Chester County Notables: Samuel Barber, Bayard T. Rustin, and N. C. Wyeth - A random glance at history

remlaps (75)in #history • 5 years ago (edited)

This post looks at some notable figures from history that I've had the opportunity to learn about in recent years, all of whom had connections to Chester County, Pennsylvania. Samuel Barber was a renowned American composer in the 20th century, Bayard T. Rustin was a civil rights leader who collaborated with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists of the time, and N. C. Wyeth was a widely known American artist.

Introduction

Roman Totenberg (violin) and Samuel Barber (piano), public domain photo from the US Library of Congress

Here in the introduction, I'll tell you how I happened to learn about these three noteworthy people, and in the following sections, I'll tell you some of what I've learned about their lives, and why they're noteworthy outside of our community.

The reason that I first heard of Samuel Barber is that he was a West Chester native, and, at the age of 12, he was the organist in the church that my family now attends. The first time I remember hearing his name is when it was announced at a 100 year anniversary ceremony for the church organ, and one of the pieces that was played had been composed by him, and donated to the church.

After that, when @cmp2020 went into the high school marching band, we learned that - at the age of 15 - Barber also composed the Alma Mater that is in use by all three of the high schools in the West Chester Area School District. @cmp2020 did an analysis of it last year, on Steem. It's here - Analysis of Rustin High School's Alma Mater (Composed by Our Very Own Samuel Barber), and when we visited West Chester University of PA's school of music, there was a huge mural on the wall with Barber's picture.

Moving on to Bayard T. Rustin. When we moved into this area, there were only 2 high schools in the school district. Some time around 2001 or 2002, I started hearing about plans to build a third, colloquially known as "the New School", because at the time, no one knew what it would be called. This would be the school that @cmp2020 would attend when he reached high school. Eventually, however, I learned that the school opened in 2006, having been named after Bayard T. Rustin, but I still had no idea who he was. I never thought much about it until some years later, when I read the article, The Civil Rights Movement's Unsung Hero, and I thought, "Wait. Can this be the same guy?" So then, my curiosity was piqued. It turns out that like Barber, Rustin was also a West Chester native.

Finally, we come to N. C. Wyeth. Unlike the other two, Wyeth was not born locally, but he moved to Wilmington, DE, for art school, and wound up living in the nearby Chadd's Ford area. The reason I learned about Wyeth, as you may have seen, is that @cmp2020 wrote a composition for a Young Composer's Workshop at the Brandywine River Museum of Art that was inspired by Wyeth's illustrations on display in the museum and from the book, The Boy's King Arthur. If you haven't listened to the composition, you really should (and I'm not saying that just 'cause I'm his dad):

So that's how I heard of these folks. Now, let's move on to what I've learned about them...

Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber was born in West Chester in 1910, began studying piano at the age of six, and began composing at the age of 7. A note that he wrote to his mother around the age of 8 or 9 is just priceless:

To begin with, I was not meant to be an athlete, I was meant to be a composer ...and will be, I'm sure ....Don't ask me to try to forget this ...and go and play football ...please ....Sometimes I've been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad! (not very). (source)

By the age of 14, he was growing withdrawn in West Chester, and was encouraged by the director of Baltimore's Peabody Institute to study music full time. Thus, he was accepted as a charter student at Philadelphia's newly established Curtis Institute. It's around this time that he was also the organist at our family's church, but he was promptly fired because he refused to play fermatas that were frequently added by the choir's vocalists, but were not indicated in the music. By the age of 18, Barber was highly regarded as a composer, pianist, and vocalist, and he began winning awards as well as launching a lifelong habit of travel throughout Europe.

In the decade that followed, Barber mostly continued his travels, meeting other composers such as George Antheil and Ralph Vaughan Williams, both of whom encouraged him in his work. His father had lost a great deal of money, so Barber financed his work by winning a variety of contests with his compositions. In 1939, Barber returned to the Curtis Institute as an orchestration teacher, and he stayed there until 1942, at which point he was inducted into the Army, then transferred to the Air Force, where he was encouraged to continue his composing, and his Commando March was used as war propaganda. After leaving the military, he resumed his travels, including a jaunt to Ireland, where he wrote the Hermit Songs, which were settings of anonymous Irish texts from the eighth through thirteenth centuries.

Those seem to be the major milestones of his life, with more travel and composition until his death in 1981. In Samuel Barber: An Improvisatory Portrait, Paul Wittke wrote,

In any pantheon of American musicians, Samuel Barber commands a prominent niche. Along with the works of Aaron Copland and George Gershwin, his are the most often played. He has become almost popular — a word that would make him cringe. Barber would be amused and amazed by all this, for he often called himself "a living dead" American composer.

Wittke also suggests that Barber wrote in the Romantic and Classical styles, but with a 20th century flare.

In the classical music community, Barber is apparently best known for his beautiful songs, but in popular culture, his most recognizable compositions are almost certainly his Adagio for Strings (which was used in the movie, Platoon), and the choral arrangement of the same melody for Agnus Dei..

