Arthur William Foote (March 5, 1853 in

Salem, Massachusetts Salem ( ) is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located on the North Shore of Greater Boston. Continuous settlement by Europeans began in 1626 with English colonists. Salem would become one of the most significant seaports tr ...

– April 8, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American classical

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, and a member of the "

Boston Six The Second New England School or New England Classicists (sometimes specifically the Boston Six) is a name given by music historians to a group of classical-music composers who lived during the late-19th and early-20th centuries in New England. More ...

." The other five were

George Whitefield Chadwick George Whitefield Chadwick (November 13, 1854 – April 4, 1931) was an American composer. Along with John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell, he was a representative composer of what is called the Se ...

Amy Beach Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her Gaelic Symphony, "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symph ...

Edward MacDowell Edward Alexander MacDowell (December 18, 1860January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites ''Woodland Sketches'', ''Sea Pieces'' and ''Ne ...

John Knowles Paine John Knowles Paine (January 9, 1839 – April 25, 1906) was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those ...

, and

Horatio Parker Horatio William Parker (September 15, 1863 – December 18, 1919) was an American composer, organist and teacher. He was a central figure in musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in the late 19th century, and is best remembered as the undergradu ...

Biography

Foote was appointed organist of the

First Church in Boston First Church in Boston is a Unitarian Universalist Church (originally Congregationalist) founded in 1630 by John Winthrop's original Puritan settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. The current building, located on 66 Marlborough Street in the Back ...

(Unitarian) in 1878, remaining there 32 years. A founder of the

American Guild of Organists The American Guild of Organists (AGO) is an international organization of academic, church, and concert organists in the US, headquartered in New York City with its administrative offices in the Interchurch Center. Founded as a professional educati ...

, he was one of the examiners at the first Guild Fellowship examination. He helped organize the New England chapter of the AGO, and from 1909 to 1912 (when the office was discontinued) he served as National Honorary President of the AGO, succeeding Horatio Parker in that position. He was one of the editors of ''Hymns of the Church Universal'', a Unitarian hymnal published in 1890. The modern tendency is to view Foote's music as "Romantic" and "European" in the light of the later generation of American composers such as

Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...

Roy Harris Roy Ellsworth Harris (February 12, 1898 – October 1, 1979) was an American composer. He wrote music on American subjects, and is best known for his Symphony No. 3. Life Harris was born in Chandler, Oklahoma on February 12, 1898. His ancestry ...

and

William Schuman William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. ...

, all of whom helped to develop a recognizably American sound in classical music. A

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

graduate and the first noted American classical composer to be trained entirely in the U.S., in some sense he is to music what American poets were to literature before

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...

. Foote was an early advocate of

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...

and

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

and promoted performances of their music. Foote was an active music teacher and wrote a number of pedagogical works, including ''Modern Harmony in Its Theory and Practice'' (1905), written with Walter R. Spalding. It was republished as ''Harmony'' (1969). He also wrote ''Some Practical Things in Piano-Playing'' (1909) and ''Modulation and Related Harmonic Questions'' (1919). He contributed many articles to music journals, including "Then and Now, Thirty Years of Musical Advance in America" in ''Etude'' (1913) and "A Bostonian Remembers" in ''Musical Quarterly'' (1937). A good part of Foote's compositions consists of

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

and these works are generally among his best. The

Chamber Music Journal ''The Chamber Music Journal'' is a periodical devoted exclusively to non-standard, rare or unknown chamber music of merit. (i.e., not Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms etc.) Between 1990 and 2010, it was published in hardcopy and available by subscription ...

(2002), discussing Foote's chamber music, has written, "If his name is not entirely unknown, it is fair to say that his music is. This is a shame. Foote's chamber music is first rate, deserving of regular public performance." His

Piano Quintet In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello). The term also refers to the group of musicians that plays a pian ...

