Charles Wakefield Cadman was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on
December 24, 1881. As a boy he played the organ in a church near
Pittsburgh, and wrote a march that was published. His main music study
took place with private teachers: Leo Oehmler, Luigi von Kunits, and
Emil Paur. From 1908 to 1910 he was the music critic of the Pittsburgh
_Dispatch_. Meanwhile, a meeting in 1902 with the lyric writer Nellie
Richmond Eberhart, turned him to the writing of songs in which he
achieved his initial outstanding successes as composer. Some of these
were inspired by the American Indian. Later researches in the field of
American-Indian ceremonials and music led him to write his opera
_Shanewis_, produced by the Metropolitan Opera in 1918, as well as
several significant instrumental works including the _Thunderbird Suite_
and _To a Vanishing Race_. From 1917 until his death he lived in
California where he wrote several major orchestral and chamber-music
works, but none in the American-Indian idiom with which he became
famous. He died in Los Angeles on December 30, 1946.
The _American Suite_, for strings (1938), is an engaging piece of music
in which Cadman makes use of several different American folk idioms. In
the first movement he borrows his melodies from the tribal music of
Omaha Indians. In the second movement we hear Negro folk tunes
indigenous to South Carolina. And in the third movement, two old fiddle
tunes are effectively employed, “Sugar in the Gourd,” and
“Hoop-de-den-do.”
“At Dawning” is one of Cadman’s two most famous songs. It sold millions
of copies of sheet music and records, and has been translated into many
languages. Though originally published in 1906, it reposed forgotten and
unknown on the shelves of the publisher (Oliver Ditson) until John
McCormack sang it at one of his recitals in 1909 and was given an
ovation. “At Dawning” was transcribed for violin and piano by Fritz
Kreisler.
_Dark Dancers of Mardi Gras_, for orchestra with piano, (1933), is one
of Cadman’s most popular symphonic compositions. The composer explains:
“The work takes its name from the Negro side of the Mardi Gras, though
no Negro themes are used. The Negroes of New Orleans have a Mardi Gras
of their own. The fantasy is supposed to reflect the fantastic, the
grotesque, the bizarre spirit of the carnival. The original theme goes
into a major key in the central section, and might represent the
romantic feeling of the King and Queen, and the Court in carnival
fashion.”
“From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water” is the second of Cadman’s two
outstandingly successful songs. It is one of four songs with lyrics by
Nellie Richmond Eberhart appearing in _American-Indian Songs_, op. 45, a
cycle which was published in Boston in 1909 and in the same year
received a prize in a contest sponsored by the Carnegie Institute. This
song was first swept to national fame by the prima donna, Lillian
Nordica, in her song recitals. It soon entered the repertory of
virtually every leading concert singer in America. Fritz Kreisler
transcribed it for violin and piano.