Margaret Louise Robyn (23 April 1878 - 10 June 1949) was an American composer, music educator, and pianist who taught for many years at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, serving as director for at least one year. Her piano pedagogy methods and books are still in use today. She published and taught as Louise Robyn. [1] [2]
Robyn was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Mary Ann O'Reilly and William Robyn, a merchant. [3] [4] Little is known about her education. She began working at the American Conservatory of Music in 1901, [5] where she taught advanced piano and teacher training. She also chaired the children's department and in 1937 served as Director of the conservatory. [3] Her students included Marie Christine Bergersen, [6] Storm Bull, [7] Jack Fascinato, [8] Irwin Fischer, [7] Robert Fizdale, [7] Marion Roberts, [9] and Ruth Crawford Seeger. [10] In 1939, Music Clubs Magazine reported at least one Louise Robyn Club in Detroit, Michigan. [11]
Robyn collaborated on some publications with Howard Hanks, Louise Johnson, Mildred Ross, and Florence White Williams. She produced many works, all for piano or early childhood music education, which were published by Clayton F. Summy Co., Lyon & Healy, Inc., Oliver Ditson, Robyn Teaching Service, Theodore Presser Co mpany, and Winthrop Rogers Ltd., [12] and include:
Ruth Crawford Seeger was an American composer and folk music specialist. Her music heralded the emerging modernist aesthetic, and she became a central member of a group of American composers known as the "ultramoderns". Though she composed primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, Seeger turned towards studies on folk music from the late 1930s until her death. Her music influenced later composers, particularly Elliott Carter.
Louise Juliette Talma was an American composer, academic, and pianist. After studies in New York and in France, piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, she focused on composition from 1935. She taught at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and at Hunter College. Her opera The Alcestiad was the first full-scale opera by an American woman staged in Europe. She was the first woman in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the first woman awarded the Sibelius Medal for Composition.
Camille Lucie Nickerson was an American pianist, composer, arranger, collector, and Howard University professor from 1926 to 1962. She was influenced by Creole folksongs of Louisiana, which she arranged and sang.
Marion Eugénie Bauer was an American composer, teacher, writer, and music critic. She played an active role in shaping American musical identity in the early half of the twentieth century.
The American Conservatory of Music (ACM) was a major American school of music founded in Chicago in 1886 by John James Hattstaedt (1851–1931). The conservatory was incorporated as an Illinois non-profit corporation. It developed the Conservatory Symphony Orchestra and had numerous student recitals. The oldest private degree-granting music school in the Midwestern United States, it was located in Chicago until 1991.
Theodore Ward Chanler was an American composer.
Johanna Magdalena Beyer was a German-American composer and pianist. Among her best known compositions is IV for Percussion Ensemble (1936), the only work pubilshed during her lifetime.
Richard Moritz Buhlig was an American pianist.
Preston Ware Orem was an American composer, pianist, and writer on music. He is frequently grouped with other composers as part of the Indianist movement in American music.
David Berkman is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and educator.
Clara Anna Korn was an American pianist, composer, and music writer. She sometimes wrote under a pseudonym C. Gerhard.
Louise Margaret Yazbeck was an American composer and teacher.
Althea Waites is an American concert pianist. She has performed across the United States and internationally. She is currently a faculty member at California State University, Long Beach.
Djane Lavoie-Herz (1889–1982) was a Canadian pianist and teacher. She studied in Montreal with Alfred La Liberté and then went to Europe where she studied in London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels. Through Scriabin’s influence, Herz became interested in Theosophy, a religious movement. The ideas of theosophy were deeply intertwined with Scriabin’s compositions, in which dissonant harmony was seen as spiritual.
Margaret Lorna McClure Stitt was an American composer, lecturer, and playwright whose compositions were performed at the White House in 1936.
May Louise Cooper Spindle was an American composer and teacher who wrote many pedagogical pieces for piano.
Florence Margaret Spencer Palmer was a British composer who wrote several hymns and a piano pedagogy textbook. She published some of her works under the name Peggy Spencer Palmer.
Radiana Pazmor was an American contralto, educator, and music therapist.
Margaret Taylor Bradford Boni was an American music educator and folklorist. She edited several books of popular music, including The Fireside Book of Folk Songs (1947). She taught music at the City and Country School from 1928 to 1954, where she worked with Pete Seeger in the 1940s.
Helen Elizabeth Roessing Aiton was an American composer of piano music whose composition won first prize at the Conservatoire Americain de Fountainebleau in France. She published her music under the name Helen Roessing.