Ernest Carter, 1866-1953, American composer, bio and catalog

I do note that some of the items below are not perfectly consistent, but all are useful as references. To download a Microsoft Word version of this document, click here for instructions. I have also included at that location instructions for downloading a 3-minute MP3 file of one of Carter's choral compositions, the Lord's Prayer.

Carter's grandson Edward L. Richards (466 Howe Rd., Northfield VT 05663) tells me that Carter's comic opera "The Blond Donna, or the Fiesta of Santa Barbara" was performed in concert version by Vermont Opera Theater in Montpelier, Vermont, on November 15 and 16, 2003.

Table of Contents:

(1.)		Hipsher, American Opera and Its Composers (1934)
(2.)		New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992)
(3.)		Soliminsky, Music Since 1900 (1994)
(4.)		Soliminsky, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1984)
(5.)		Yale Music Library Catalogue of Archival Papers
(6.)		Yale Collection of American Literature
(7.)		Princeton University Library Main Catalogue
(8.)		Princetoniana: re: Carter's "Steps Song"
(9.)		Harvard University Library
(10.)		To learn how to download 2MB audio of Carter's Lord's Prayer.

(1.) Material on Ernest Carter from American Opera and Its Composers, by Edward Ellsworth Hipsher (Phil.:Theo. Presser Co., 1934, reprint by DaCapo Press, 1978).

[page 53-54]

The New York Opera Comique -- known till the summer of 1931 as the Little Theater Opera Company-- has given in the Brooklyn Little Theater and in the Heckscher Theater of New York, three hundred and sixteen performances of opera in English. It began with a production in the Brooklyn Little Theater, on December 5, 1927, of Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor." In this season were given also Donizetti's "Elixir of Love" and deKoven's "Robin Hood." To the repertoire were added, as novelties, for the season 1928-1929, "The Bat (Die Fledermaus)" and "The Chocolate Soldier" of Johann Strauss and, on a double bill, Bizet's "Djamileh" and Bach's "Phoebus and Pan"; for 1929-1930, Offenbach's "Grand Duchess," Mozart's "Magic Flute," Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment," Auber's "Fra Diavolo" and Strauss' "Gipsy Baron"; for 1930-1931, Millcker's "Beggar Student," Offenbach's "Orpheus in Hades," Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro," Donizetti's "Don Pasquale," and Strauss' "Waltz Dream"; and for 1931-1932, Lortzing's "The Poacher," Carter's "The Blonde Donna" and Offenbach's "Parisian Life" All of which was accomplished through the optimistic enthusiasm of Kendall K. Mussey.

[page 113-117:]

ERNEST CARTER

Ernest Trow Carter, composer and conductor, was born at Orange, New Jersey, September 3, 1866, the son of Aaron and Sarah Swift (Trow) Carter. At seven he began eight years of study of piano and harmony, with Mrs. Mary Bradshaw. When but thirteen he organized an amateur orchestra, studied the cornet, was assistant conductor of the school orchestra; and at sixteen he was playing cornet in a professional orchestra.

Mr. Carter was graduated from Princeton University, cum laude, in 1888, and while there he became leader of the Glee Club and Chapel Choir. He composed the famous Princeton "Steps Song" and arranged much of the music sung by the club. In the meantime he had been studying the piano with Dr. William Mason and singing with Francis Fisher Powers. He also studied the French Horn with Hermann Hand of the New York Symphony Orchestra, and played in theater and amateur orchestras for experience.

Mr. Carter went to California in 1892 as musical director of the Thacher School in The Ojai. Then, in 1894, he decided that music should be the work of his life and went to Berlin where he studied composition with Royal Music Director Wilhelm Freudenberg, composer and director of opera, and with 0. B. Boise; and organ with Arthur Egidi.

Returning to New York, he continued organ study with Homer N. Bartlett. From 1899 to 1901 he was lecturer on music, also organist and choirmaster, at Princeton. He then resigned that he might give all his time to composition, and for one year sang in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera Company, largely as a means of studying opera technic. [sic] He has written vocal music in almost all forms and has edited many collections. The Andante of an unfinished symphonic suite has been played in Berlin, under Dr. Karl Muck, and the Scherzo at the Stadium and Central Park Concerts in New York.

His comedy opera, "The Blonde Donna; or, The Fiesta of Santa Barbara," for which Mr. Carter was his own librettist, had a successful production in concert form at the Century Theater, New York, in February, 1912. It is written for a stock company rather than as a vehicle f or a star singer or comedian and so is adapted to local presentations.

The plot is a triangular love maze of a sea-waif of the California coast adopted by the Father Superior of a mission; his sister, adopted under similar conditions, by a wealthy Spanish widow; and the foster-mother's own blond daughter; the relationship of brother and sister being disclosed only in the denouement. An uprising of Mission Indians against the beneficent tyranny of the Padres lends dramatic interest.