, Op.38 and

Piano Quartet A piano quartet is a chamber music composition for piano and three other instruments, or a musical ensemble comprising such instruments. Those other instruments are usually a string trio consisting of a violin, viola and cello. Piano quartets for ...

, Op.23, are singled out for special praise. With regard to the Piano Quintet, the author writes, "Each of the movements is a gem. The Scherzo is particularly fine and the rousing finale beyond reproach. I believe that the only reason this work never received the audience it deserved and deserves is because it was written by an American who was 'out of the loop.'" As for the Piano Quartet, the opinion is that "it is as good as any late 19th century piano quartet." Foote lived in

Dedham, Massachusetts Dedham ( ) is a town in and the county seat of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 25,364 at the 2020 census. It is located on Boston's southwest border. On the northwest it is bordered by Needham, on the southwest b ...

and was a member of the

Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves is one of the "oldest continually existing horse thief apprehending organization in the United States, and one of Dedham, Massachusetts, Dedham's most venerable social organizations." Since its ...

. His students included

Isabel Stewart North Isabel Stewart North (June 20, 1860 – March 6, 1929) was an American song composer, music educator, and publisher. North was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, to Lucy R. Royer and J. Sewell Stewart. She studied music at the Burlingame Seminary a ...

Selected works

* Three Pieces for Cello & Piano, Op. 1 (1881) * String Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 4 * Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 5 (1883) * Three Pieces for Violin & Piano, Op. 9 * Sonata for Violin & Piano, Op. 20 * Scherzo for Cello & Piano, Op. 22 * Piano Quartet in C major, Op. 23 (1890) * Francesca da Rimini, Op. 24 (1890) * Serenade for Strings in E major, Op. 25 * Three Pieces for Oboe (or Flute) & Piano, Op. 31 (Flute = Op. 31B) * String Quartet No. 2 in E major, Op. 32 (Finale performed separately as Tema con Variazione) (1893) * Cello Concerto in G minor, Op. 33 * Romanza for Cello & Piano, Op. 33 (piano reduction of slow movement of Cello Concerto, Op. 33) * Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 38 (1897) * Melody for Violin & Piano, Op. 44 * Four Character Pieces after the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Op.48 (1900) * Suite in E major for Strings, Op. 63 (premiered and first recorded by the

Boston Symphony Orchestra The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 1881, ...

) (1907) * Piano Trio No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 65 (1907–1908) * Ballad for Violin & Piano, Op. 69 * String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 70 *Seven Pieces for organ. Op. 71 * Two Pieces for Violin & Piano, Op. 74 * Legend for Violin & Piano, Op. 76 * Aubade for Cello & Piano, Op. 77 * * Sonata for Viola & Piano, Op. 78A * ''Nocturno & Scherzo'' for Flute & String Quartet, WoO. (1918, ''Nocturno'' also known as ''A Night Piece') * ''At Dusk'' for Flute, Harp and Cello, WoO * Sarabande & Rigaudon for Oboe (or Flute), Viola (or Violin) and Piano, WoO

References

Works cited

External links

*, also includes List of Works
The Chamber Music of Arthur Foote. Sound-bites and information from several works.
- biography page at the

Unitarian Universalist Unitarian or Unitarianism may refer to: Christian and Christian-derived theologies A Unitarian is a follower of, or a member of an organisation that follows, any of several theologies referred to as Unitarianism: * Unitarianism (1565–present) ...

Association web site
Art of the States: Arthur Foote
''Three Character Pieces, op. 9'' (1885) {{DEFAULTSORT:Foote, Arthur 1853 births 1937 deaths 19th-century classical composers 20th-century classical composers American male classical composers American Romantic composers 19th-century American composers 20th-century American composers Classical musicians from Massachusetts 20th-century American male musicians 19th-century American male musicians Pupils of John Knowles Paine Harvard College alumni People from Dedham, Massachusetts People from Salem, Massachusetts Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves

Biography

Selected works

References

Works cited

Further reading

External links