Ruth Crawford Seeger

One of the best magazines of experimental music / sound art, founded by John Oswald and published since 1978. Includes feaurures, essays, interviews, reviews, etc., and comes with a CD with (often exclusive) music/sound in relation to the contents of the magazine. In this issue: Scratch Orchestra, sound poetry and sound art, etc.

1990 release ** "Arditti", presents a typically challenging Arditti programme, beginning with Beethoven's Grosse Fuge (1826), which comes over well from their modernist standpoint. Conlon Nancarrow's String Quartet No. 3 (1987) comes next - Nancarrow had said that the Grosse Fuge was the only music he would want his quartet to follow, and they make an illuminating pairing. Ruth Crawford Seeger's magnificent String Quartet (1931) has had several fine recordings, and this one is one of the best - …

The generation of American composers who came of age in the 1920s are now generally acknowledged as seminal figures in the creation of a truly indigenous American art music. Quartet Romantic makes available for the first time on CD several important chamber works by four of these figures - Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Wallingford Riegger, and John Becker - as well as an early work by Cowell's most famous pupil, Lou Harrison.