Broe on Kerr

Louise Lincoln Kerr (1892-1977): Composer, Performer and Patron



By Carolyn Waters Broe – IAWM Journal (2004)


During the early years of the 20th century, most women were prohibited from gaining higher education in theory and composition or from holding a position in a professional symphony orchestra. One American woman who managed to beat the odds was Louise Lincoln Kerr (1892-1977). She studied with Columbia University professors, won awards in composition at Barnard College in New York and was one of the first two women to win a seat in the early Cleveland Symphony Orchestra as a violinist.

Kerr was active in the recording industry. In the 1920s, she worked at Aeolian Recording Company of New York proofing piano rolls, and she later worked in the sound booth as the trouble-shooter for the first disc recordings of modern music.


She was also a pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology. In the 1940s white people and especially women were never allowed to view the sacred ceremonies of the Native American Hopi people, but Louise Kerr and violinist Sidney Tretick were invited into the kivas of the Hopi Indians, and recorded their music on a reel-to-reel tape recorder (the recordings are no longer extant). The Hopis called her “Mother.” Her sketchbooks include Hopi melodies, and several of her compositions are based on these Native American themes.


During the 1950s, few women could get their works premiered by university and professional symphonies. Louise Lincoln Kerr’s symphonic works, however, were premiered and performed by Arizona State University, Phoenix Symphony and Sun City Symphony (directed by male conductors).


Biographical Background


Louise Lincoln Kerr was born April 24, 1892 in Cleveland, Ohio, and died December 10, 1977 in Cottonwood, Arizona, at her ranch. She was the daughter of John C. Lincoln, an engineer and real estate tycoon who founded Lincoln Electric of Cleveland, held numerous patents and owned mining interests in Arizona. Her mother, Myrtie, taught her to play the piano at age six and violin at seven; she later learned viola. Kerr studied violin in Cleveland with Sol Marcosson, concertmaster and soloist with the early Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. She attended Barnard College, an elite school for young women in New York, where she studied music composition with two prominent Columbia University professors, Cornelius Rybnor and David Gregory Mason, and violin with the famous Dutch virtuoso, Christian Timmner. While at Barnard she won awards for two vocal works that are now lost. Years later, she also received private training in composition and music theory from Stravinsky, Prokofiev and possibly Milhaud.


Timmner was appointed conductor of the early Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, and in 1913 Kerr accepted his offer to join the violin section as one of the orchestra’s youngest members. She and a harpist were the first two women to become members. (This group folded in 1915 and was a predecessor of the Cleveland Orchestra of today, which has always included women in its membership.) Louise married Peter Kjer, moved back to the East Coast and raised a family of eight children (the last two boys were identical twins). They later changed the spelling of their name to Kerr (pronounced “care”). In New York, while working for the Aeolian Recording Company proofing piano rolls, she met with such noted musicians as Sergei Prokofiev, pianist Alfred Cortot, and George Gershwin. She was also a friend of the renowned conductor Dimitri Metropolis and violinist Isaac Stern. Later, when she worked in the sound booth studio of Duo Arts Records (at Aeolian), she assisted conductors in correcting mistakes on early disc recordings of works by contemporary composers.


The Kerr family moved to Arizona in 1936 for the health of one of their children. Their home in Phoenix became a focal point for chamber music concerts and cultural activities. Shortly after her husband died in 1939, Kerr began to compose again. According to her youngest son, William Kerr, she often composed at her piano late at night (no doubt a necessity with eight children).1 She also performed with the Pasadena Symphony in California from 1942 to 1945, and was a member of string quartets in both Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona. At one time, she owned five homes: a ranch in Cottonwood (near Flagstaff) and homes in Phoenix, Belair (Los Angeles), New York and Europe. Kerr was a founding member and benefactor of the Phoenix Symphony, formed in 1947; she contributed both funding and property to the organization. In 1959 she built a home and music studio in nearby Scottsdale. Although cattle drives were still run through the center of town at that time, she turned her home into a performing arts center and later invited the Juilliard and Budapest String Quartets to perform there.

In Arizona, Louise Kerr was known as the “Grand Lady of Music.”2 She not only maintained her studio in Scottsdale as a haven for chamber music, but also developed an artists’ colony there in 1959. In addition, she helped co-found and/or develop The Phoenix Chamber Music Society, The Scottsdale Center for the Arts, The National Society of Arts and Letters, Monday Morning Musicals, The Bach and Madrigal Society, Young Audiences, The Musicians Club, and the Phoenix Cello Society (now the Arizona Cello Society).3 She was extremely generous with both her time and money. She was a major benefactor of the School of Music at Arizona State University (ASU), and she established the Kerr Memorial Scholarship Fund. Kerr presented her private music library to the ASU School of Music. She also gave her extensive collection of orchestral and chamber music manuscripts (labeled MSS-90) to the ASU Archives and Manuscripts at Haydn Library. In addition, she donated her Scottsdale home and studio to ASU to be used as a chamber music venue, now called the Kerr Cultural Center. She received a gold medal for distinguished contribution to the arts from the National Society of the Arts and Letters, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from ASU shortly before her death; she was unable to receive the degree in person. When Kerr passed away in 1977, she left a great legacy to Arizona State University.

