Biographical Note
American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on 24 December 1881, the son of William Charles
Cadman, a chemist, and Caroline Wakefield. His maternal great-grandfather, Samuel Wakefield (17991895), was a composer of
hymns and built the first pipe organ west of the Allegheny Mountains.Cadman began piano lessons at thirteen and soon afterward
composed simple melodies; he abandoned his formal education the following year. To finance his future musical education, he
played the organ at various Pittsburgh churches and became an errand boy at twenty dollars a month to Joseph Schwab (brother
of Charles Michael Schwab) at the Carnegie Steel Mill in 1895. At the age of seventeen, Cadman self-published "The Carnegie
Library March" (1898) and eventually sold some six thousand copies door to door. In Pittsburgh he briefly studied harmony
and theory with Leo Oehmler (1902) and orchestration with Luigi von Kunits (1908), concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, and with Emil Paur, its conductor. From 1907 to 1910 he was the organist at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church,
Pittsburgh, and in 1908 he became the accompanist to the Pittsburgh Male Chorus. That year he was appointed music editor and
critic of the Pittsburgh Dispatch. He also was the Pittsburgh correspondent for the Musical Courier (1908-1910). He was largely self-taught; having seen a production of De Kovens operetta Robin Hood when he was 14, he composed three operettas by the age of 20. His most famous work, the song "At Dawning," which was inspired
by American Indian tribal songs, was written before he was 25. Cadman made his livelihood from royalties, piano concerts,
music journalism, film scores, and lecture tours of the USA and Europe, which included a celebrated talk on American Indian
music. Two of his operas were based on American Indian tales and songs, developed after research into their culture. One of
Cadman's main interests was to "idealize" American Indian music by adding conservative 19th-century harmonies to the native
melodies, a treatment that the musicologist John Comfort Fillmore claimed the American Indians themselves approved. While
his opera Shanewis, based on the life of the Creek Indian Tsianina Redfeather, was the most successful and lasting of his opera ventures, his
dramatic works also include cycles for vocal quartet with piano, one of which, The Full Moon, was intended to be staged. His radio opera The Willow Tree was likewise originally conceived for a vocal quartet. He saw productions of all but his first opera Daoma ("The Land of Misty Water"), which he continued to revise until late in his life under the title Ramala. While he considered his "serious" compositions, particularly the operas, to be his most significant works, it was for his
shorter novelties that he was best known.
Although Cadman was exposed to Indian legend and lore as a youth, it was not until 1907, after reading Indian Story and Song (1900), by the Washington, D.C., ethnologist Alice C. Fletcher, that he was inspired to compose solo songs and piano works
based on Indian melodies. Through correspondence, Fletcher urged Cadman to live among and research the Omaha Indians in Nebraska.
He followed her advice and soon met Francis La Flesche, an Omaha Indian working in the Office of Indian Affairs. Together,
Cadman and La Flesche were pioneers in making early cylinder recordings and transcriptions of Omaha Indian tribal melodies
for the Smithsonian Institution (Aug. 1910). Cadman learned to play their instruments and later arranged or "idealized" (adapting
the melody into a nineteenth-century harmonic idiom) their music for concert audiences. He described his work in an article
in the Musical Quarterly (July 1915), "The 'Idealization' of Indian Music."
Cadman's early "Indian" works did not enjoy wide popularity until "From the Land of the Sky-blue Water" was included as an
encore by the American soprano Lillian Nordica at a Cleveland, Ohio, recital on 8 February 1909. The work was written six
months before Cadman had ever visited an Indian reservation and was rejected by five publishers before the White-Smith Music
Publishing Company accepted it for publication in 1909. The most beloved of all "Indianist" songs, the original pencil manuscript
was donated by Cadman to the Library of Congress in 1915. His most successful song, the ballad "At Dawning" (1906), was not
based on Indian melodies but had a similar story being popularized by tenors John McCormack and Alessandro Bonci. Although
the Oliver Ditson Company purchased the work outright for fifteen dollars several years before its success, they generously
rewrote the contract and paid Cadman on a royalty basis. The song ultimately surpassed one million copies sold before the
composer's death. The lyrics to these songs were written by Cadman's longtime friend, confidante, and principal lyricist,
Nelle Richmond Eberhart.
With the commercial success of his songs, Cadman lived comfortably and devoted much of his time to serious composition, including
the Trio in D Major (1913), which was hailed as the first use of ragtime elements in an American chamber work. His American
Indian opera, Shanewis (The Robin Woman), based on authentic Indian melodies, was premiered by the Metropolitan Opera on 23 March 1918. Receiving
twenty-two curtain calls after its first performance, it was the first American opera with a contemporary American setting
staged at the Met, the first American opera with a libretto by a woman (Eberhart) at the Met, and the first American opera
to be performed a second season.
By the early 1920s Cadman had become a self-proclaimed expert on American Indian music, and from 1909 to 1940 he toured North
America and Europe, delivering his celebrated "Indian Talk." Demonstrating Indian melodies on the piano and with an Indian
flageolet, he was often supported by the Cherokee-Creek mezzo-soprano "Princess" Tsianina Redfeather.
