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With the recent publication of Charles Seeger's Tradition and Experiment in the New Music, his contribution to American modern music and his influence on the music of Ruth Crawford have received renewed attention.l Important studies that seek to illustrate the use of Seeger's theory in Crawford's own compositions have preceded and followed the publication of this treatise. Fortunately, a major recent biography sheds new light on Crawford's influence on the formation of Seeger's composition theory.2 My work expands on the idea that during the crucial period from 1929 to 1931 the partnership between Seeger and Crawford generated the core of inquiry through which Crawford crystallized her musical expression in composition and Seeger synthesized his thoughts on modern musical composition-ideas that would eventually find expression in his treatise. This core of inquiry may also have contributed to the notable evolution of Seeger's treatise during the period of Crawford's study with him.3
In order to examine the Crawford-Seeger partnership in modern music, this article will study various sketches and versions of Seeger's treatise, tracing the shifting focus on selected theoretical/compositional issues that emerged at different stages of its development. The treatise is treated not as a self-contained compositional theory but rather as a thinking and working process in which the focus was significantly modified over the period encompassing Crawford's involvement. This article will then analyze the governing principles of the muchneglected second movement of Crawford's String Quartet (1931), focusing upon its interesting dialectical relationship to the principles that Seeger arrived at in later versions of his treatise.4 Commencement of an Unusual Alliance
Crawford and Seeger's mutual devotion and passion for modern music was a uniting force that was most fruitful from the fall of 1929 through 1931. Their respective roles within the contemporary modern music scene of that period were understandably different. Crawford, who had studied and taught in Chicago since 1921, was regarded as an unusually gifted young composer. In the summer of 1929 she left Chicago to join other creative artists at the MacDowell Colony. Continuing on to New York City that fall she was warmly accepted, in spite of being a newcomer, and her music was soon recognized by new friends. Her successful application for the Guggenheim Fellowship, dated November 14, was endorsed not...