(if you have trouble viewing the table, try viewing through SteemPeak)

- Adagio for Strings -	------ Agnus Dei -----

References

THE HERMIT SONGS OF SAMUEL BARBER
Music Sales/Classical: Samuel Barber

Bayard T. Rustin

Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester in 1912. He was raised by his grandparents, believing that his mother was his older sister. His grandmother, Julia Rustin, was a Quaker and a member of the NAACP, and frequently had nationally known guests like W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson in their home. These influences led the young Rustin to advocate for pacifism and argue vociferously against Jim Crow laws.

In 1936, after finishing college, Rustin moved to Harlem, NY, and became affiliated with the Communist Party, but was quickly disillusioned and began working with the socialist party, instead. In 1942, he traveled to California to protect the property of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who had been interred, and then set his sights on Jim Crow laws again, organizing the first of the "Freedom Rides" along with George Houser in 1947.

In a surprise twist, Rustin had a record published in 1952, where he was singing spiritual and Elizabethan songs, and he even made a living for a time by singing with Huddie Ledbetter ("Leadbelly"). Here are some videos. Rustin was actually a decent singer. Click through the Rustin video for a playlist.

(if you have trouble viewing the table, try viewing through SteemPeak)

-- Rustin --	Leadbelly

Anyway, back to his main area of pursuit... Rustin was arrested for engaging in gay behavior in 1953, and because of the stigmatization towards gay people at the time, he was pushed out of many visible roles in the civil rights movement, but continued working both behind the scenes and organizing activities. In the sixties, he fell even further out of favor with some civil rights activists when he started to become attached to the anti-communist political theorist, Max Schachtman. In the late sixties, he opposed the black nationalist movement, and participated in at least one debate with Malcom X. By this time, his philosophy is described by many writers as neoconservative.

He described his own philosophy like this:

The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.'

When he died in August, 1987, President Reagan issued a statement praising his life-long work on civil rights and his shift towards neoconservative politics, and in 2013, President Obama posthumously awarded him the Presidential medal of freedom.

References

Newell Convers Wyeth (N. C. Wyeth)

Unlike the previous two notables, Wyeth was not born in Chester County, but he spent most of his adult life here, living in a Chadds Ford home. Wyeth's birth took place in Needham, Massachusetts in 1882, where he was descended from a stone mason who had arrived in Massachusetts in 1645. In 1902, Wyeth was invited to study art at Howard Pyle's School of Art, which apparently had locations in Wilmington, DE, and nearby Chadds Ford, PA. His first commissioned art work was a bucking bronco for the Saturday Evening Post, in 1903.

He described his work as, "true, solid American subjects—nothing foreign about them", and spent a number of years in the early 1900s traveling throughout the American West to gain inspiration. In 1908, he married Wilmington's Carolyn Bockius, and the pair settled on 18 acres in Chadds Ford, near the Brandywine Battlefield.

here

In addition to Wyeth's successful career as an artist, he also raised five creative children, including artists, a musical composer, and an inventor. F. Scott Fitzgerald was among the frequent visitors to their home. Probably the most famous of his children was Andrew Wyeth, who was one of the best known American artists of the mid-20th century. Of interest to the music community, his daughter Ann Wyeth Mccoy was an artist and composer, with her musical compositions still being performed as recently as 2018. Grandson, Jamie Wyeth was also a well-known artist, and another grandson, Howard (Howie) Wyeth was a drummer and pianist (best known for working as a drummer with Bob Dylan).

Although (N.C.) Wyeth made his living from commercialism, he is said to have detested it, and battled internally over the contradiction. His work decorated everything from Lucky Strike cigarette boxes, Coca Cola bottles, and Cream of Wheat boxes to Steinway Pianos, schools, and bank murals. Like Barber, his work during WWII included patriotic war propaganda for the US military.

Tragically, Wyeth and his young grandson were both killed in 1945 when their car was struck by a freight train at a railroad crossing near their home. His artwork is on display in Chester County at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, and also at two museums in Maine. His home was designated as a national historic landmark in 1997, and tours of the home are facilitated by the Brandywine River Museum of Art.

References

everipedia: N. C. Wyeth

Conclusion

I had already learned some things about these men when I started this essay, and I learned even more while writing it. In addition to the fact that the three men are all connected by their time in Chester County, I was surprised to learn that Rustin and Barber were also connected by their work as musicians.

Another connection that I noticed while writing this is that Rustin and Wyeth were both deeply inspired by the philosophy and writings of Henry David Thoreau.

Finally, if you go take a look at the publisher on that Saturday Evening Post cover in the section on N.C. Wyeth, you may recognize a name from the Samuel Barber portion of this essay. Samuel Barber attended and taught at Philadelphia's renowned Curtis Institute, and I was surprised to see the name The Curtis Publishing Company on that cover. A quick glance at everipedia seemed to confirm my guess that the Curtis Institute was, indeed, founded with money from the Curtis Publishing Company, so that enterprise apparently deserves a bit of credit for helping to kick-start the careers of both Barber and Wyeth.

Beneficiaries

25% to @cmp2020 for the inclusion of his "King Arthur" video
10% to @rgkmb-unofficial for Marching Band fund-raising
10% to @null to burn Steem
5% to @steempeak to support the dApp

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Fundraising for the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band by @rgkmb-unofficial

Thank you for your time and attention.

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

Steve is also a co-founder of the Steem's Best Classical Music Facebook page, and the @classical-music steemit curation account.

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5 years ago in #history by remlaps (75)

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