Ruth Crawford Seeger is frequently considered the most significant American female composer in this century. Joining Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell as a key member of the 1920s musical avant garde, she has left a small but impressive body of original music, including her masterpiece, String Quartet (1931). But her legacy extends into folk music as well. Collaborating with poet Carl Sandburg on folk song arrangements in the twenties, and with the famous folk song collectors, John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s, she emerged as a central figure in the American folk music revival, pioneering the use of American folk songs in the children's music education, with an impact comparable to Bartok and Kodaly. Radicalized by the Depression, she spent much of the ensuing two decades working aggressively for cultural change, along with her husband and her stepson, the folk singer-activist, Pete Seeger.

-- by Judith Tick