"The Blonde Donna," in three acts, had its first full performance when presented on December 8, 1931, at the Brooklyn Little Theater, by the New York Opera Comique. This was a "benefit" for a Brooklyn charity, with dowagers and debutantes in evidence. Eleanor Steele was the Marina; Patricia O'Connell, her sister Carlota; Hall Clovis, the novice, Marinus; Harrison Christian, Genio Piastro; Howard Laramy, Padre Bonifacio; Arnold Spector, Jacinto and Joe Hankins; Sonia Essin, Senora Blanca; Crawford Wright, Tellacus; Benjamin Tilberg, The Commandante; Theodore Everett, Senor Piastro; George Griffin, Gabriel, and Bess Barkley, Anita. Rudolf Thomas was the conductor.

The official "first night," for critics and reporters, was on the 9th; when the National Federation of Music Clubs presented a laurel wreath to the composer. The press was generally friendly; and the score was mentioned as "naturally melodic . . . harmonically conservative . . . never dull." There were four more performances that week; and from December 14th to 19th the same company gave seven performances of "The Blonde Donna" at the Heckscher Theater in New York.

In the Hinshaw Contest of 1916-1917 Mr. Carter's "The White Bird" was given second rating among the eighteen operas submitted. It had a performance, in concert form, at Carnegie Chamber Music Hall, New York, on May 23, 1922, with the composer conducting.

The libretto of "The White Bird" is by Brian Hooker who has so many successes of this nature to his credit that he might without impropriety be acclaimed "The American Scribe."

"The White Bird" had its world premiere at the Studebaker Theater, Chicago, March 6, 1924, under the auspices of the Opera in Our Language Foundation. At the close of the performance the composer received the first David Bispham Memorial Medal awarded for the production of an American opera, which was presented by Mrs. Eleanor Everest Freer, founder and chairman of that organization.

Premiere Cast

Reginald Warren		Ward Pound
Elinor		Hazel Eden
Basil		Bryce Talbot
Hugh		Dwight Edrus Cook
Marian (Hugh's Wife)		Laurina Oleson
John Wardwell		Haydn Thomas
Nannie, Nurse to Elinor		Elaine de Sellem
Guest Huntress		Lillian Arthur
Andrew		Joseph Nolengraft
Conductor		Leroy N. Wetzel

The scene of "The White Bird" is laid in a hunting camp by an Adirondack lake, early in the nineteenth century. In one act of two scenes it depicts a typical phase of American life never before used for operatic material.

The opera tells a story of life in the woods, where a jealous, dwarfish, misshapen and bitterly intelligent husband, Reginald Warren, suspects his wife, Elinor, of being too fond of Basil, the chief forester of his large estate. Elinor secretly loves Basil; but, for her honor and her pride of place, she cannot stoop to the natural issue. Basil, who owes to Warren both his life and livelihood, is thereby equally bound to restrain his love for Elinor. All this Warren understands; and, refusing his wife's plea to be taken away from temptation, he openly taunts her with her passion and with the pride which holds it harmless.

John Wardwell, the steward and a Puritan out of New England, attempts to warn the unnatural lovers of the dangers of their hopeless passion. He then conscientiously carries his tale to Warren who thereupon contrives that Basil himself shoots and kills Elinor, mistaking in the morning mist the white scarf about her bosom for a white bird--a gull--which has been flying about the camp. When the truth is unfolded, Basil, infuriated, strangles Warren, and the curtain falls on the usual number of rent hearts and cadavers.

The tale is worked up beautifully by the librettist, with a fine mixture of sentiment, romance and melodrama. The music is pleasing and so entirely compounded of the melodic and harmonic effects of the American art song that its nationality could scarcely be mistaken. Elinor's principal solo, her duet with Basil at the close of Act I, the quartet of the first scene, and the "Hunting Song" (most brilliant number of the opera) are effective selections for detached performance. "The White Bird" made history when on November 15, 1927, it became the first American opera to be presented in the Municipal Theater of Osnabruck, Prussia; and it had there three subsequent hearings in that month.

The composer's "Namba," a pantomime ballet, was favorably received when performed on April 22, 1933, at the Shakespeare Theater of New York, by the Charlotte Lund Opera Company and the Aleta Dore Ballet. In 1932 he had received from Princeton the honorary degree, Doctor of Music.

(2.) From the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. by Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan (5^th ed., 1992).

Article Heading: Carter, Ernest Trow

American composer.

