During his stay in America, the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak became convinced that distinctive American music could be based on two sources: the work songs and spirituals of African-Americans and the chants and dances of indigenous Native American tribes. By the early 20th century, a number of American composers had taken his suggestions to heart.

One of them, Arthur Farwell, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on today’s date in 1872. Farwell went to MIT intending to become an electrical engineer, and did, in fact, get his engineering degree in 1893, the same year Dvorak’s views began appearing in the press. Farwell decided that a musical career might be more interesting than engineering. Frustrated at his inability to find a publisher for his set of solo piano transcriptions entitled American Indian Melodies, he formed his own publishing house.

Farwell also set Emily Dickinson poems to music, experimented with polytonality, and, in 1916, arranged for the first “light show” in New York’s Central Park, decades before the psychedelic 1960s. Farwell taught at Cornell, UC Berkley and Michigan State, but never felt at home in academia, preferring to organize community-based musical pageants with audience participation. He died at the age of 79 in New York in 1953.

Arthur Farwell (1872 – 1952) Navajo War Dance and Song of Peace Dario Muller, piano Marco Polo 223715