Eleanor Hague (October 7, 1875 – December 25, 1954) was an American folklorist and musicologist, who specialized in the traditional music of Latin America.
Early life and education
Hague was born in
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
, the daughter of geologist and mining engineer
James Duncan Hague
James Duncan Hague (18361908) was an American mining engineer, mineralogist, and geologist.
Early years
Hague was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to the Rev. William Hague and Mary Bowditch Moriarty. Through the Foote family, she was related to the Beechers and to many other prominent New England families. Writer
Kate Foote Coe
Katherine Elizabeth Foote Coe (May 31, 1840 – December 23, 1923) was an American educator, journalist, and traveler from Connecticut.
Early life
Foote was born in Guilford, Connecticut, one of the ten children of George Augustus Foote and Eliza ...
was her aunt; her uncle
Arthur De Wint Foote
Arthur De Wint Foote (1849–1933) was an American civil engineer and mining engineer who impacted the development of the American West with his innovative engineering works and entrepreneurial ventures. In Northern California in the late 189 ...
was a noted engineer, and husband of book illustrator
Mary Hallock Foote
Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938) was an American author and illustrator. She is best known for her illustrated short stories and novels portraying life in the mining communities of the turn-of-the-century American West.
Biography
Overview
Mar ...
. Another aunt married politician
Joseph Roswell Hawley
Joseph Roswell Hawley (October 31, 1826March 18, 1905) was the 42nd Governor of Connecticut, a U.S. politician in the Republican and Free Soil parties, a Civil War general, and a journalist and newspaper editor. He served two terms in the Unit ...
; his daughter, her first cousin
Margaret Foote Hawley
Margaret Spencer Foote Hawley (1880–1963) was an American painter of portrait miniatures.
Hawley and her sister, Mary Foote – also later to become a painter – were born in Guilford, Connecticut, the daughters of Charles Spencer Foote (1837â ...
, was an artist.
Hague studied music in New York and Massachusetts, and abroad in France and Italy.
Career
As a young woman in New York, Hague was a member of the New York Oratorio Society, and was a church choir director.
Hague collected, preserved, and published folk songs from Latin America and Spanish California. She was credited as arranger on a 1925
Victor
The name Victor or Viktor may refer to:
* Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname
Arts and entertainment
Film
* ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film
* ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...
recording of "Carmela" by
Dusolina Giannini
Dusolina Giannini (December 19, 1902 – June 29, 1986) was an Italian-American soprano, particularly associated with the Italian repertory.
Biography
Born into a musical family in Philadelphia, Giannini was the daughter of Italian tenor Ferr ...
. She is best known for discovering the bound manuscript notebooks of Jose MarÃa GarcÃa, an eighteenth-century Mexican dance master, who made shorthand notations about how to perform specific dance steps. She also translated folksongs from Spanish to English, working with Luisa Espinel,
Juan Bautista Rael
Juan Bautista Rael (August 14, 1900 – November 8, 1993) was an American ethnographer, linguist, and folklorist who was a pioneer in the study of the people, stories, and language of Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado in the Southwe ...
, and Marion Leffingwell. She sometimes performed the songs she collected, singing and playing piano or guitar.
In 1932, Hague lectured on early Spanish music at the
Los Angeles Public Library
The Los Angeles Public Library system (LAPL) is a public library system in Los Angeles, California. The system holds more than six million volumes, and with around 19 million residents in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, it serves the large ...
Pasadena, California
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
I ...
, to teach Mexican traditional music and dance to young people, and she directed the students' performances. In 1941, she directed the Jarabe Club dancers when they performed in the National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C.
Publications
* "Mexican Folk-Songs" (1912)
* "Brazilian Songs" (1912)
* ''Folk songs from Mexico and South America'' (1914, with
Edward Kilenyi
Edward Kilenyi Jr. (1910 – 2000) was a classical pianist. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1910. Kilenyi studied in Hungary with the composer/pianist Ernő Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, earning a diploma in 19 ...
)
* "Spanish Songs from Southern California" (1914)
* "Eskimo Songs" (1915)
* "Five Mexican Dances" (1915)
* "Five Danzas from Mexico" (1915)
* ''Spanish-American Folk Songs'' (1917)
* ''Early Spanish-Californian folk-songs'' (1922, with Gertrude Ross)
* ''Latin-American Music Past and Present'' (1934)
* "Regional Music of Spain and Latin America" (1943)
Personal life and legacy
Hague died in 1954, at the age of 79, in Flintridge, California. She left her papers to the
Southwest Museum
The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) canyon and stream. The muse ...
, including the Jose MarÃa GarcÃa manuscript. In 1996, the Children of the Hague Manuscript, an ensemble of young musicians in Atascadero, California, performed music based on the Jose MarÃa GarcÃa notes at several concerts.