Compositional Style


Kerr composed more than 100 works including symphonic tone poems, works for chamber orchestra and ballet, a violin concerto, piano pieces, a considerable amount of chamber music, and a small number of vocal works. Even though she had the means and connections to publish her music, she was a very modest woman who did not seek fame. All but five of her works remain unedited and unpublished, and very few are dated. The five piano and viola works, edited by Carolyn Broe and Miriam Yutzy, are the first of Kerr’s works to be published.4 Unfortunately, the reel-to-reel recordings of the premieres of her music have been lost.

Her overall compositional style may be characterized as impressionistic, enhanced by the local color of the American Southwest. She developed her concept of Southwest Impressionism by studying the works of the impressionist painters who lived in California and in Arizona during the 1940s, and both she and her eldest daughter Tammara were painters. The region was populated by Native Americans and Hispanics, and Kerr used elements of their music in her own compositions as well as that of the local cowboys. Her music is tonally based and would be appreciated by contemporary audiences, but she composed during a time when atonality, serial writing and dissonance were in vogue. One can also discern the influence of the many famous pianists with whom she worked in New York in the early 1920s.

Orchestral Works


With her experience as a violinist and violist with several symphony orchestras and chamber groups, Kerr had a rich background upon which to draw, especially when writing for strings. She composed at least fourteen fully-orchestrated symphonic works (see the catalogue at the end of the article), most of which are tone poems with descriptive titles. The Phoenix Symphony as well as a number of other orchestras performed Enchanted Mesa, written in 1948. For this work, Kerr drew on the legends and music of the Hopi tribe to create her first symphonic tone poem. Arizona Profiles was commissioned for the dedication ceremonies of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts in 1968.

Kerr composed five ballets and incidental music. Her ballet Naked Came I was written for, and performed by, the ASU School of Dance. The ballet Tableau Vivant was premiered for the unveiling of the twelve statues entitled “Dance” by John Waddell at Symphony Hall in Phoenix in 1975.

She also wrote fourteen works for chamber orchestra, including a violin concerto. Unfortunately, the Kerr collection was in a state of disarray when donated to ASU’s Haydn Library. It was organized by music librarian Annette Voth in 1991, but Voth had difficulty determining if some of the works are actually movements from larger compositions.


Chamber Music


Kerr was a connoisseur of chamber music. She both performed and wrote extensively in this genre, sharing and performing her compositions with her friends. The works are remarkable for their creativity and beauty and many are technically challenging. Among the most effective are those for viola and piano and string quartet.

Works for Viola and Piano


Habañera and Las Fatigas del Querer may have been written for her friend Marie Escadero, who was a professor of Spanish at ASU. Habañera captures the flavor of the traditional Spanish dance and is somewhat similar to the Spanish-influenced pieces of Ravel and Debussy. The work is characterized by short phases, two-bar echo effects, triplet figures interspersed with duplets, and catchy rhythms. The viola assumes the role of a flamenco singer with piano accompaniment rather than guitar.


Las Fatigas del Querer is an idiomatic Spanish phrase that translates as “The sorrows of loving.” In a score to one of her violin pieces with the same title, Kerr wrote: “Free treatment of a Spanish folk song” and “Not even tears can relieve the bitterness of the sorrow that comes from loving. Only music can express it.”5 She may have been referring to the loss of two of her daughters when they were teenagers. (The treatment of the folk song in the work for violin and piano is entirely different from that for viola and piano.) Again, the violist resembles a Spanish singer, especially in the declamatory ad libitum passage toward the end of the piece. Like many of the impressionists, Kerr employed different modes; Las Fatigas del Querer seems to be in A phrygian or possibly D harmonic minor. This work is very convincing in using the ability of the viola to pull at one’s emotional heartstrings and imitate the human voice.

Kerr penciled in many corrections in the piano part of the score of Las Fatigas. The viola part seems to have been a finished product, but she apparently revised the piano part after performing the work with a friend.

The Berceuse for viola and piano is a beautifully crafted character piece of the French Impressionist genre. This charming work is similar in style to the Berceuse and Sicilienne for violin and piano by Gabriel Fauré. The dark harmonic texture of the Lament creates a brooding mood, reminiscent of Brahms’ viola works and songs for contralto and viola. It is purposefully restless and indecisive, like someone mourning the loss of a loved one. This work seems to wander in a Mahler-like fashion, never offering a full return of the opening melody.

The Toccata is a brilliant fantasia which places a high demand on the technical ability of the performers, and is an excellent showpiece for the viola. Kerr incorporates the phrygian mode in addition to the more vibrant keys of C and D major.

String Quartet in A Major


Louise Kerr wrote many string quartet movements, but we do not know exactly how she intended to combine them. The String Quartet in A Major is her only known four-movement quartet. Even so, the inclusion of the scherzo movement is speculative at best. The other three movements are clearly marked with the same numbering system. The quartet is tonally based, with many colorful modulations as well as playful melodies.


