Charles Sanford Skilton

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Charles Sanford Skilton (August 16, 1868 – March 12, 1941) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. Along with Charles Wakefield Cadman, Blair Fairchild, Arthur Nevin, and Arthur Farwell, among others, he was one of the leading Indianist composers of the early twentieth century.[1]

Life

Skilton was born in

preparatory school in Newburgh, New York; while there, he studied composition with Dudley Buck and organ with Harry Rowe Shelley. Skilton traveled to Berlin for further study in 1891, remaining there until 1893 and studying at the Hochschule für Musik with Woldemar Bargiel and Otis Boise. Returning to the United States, he became director of music at the Salem Academy and College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in which position he served until 1896. In 1897 he found work as an instructor of piano and music theory at the State Normal School in Trenton, New Jersey (now The College of New Jersey); he moved west in 1903, when he became a professor of organ, theory and history at the University of Kansas. He served as the Dean of the School of Fine Arts at that institution from 1903 until 1915. It was there that he developed his interest in American Indian music.[2]

Skilton died in Lawrence, Kansas in 1941.

Music

Skilton first became interested in the music of American Indians in 1915, when George La Mere, an Indian pupil of his offered a trade; the pupil would sing him traditional tribal songs in exchange for lessons in harmony. Skilton expressed interest, and soon found himself visiting the nearby Haskell Institute. The first works he completed on Indian themes were Two Indian Dances for string quartet, Deer Dance and War Dance,[3] originally intended for a student opera.[4] These he later orchestrated as the first part of his Suite Primeval; the second part, published four years later, consisted of four movements based on traditional songs of three tribes. These were:

  • Sunrise Song, from the Winnebago
  • Gambling Song, from the
    Rogue River
  • Flute Serenade, from the Sioux
  • Moccasin Game, from the Winnebago[1]

Skilton also wrote

Chicago, Illinois.[2]

Besides his work on Indian motives, Skilton wrote music on other themes, including

Electra at Smith College in his youth. Among his other compositions were an oratorio, The Guardian Angel, and numerous orchestral works.[1]

Many of Skilton's manuscript scores, and published copies of some of his work, are held in the library of the University of Kansas. Among these are manuscript copies of his three operas.

Recordings

Little of Skilton's music appears to have been recorded. Some of his piano pieces, including a solo piano arrangement of the "War Dance" from "Suite Primeval," (possibly the arrangement by Carl A. Preyer referenced in the full score of Suite Primeval

Victor red seal
no. 11-8302, coupled with the "Sunrise Dance" from Part II. Thus, leaving aside questions of varying recording technology and accessibility to modern listeners, recordings have at least documented the "War Dance" in all three guises: solo piano, string quartet, and full orchestral.

Notes and references

  1. ^ a b c d Howard, John Tasker (1939). Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of It. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
  2. ^ a b c "UMKC Special Collections - Charles Sanford Skilton Collection". University of Missouri-Kansas City. 2008-08-02. Archived from the original on 2008-08-12.
  3. ^ a b c d Program Notes to orchestral score of Skilton: Suite Primeval on Tribal Indian Melodies for Grand Orchestra, New York: Carl Fischer, no date, accessed online Dec. 10, 2010
  4. ^ Pratt, Waldo Selden, and Charles N. Boyd, eds.; Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, American Supplement; Philadelphia: Theodore Presser Co., 1922, accessed online Dec. 10, 2010
  5. ^ "American Indianists, vol. 1". Naxos Records. 2008-08-02.
  6. ^ "American Indianists, vol. 2". Naxos Records. 2008-08-02.

External links

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