Full Text: (Born Orange NJ, Sep. 3, 1866; Died Stamford CT, Jun. 21, 1953). American composer. He studied the piano, horn and organ and after graduating from Princeton University in 1888 went to Berlin. There he took lessons in composition with Wilhelm Freudenberg (1894-8) and Otis Boise (1895-7) before returning to the USA and further studies at Columbia University (1899). Employed as organist and choirmaster of Princeton from 1899 to 1901, he then moved to New York, where he worked as an arranger, conductor and composer.

His first opera, The White Bird (to a libretto by B. Hooker), is set in the Adirondack lake area during the early 19th century and is a story about the love between a forester and his employer's wife. The forester is tricked into shooting the wife by mistaking her white scarf for a gull that had been haunting the camp. Carter conducted a concert version of his work at the Carnegie Chamber Music Hall in New York on 23 May 1922 and it was first staged at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago on 6 March 1924. The European premiere was at the Stadtisches Theater, Osnabruck, on 15 November 1927; it was the first American opera presented there. The White Bird won the David Bispham Medal in 1924.

The Blonde Donna, an 'opera comique' in three acts, concerns an uprising of Mission Indians in Santa Barbara, California, in 1824, in which the Padres, with the help of the Blonde Donna, persuade the rebel Indians to give up their insurrection. A concert performance of this work took place in 1912 but it was subsequently revised and offered again in New York in February 1931 at the Century Theater; it was staged at the Little Theater, Brooklyn, on 8 December 1931. The vocal score was published in New York in 1936. [Entry by Bradley H. Short.]

(3.) from Music Since 1900, by Nicolar Slonimsky, NY: Shirmer Books (1994).

[Entry:] 6 March 1924. The White Bird, one-act opera by the American composer Ernest CARTER, wherein a forester passionately involved with his employer's wife shoots her by accident mistaking the white scarf around her bosom for a low-flying white bird, and in desperate fury strangles the husband, making use of American songs peculiar to the scene in upper New York State, arranged in abecedarian harmonies, is performed for the first time in ChicagoÖ

[Entry:] 8 December 1931. The Blonde Donna, or The Fiesta of Santa Barbara, opera in three acts by the 65-year-old American composer Ernest CARTER, first performed in concert form in New York in February 1912, to his own libretto involving an uprising of Mission Indians in Santa Barbara, California, in 1824, against the obtusely beneficent Padres, with the Blonde Donna of the title persuading the rebels to desist and take part in a general dance, receives its first stage production in Brooklyn.

(4.) from Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, by Nicolas Slonimsky, NY: Schirmer Books (7^th ed., 1984).

Carter, Ernest Trow, American organist and composer; b. Orange, N.J., Sept. 3, 1866; d. Stamford, Conn., June 21, 1953. He studied piano with Mark Bradshaw and William Mason (1874-84); then composition in Berlin with Wilhelm Freudenberg, Otis Boise, and others; returning to the U.S., he became organist and choirmaster at Princeton Univ. (1899-1901); he settled in N.Y. as an arranger, conductor, and composer. He received a B.A. from Princeton (1888) and an M.A. from Columbia Univ. (1899).

WORKS: Operas: The Blonde Donna, or The Fiesta of Santa Barbara (N.Y., Dec. 9, 1931) and The White Bird (Chicago, March 6, 1924; Osnabr¸ck, Germany, Nov. 15, 1927); ballet pantomime, Namba or the 3^rd Statue (N.Y., April 22, 1933); Symphonic Suite for Orch.; String Quartet; anthems, including The Lord's Prayer and Out of the Depths; male quartets; piano pieces; songs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: E.E. Hipsher, American Opera and Its Composers (Philadelphia, 1927; pp. 113ñ17).

(5.) from Yale Music Library catalogue of Archival Papers

MSS 40 - The Papers of Ernest Trow Carter; 18.3'

To support himself, the composer and organist Ernest Trow Carter (1866-1953) had a career in law, during which he continued to compose and perform. He had a B.A. ('88) and an honorary Doctor of Music degree [both] from Princeton, where he taught briefly at the turn of the century and served as editor of Princeton's song book, Carmina Princetonia, from 1887 to 1940. He composed a variety of vocal and instrumental works, including two operas and a ballet-pantomime. One of the operas was performed in Osnabr¸ck, Germany, in 1927. In addition to his published and unpublished music, his Papers [at Yale Music School] include correspondence, programs, clippings, photographs, articles by Carter, and financial documents. (Catalogued.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(6.) from Yale University Press MSS Survey

This is a survey done of materials in the Yale Collection

of American LiteratureÖ

Manuscripts:

...

Carter, Ernest and Brian Hooker. THE WHITE BIRD.

...

------------------------------------------------------------------------

(6.) Below: from Princeton main catalogue --->>

Database: Princeton University Library

Author: Carter, Ernest, 1866-1953.

Title: The blonde donna; or, The fiesta of Santa Barbara. Opera comique in three acts. Words and music ... Prompt book.