Cadman's music is marked by well-made melodies, if conventional harmony. He belongs to that group of American composers which
also included Farwell, Gilbert, Nevin, and Skilton who "idealized" (i.e. set into a conservative 19th-century harmonic idiom)
the music of the American Indians. Although his early works were mostly emotionally appealing household songs, the Trio in
D major (1914) revealed in the composer a keen instrumental flair, also evident in later orchestral works. His once popular
Dark Dancers of the Mardi Gras (1933) is one of his most stylistically advanced pieces and is marked by ragtime syncopations
in its livelier sections, supple Gershwinesque melodies in its slower portions and vivid orchestral colouring throughout.
Cadman also wrote articles on American music (MQ, i (1915), 387; The Etude, lxi (1943), 705).
When not on tour, Cadman returned to Los Angeles, where he had resided since 1916. He gave freely of his time to further culture
in the southern California vicinity and was a charter member of the Theater Arts Alliance (1919), the founding organization
of the Hollywood Bowl. Cadman was a featured Bowl soloist no fewer than seven times in his career, and entire evenings were
declared "Cadman Nights" during the seasons of 1922, 1923, and 1924. He also donated much time to the field of musical education
and was director of education for the California Federation of Music Clubs (1921) and a lecturer on music at the University
of Southern California.
With Hollywood close by, it was natural for Cadman to gravitate toward the motion picture studios. Assembling scores for several
silent films, including The Vanishing American (1925), in 1929 Cadman eventually was contracted by the Fox Film Corporation to compose music for talking pictures. His scores
included The Sky Hawk (1929), Captain of the Guard (1930), Women Everywhere (1930), and Harmony at Home (1930). Before leaving Fox in 1930, Cadman became embroiled in a public dispute with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer composer Dmitri
Tiomkin over the future direction of music for motion pictures. Cadman felt that music for motion pictures should be based
on classical or traditional styles and was opposed to Tiomkin's "popular jazz" approach. Eventually Cadman relented in his
position, but only after his severance from the studios was complete.
By the early 1930s public interest in the Indianist movement had waned, and Cadman recognized that his base of support was
eroding. Though he was voted the most popular American composer of 1930 by the National Federation of Music Clubs, Cadman
sensed that the public was no longer content with simple, idealized melodies and maudlin lyrics. As late as 1935 the California
Pacific International Exposition at San Diego declared 4 September "Cadman Day." The event was based entirely on Cadman's
past association with American Indian music and included a ceremony making him an honorary Indian chief. The following year
Cadman again received national attention when he was the only member to resign from the American Music Committee of the Berlin
Olympic Games Festival. He declared the Nazi regime "repugnant."
Cadman spent the last decade of his life promoting his serious works, which he held in high regard. These attained little
acceptance beyond southern California, his major base of support. The only major exception was in March 1940, when the premiere
of his Pennsylvania Symphony was broadcast nationally from the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, with Albert Coates conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Orchestra. The symphony received enthusiastic acclaim, but Cadman could not interest the major eastern orchestras in a performance.
In fact, Cadman had difficulty getting any of his symphonic works, old or new, performed by American orchestras during his
last years.
The difficulty was twofold. First, Cadman handled his own public relations, which had become ineffective, and second, deteriorating
political conditions in Europe during the mid-1930s brought many talented European composers and conductors to American shores.
Competition for performances and publicity was intense.
Living the last three years of his bachelor life in semifrugality at a modest hotel in Los Angeles, Cadman tried to maintain
his old stature, though he was in poor health. He died in Los Angeles, 30 December 1946.
Bibliography
Lance C. Bowling, "Cadman, Charles Wakefield"; American National Biography Online http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-00170.html; February 2000, Accessed 6 April 2005.
David E. Campbell and N.E. Tawa, "Cadman, Charles Wakefield," Grove Music Online ed. by L. Macy Accessed 6 April 2005 http://www.grovemusic.com
Thomas Warburton, "Cadman, Charles Wakefield," (opera) Grove Music Online ed. by L. Macy Accessed 6 April 2005 http://www.grovemusic.com
In 1937 Cadman published Catalog: Complete Musical Works of Charles Wakefield Cadman under the pseudonym Charles William Wakefield. Another catalog using the same title edited by Charles N. Fielder, Cadman's
principal music copyist, was published in 1951 by the Cadman estate. The most authoritative source is Harry Perison, "Charles
Wakefield Cadman: His Life and Works" (Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, 1978). An obituary is in the New York Times, 31 Dec. 1946.
Scope and Content
The papers of Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946) contain a broad representation of his life and career as an American composer,
pianist, and teacher. The majority of the collection focuses on the many musical and operatic scores he wrote during the
early 1900s.
Cadman's early life, before his rise to popularity, is not well documented in this collection. Rather, most of the scrapbooks
containing newspaper clippings, photographs, and personal correspondence were started well after his career had begun.
There are two scrapbooks of a personal nature, kept by Cadman, which include clippings of articles written while he was a
critic at the Pittsburgh Dispatch from 1908-1910. Another scrapbook contains clippings of performances from various cities.
Items of importance can be found in each group of materials in the collection. The musical and operatic scores include some
which are the original handwritten works. Phonograph records of some of the more popular Cadman songs, such as "I Hear a
Thrush at Eve," "Bells of Capistrano," and "At Dawning," are also included.
Among the collection's group of photographs are personal pictures of Cadman and family members, Hollywood Bowl rehearsal photos
at the performance of Shanewis, and publicity shots.
