Wan Press to publish music in this genre. He combined teaching, composing and conducting in his career, working on both coasts and in Michigan. The American composer and critic A. Walter Kramer identified Farwell as “probably the most neglected composer in our history - at the turn of the century no one wrote music with greater seriousness of purpose or fought harder for American music”. Biography Farwell was born in St Paul, Minnesota. He trained as an engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1893. But he turned toward a musical career following contact with Rudolf Gott, an eccentric Boston-based composer. After studying in Boston, Farwell traveled to Europe for additional work, becoming a student of Engelbert Humperdinck in Berlin and Alexandre Guilmant in Paris. Returning to the U.S., he lectured in music at Cornell University from 1899 to 1901. He founded the Wa-Wan Press, dedicated to publishing the works of the American Indianist composers, among whom Farwell was a leading figure. There was great interest in this period in drawing from Native American forms and songs. From 1910 to 1913 Farwell directed municipal concerts in New York City, including massed performances of choral works, some of them his own, by up to 1,000 voices. He directed the Music School Settlement (now Third Street Music School Settlement) in New York from 1915 to 1918, where his private pupils included the young Roy Harris. During this period he composed the score for Percy MacKaye's "Community Masque" Caliban by the Yellow Sands.