Publication: [n.p., c1932]. Physical Description: 41 p. 25 cm. Location: Mendel Music Library (MUS). Call Number: ML50.C2 B6

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author: Carter, Ernest, 1866-1953.

Title: Decennial march ... for piano and male voices ...

Publication: Leipzig, Rder [c1898]. Description: 7 p. 29 cm.

Location: Off-site Annex, Forrestal (ANXA): Princeton Collection (P)

Call Number: P741.02.241

---------------------------------------

Author: Carter, Ernest, 1866-1953.

Title: The honeysuckle waltzes : 1893.

Physical Description: 1 v. (5 leaves) ; 33 cm.Electronic Access: Search MASC (Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections), the database of the Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections, to find related material/

Location: Rare Books: Manuscripts Collection (MSS)Call Number: C0199 (oversize)

----------------------------------------------------------

Author: Carter, Ernest, 1866-1953.

Title: [White bird. Vocal score]

Der weisse Vogel : Oper in einem Akt. Englischer Text von Brian Hooker. Deutsch von Fritz Remond. Musik von Ernest Carter. Klavierauszug.

Publication: Berlin, B¸hnen-Verlag Trask & Matthias, 1924.

Physical Description: vocal score (132 p.) 33 cm.Location: Mendel Music Library (MUS)

Call Number: Oversize Oversize M1503.C2 W5q

Location: Off-site Annex, Forrestal (ANXA): Princeton Collection (P)

Call Number: Oversize P94.888.012.01q

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author: Hooker, Brian, 1880-1946.

Title: The white bird, opera in one act. The poem by Brian Hooker. The music by Ernest Carter.

Publication: New Haven, Yale University Press, 1924.Physical Description: 2 p. l., 66 p. 21 cm.

Location: Off-site Annex, Forrestal (ANXA): Princeton Collection (P)

Call Number: P94.888.012.03

(8.) Princetoniana -- re "Steps Song"

[from Princeton University web page] This is adapted from Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, c. Princeton UP (1978).

Princetoniana: THE TIGER

The Tiger emerged as a symbol of Princeton, ironically, not very long after Woodrow Wilson's class, at its graduation in 1879, gave the College a pair of lions to guard the main entrance to Nassau Hall. The growing use of the tiger -- rather than the lion -- as Princeton's totem has been ascribed by Princetonians of that period to two things: the College cheer, which, like other cheers of that time, contained a "tiger'' as a rallying word; and the growing use of orange and black as the college colors.

In 1882 the senior class issued a humor magazine called The Princeton Tiger, depicting on its title page a lively tiger cub being born beneath the legend Volume I, Number 1. This tiger's influence was short-lived, however, since after only nine issues no other issue appeared until 1890 when another generation brought forth a second Volume I, Number 1. Meanwhile, football players of the early 1880s were wearing broad orange and black stripes on their stockings and on their jerseys, and sometimes on stocking caps. Watching their movements in the waning light of late autumn afternoons, sportswriters began to call them tigers.

The tiger soon began to appear in Princeton songs, beginning with "The Orange and the Black,'' written in the late 1880s by Clarence Mitchell [Class of 1889, to a tune arranged by Ernest Carter] ....A few years later, Ernest Carter 1888's lovely "Steps Song'' began...

"Our lofty elms so gently break

The twilight crescent moon's soft light;

Old Nassau's tigers slow awake;

The Seniors hold the steps tonight.''

[The "Steps Song" still is sung in 2006: Google says that the song is available on CDs from the following Princeton singing groups: the Tigertones, the Katzenjammers, the Roaring Twenties, and the Nassoons].

(9.) Harvard University Library

TITLE The white bird, opera in one act. The poem by Brian Hooker (1880-1946). The music by Ernest Carter.

PUB. INFO New Haven, Yale University Press, 1924. DESCRIPTION 2 p. l., 66 p. 21 cm.

LOCATION Widener: Harvard Depository AL 1776.3.20

Consult Circ. Desk for Copy A=HX4Y9B, copy B=HX4Y9A

Harvard University Library has 2 copies.

(10.) Audio of Carter's The Lord's Prayer

In 2001, Edward L. Richards of Norwich University arranged to have two works of Ernest Carter recorded on CD: a piano rendition of "The Blonde Donna," and "The Lord's Prayer" sung by the Montpelier VT Unitarian Church Choir. He also placed this CD with the Carter papers at Yale. To learn how to download a 3-minute MP3 audio file of "The Lord's Prayer" from this web site, click here.

Dr. Richards tells me that Carter's comic opera "The Blond Donna" will be performed in concert version by Vermont Opera Theater at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier, Vermont, on November 15 and 16, 2003.

(Compiled 11/9/2003 by S. Ells <steveells@earthlink.net>).