The first movement, Allegro grandioso, begins with a beautiful duo passage for cello and viola, with the violins murmuring in the background. As the work continues, it journeys through many exotic melodies—one minute dance-like and the next Middle Eastern—and various key changes. The rhythmic motives are often syncopated, affirming the influence of jazz on Kerr’s works. The andante movement is more traditional and sounds very much like a lullaby, with the violin dominating the texture. The scherzo is truly a musical joke and includes quotations from works by other composers. The finale begins with a very powerful, syncopated rhythm and is influenced by both Eastern European and Native American music.

In this work and elsewhere, Kerr fused classical music with jazz and folk elements, and blended Impressionism and late Romanticism with the music and ethnic characteristics of the American Southwest to create a style that is both unique and appealing. Her music is deserving of further research, publication and performance.6


NOTES


1. Carolyn Waters Broe, Interview with William Kerr, April 22, 2001.


2. A. Nannette Taylor, “Louise Lincoln Kerr; Grand Lady of Music,” Tour Guide Notes, Kerr Cultural Center, Arizona State University.


3. Ibid.


4. Louise Lincoln Kerr, Five Character Pieces for Viola and Piano, edited by Carolyn Broe and Miriam Yutzy, Classics Unlimited Music: Scottsdale, Arizona, 2002. This edition is available at http://www.fourseasonsorchestra.org.


5. Kerr, Las Fatigas del Querer for Violin and Piano, Arizona Collection, ASU Archives MSS 90.

6. For additional information, see Carolyn Waters Broe, The String Compositions of Louise Lincoln Kerr: Analysis and Editing of Five Solo Viola Pieces, doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University Press: Tempe, Arizona, 2001.

Louise Lincoln Kerr: Work List


Full Orchestra


Arizona Pageant; Children’s March; Comanche Song; Country Fiddler; Enchanted Mesa (1948); Ileana; Indian Lullaby (1953/4); Indian Round Dance (1953); Profiles of Arizona (1968); Senior Alcalde Mayor; Sicilienne; Spanish Town; Suite for Orchestra (1952); Suite— Rigaudon

Ballets and Incidental Music


Indian Legend (Ballet Noelpie); La Muerta de la Locura; Naked Came I (1957); Peer Gynt; Tableau Vivant (1974)


Chamber Orchestra


Ballade; Concerto for Violin, Strings and Piano; Little Lost Girl; In Memoriam; Indian Poem; Nocturne; Pastorale Symphony; Prelude for Winds and Piano; Prelude, Arioso and Rigaudon for flute, oboe and strings; Prelude for Winds and Strings; Presto for Winds and Strings; Quintet for Oboe and Strings; Rigaudon no. 2; Romance


Piano


Solo: Preludes I-XII; Toccata; Soliloquy (left hand alone)


Duo (four hands): Muerto [La Muerta?] de la Locura; Rigaudon; Tarantella; Untitled (also orchestrated); Cancion Espagnol (Senior Alcalde Major)


Chamber


Cello and Piano: Habañera and Toccata


Viola and Piano: Berceuse; Habañera; Lament; Las Fatigas del Querer; Toccata


Violin and Piano: Aubade; Berceuse (April 1945); Country Fiddler (August 1947); Las Fatigas del Querer; Habañera in A minor and F minor; Happy Birthday to You; Hebrew Song (September 1942); In Memoriam; Legend; Lingara; Marche Mignonne; Moong-wah (Hopi Lullaby); Prelude (Versions I & II); Presto; Rigaudon; Spanish Dance; Tempo di Valse; Waltz;

Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major (two movements; April 24, 1914)

Violin and Viola Duos: Etude and Orientale (performed in 1975 at ASU)


Piano Quartets and Quintets: In Memoriam, Mau Corazon; Nocturne; Nostalie; Suite for Piano Quintet (also orchestrated score); Rigaudon String Quartet in A Major (premiered 2001, ASU)

String Quartet movements: Ballade; German Dance; Mau Corazon; Mazurka; Midnight; Passepied; Pastorale; Rigaudon; Serenade; Shabat Shalom Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Cello (premiered ca. 1960 at ASU)

Vocal
Por Me Jesu; Indian Poem (version with strings); Indian Serenade for soprano, flute and piano; Song of an Indian Woman


Miscellaneous Compositions


Various pieces for piano and one instrument; L’Ondine (sketches and fragments); Nocturnes (various sketches); various sketches and fragments.

Lost Works


Chorus: To Aurora, Goddess of Dawn (1911, Barnard College, New York)

Chorus: To Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow (1912; award-winning work, Barnard College, New York)


Dr. Carolyn Waters Broe is professor of viola at Mesa Community College and Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. She is also the conductor of the Four Seasons Orchestra and the violist with the Four Seasons String Quartet of Scottsdale, Arizona. Broe has performed as the viola soloist with several orchestras and is recorded on numerous CDs. More information is available at http://www.fourseasonsorchestra.org.