Natalie Curtis
Encyclopedia
Natalie Curtis (born April 26, 1875, in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

; died October 23, 1921, in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 ethnomusicologist. Curtis, along with Alice Cunningham Fletcher
Alice Cunningham Fletcher
Alice Cunningham Fletcher was an American ethnologist who studied and documented American Indian culture.-Biography:...

 and Frances Densmore
Frances Densmore
Frances Densmore was an American ethnographer and ethnomusicologist, both being divisions of study within anthropology. She was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, and specialized in Native American music and culture....

, was one of a small group of women doing important ethnological studies in North America at the beginning of the 20th century. She is remembered for her transcriptions and publication of traditional music of Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 tribes as well as for having published a four-volume collection of African-American music.

Work

Curtis studied music at the National Conservatory of Music of America
National Conservatory of Music of America
The National Conservatory of Music of America was an institution for higher education in music founded in 1885 in New York City by Jeannette Meyers Thurber...

 in New York City as well as in France and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. In Europe, she studied with prominent musicians, including Italian composer Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

. After a trip to Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

 in 1900, she became fascinated with Native American music and devoted herself to the collection and transcription of such music.

Starting in 1903 she worked from the Hopi
Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...

 reservation in Arizona and produced transcriptions using both an Edison cylinder recorder and pencil and paper. At the time, such work with native music and language was in conflict with the policies of the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which discouraged natives on reservations from speaking their language, singing their music, dressing in native garb, etc. It was only after the personal intervention of her friend, President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

, that she could continue her work unhindered. Roosevelt, himself, visited the Hopi reservation in 1913 for the Hopi flute and snake ceremonies, which visit was detailed by Curtis in "Theodore Roosevelt in Hopi Land," an article Curtis wrote for Outlook magazine in 1919.

In 1905, Curtis published The Songs of Ancient America, three Pueblo
Pueblo
Pueblo is a term used to describe modern communities of Native Americans in the Southwestern United States of America. The first Spanish explorers of the Southwest used this term to describe the communities housed in apartment-like structures built of stone, adobe mud, and other local material...

 corn-grinding songs with piano accompaniment. Characterizing her own task as a transcriber, she wrote, “I have in nowise changed the melodies, nor have I sought to harmonize them in the usual sense, nor to make of them musical compositions…My one desire has been to let the Indian songs be heard as the Indians themselves sing them..."

Curtis published The Indians’ Book in 1907, a collection of songs and stories from 18 tribes, illustrated with handwritten transcriptions of songs as well as with artwork and photography. Most of the 200 songs are presented only in manuscript notation with no piano accompaniment at all. The book served as source for her former teacher Busoni’s Indian Fantasy
Indian Fantasy
The Indian Fantasy is a fantasy for piano and orchestra by Ferruccio Busoni. Composed in 1913, it was first performed in Zürich in January, 1916, under the direction of Volkmar Andreae. The piece is based on several melodies and rhythms from various American Indian tribes; Busoni had received...

, a work for piano and orchestra, first performed in 1915 by the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

 under Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

.

Around 1910, Curtis broadened her research to include transcription and collection of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 music, working at the Hampton Institute in Hampton
Hampton, Virginia
Hampton is an independent city that is not part of any county in Southeast Virginia. Its population is 137,436. As one of the seven major cities that compose the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, it is on the southeastern end of the Virginia Peninsula. Located on the Hampton Roads Beltway, it hosts...

, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, a college established in 1868 to educate former slaves. The work was funded by philanthropist, George Foster Peabody
George Foster Peabody
George Foster Peabody was a banker and philanthropist.-Early life:...

. In 1911, she and David Mannes
David Mannes
David Mannes was an American violinist, conductor, and educator.Mannes studied in Berlin with Karol Haliř and was a violinist in the New York Symphony Orchestra from 1891 and its concertmaster from 1898 to 1912. In 1912 he helped found the Colored Music Settlement School and in 1916, with his...

 founded the Colored Music Settlement School
Colored Music Settlement School
The Colored Musical Settlement School was a New York City school established and operated to provide music education for African-American children, who were generally excluded from other music schools....

 in New York, and in 1912 she helped sponsor the first concert featuring black musicians at Carnegie Hall, a concert that featured the Clef Club
Clef Club
The Clef Club was a popular entertainment venue and society for African American musicians in Harlem, achieving its largest success in the 1910s. Incorporated by James Reese Europe in 1910, it was a combination musicians' hangout, fraternity club, labor exchange, and concert hall, across the street...

 orchestra, directed by James Reese Europe
James Reese Europe
James Reese Europe was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African American music scene of New York City in the 1910s.-Biography:...

.

In 1918 and 1919 Curtis (now, Curtis Burlin) published four volumes entitled Negro Folk-Songs; the volumes included spirituals, and “work-and play-songs." She published the songs in four-part harmony, a task that brought praise from composer Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...

 in 1918. Proceeds from the volumes went to the Hampton Institute. As well, she began to study the music of African tribes and in 1920 published Songs and Tales from the Dark Continent.In 1917 she had married artist Paul Burlin
Paul Burlin
Paul Burlin was born in New York of an English father and a German mother. Burlin was a modern and abstract expressionist painter.-Childhood:...

; they moved to France, where she died in a traffic accident in 1921.

Her published work often did not appear in “scholary journals” of anthropology or folklore. She published, for example, in Southern Workman, The Craftsman, and The Outlook, as well as in general musical publications such as Musical America. Reviews of her work appeared in such magazines as well as in standard scholarly journals of the day.

Original compositions

Curtis Burlin may be considered among a small group of US American composers who used native American material in her own compositions. Others are Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman
Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer.Cadman’s musical education, unlike that of most of his American contemporaries, was completely American. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he began piano lessons at 13...

, Arthur Nevin
Arthur Nevin
Arthur Nevin was an American composer, conductor, teacher and musicologist. Along with Charles Wakefield Cadman, Blair Fairchild, Charles Sanford Skilton, and Arthur Farwell, among others, he was one of the leading Indianist composers of the early twentieth century.-Biography:Born in Edgeworth,...

, and Thurlow Lieurance
Thurlow Lieurance
Thurlow Weed Lieurance was an American composer, known primarily for his song "By the Waters of Minnetonka". He is frequently classed with a number of his contemporaries, including Charles Wakefield Cadman, Arthur Nevin, Charles Sanford Skilton, Preston Ware Orem, and Arthur Farwell, as a member...

. She composed about 15 short, original works, many based on native American or African American themes.

External links

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