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Charles Tomlinson Griffes' Biography

Biography Source

Born in Elmira, New York, on September 17, 1884, Griffes displayed an early interest in painting and drama. Recuperating from typhoid fever at age 11, he grew fascinated with his sister Katharine's practicing the European classics on the piano, and he set himself out to master the instrument. At 13, he began his studies with Mary Selena Broughton, who remained his mentor and friend throughout his life. It was Miss Broughton who financed Griffes' 1903 voyage to Berlin, where he studied for four years, the last two of them with Humperdinck.

Burdened with support for his widowed mother and family, Griffes returned to America in 1907 to take a post as music instructor at the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York. What he hoped would prove a temporary situation lasted until his death, and Griffes was frequently unhappy in his life as a schoolmaster. Not only did his abilities far exceed his duties and his small salary, but he must also have felt increasingly isolated emotionally and a rtistically. Neither his genius as a composer nor his self-avowed homosexuality could ever be publicly expressed at Hackley, and with the advent of World War I's anti-German feelings, Griffes felt himself cut adrift from his European friends and ties. This sense of isolation and lack of appreciation undoubtedly led Griffes to work all the harder to find recognition for his work in the professional world. He initially succeeded in getting G. Schirmer to publish his early German settings, though as his music became less conventional, his compositions were rejected by the music-publishing establishment.

In the remaining six years of his life, he produced his most important compositions, among them "The Pleasure Dome Of Kubla Khan," a 1917 orchestral work inspired by Coleridge's poem, which revealed the composer's orientalizing inclinations; his 1918 "Piano Sonata"; his 1919 "Poem For Flute And Orchestra"; and the unfinished "Five Pieces For Piano."

These unconditional successes were soon to turn bittersweet. The victim of lung and heart problems as well as overwork and emotional strain, he collapsed at Hackley in December 1919. Neither a sanitarium stay nor surgery could cure him, and Griffes died at New York Hospital on April 8, 1920.