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

One of them, an American composer, publisher, music editor and critic named 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 Dvořák's views began appearing in the press, and Farwell eventually came to the conclusion 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.

In addition to pioneering work in arranging Native American themes, Farwell 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. His teaching career included stints at Cornell, UC Berkley and Michigan State, but Farwell never felt completely 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.