Frances Copthorne and Her Music
Music:
For an audiovisual tour of the March 26, 2007 events involving Frances at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, click here.
| Below are three of Frances's compositions
as performed by Sophia Ahmad (Piano) and
Tom Vendafreddo (tenor) at the Women in Music Festival, Eastman
School of Music, March 26, 2007.
When played
on a Windows Media Player (and others), the words of
(Words don't appear on screen? Click here.) |
 Frances Copthorne (circa 1936) |
Newly-found (November
2007) audio material
MP3
files. Left-click to listen. Right-click
and Save Target As to download.
The Waltz That Was Lost in a Dream and Your Voice Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyrics (both pieces) by Francesca Falk Miller. Connie Knoll, piano. Mary Helmer, voice. Introduction by Louise Copthorne Kirtland. Taped February 1964 by Louise.
Let us Walk in the Snow (Presumed title.) Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyric composer unknown. Frances Copthorne, piano. Voice, probably Norma Bosworth. Recorded on acetate disk circa 1942.
I Must Be In Love With You (Presumed title.) Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyric composer unknown. Frances Copthorne, piano. Voice, probably Norma Bosworth. Recorded on acetate disk circa 1942.
When Night Comes On Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyric by Elsie Fowler. Frances Copthorne, piano. Voice, probably Norma Bosworth. Recorded on acetate disk circa 1942.
Background:
Frances Copthorne was born Frances Frederika Kammeyer in 1894, married Howard Norman Copthorne, and in 1912 — at age 18 — gave birth to the first of her three daughters, Jane. Her second daughter, Frances, was born in 1914, and Louise was born in 1918. During the years when her daughters were growing up, Frances and her family lived in Winnetka, Illinois, one of Chicago's "North Shore" suburbs. I am Jane's son Copthorne, and go by the name "Cop." I'm writing this to tell you a bit about Frances's life and her musical legacy.
Music was Frances’s great love, and during the 1920s and '30s she was actively involved in the musical life of the Chicago area. I'm not sure how she first learned to play the piano and read music, or just when, but it is clear that this happened early in her life. Frances could also sing, and at about age 26 she began taking singing lessons from a teacher in Chicago. A newspaper account of a January 11, 1921 recital said that "One of the most talented of the young singers was Mrs. Copthorne whose voice is of a clear, singularly appealing quality which she uses with considerable facility." Later, Frances was tutored by Amelita Galli-Curci, who for many years was with the Metropolitan Opera Company. At a 1924 Birchwood Musical Club recital in Chicago, Frances sang arias from Gounod’s opera "Mignon" and Verdi's opera "La Boheme."
Later in the 1920s Frances's interest shifted from singing songs to writing them — or, more accurately, to writing the music that turned other people's poetry into songs. These songs would be described today as art songs, or lieder. During this period she became involved in the League of American Pen Women, an organization of women poets, authors, and composers, and became friends with several poets. One of these was Francesca Falk Miller. Frances put several of Miller's poems to music, and did the same with the poems of other writers. During the late 1920s and early 1930s Frances participated in many concerts and recitals in which she accompanied (on the piano) another singer (often Norma Boswell) who sang Frances's songs.
In 1929, her song Your Voice, one of the Francesca Falk Miller poems set to music, was published by a Chicago music publisher. (Perhaps other songs were also published, we simply don't know.) That same year some of Frances's songs were being sung on the radio, and in 1931 Frances herself performed weekly on a Chicago radio station.
Frances was also interested in musical theater. She wrote the music for several operettas. One, "The Emperor's New Clothes," was for Chicago's Children’s Civic Theater. Others, such as "Meet the Professor" and "A Romantic Rose" were for adults. In 1933 Francis performed some of her compositions during a concert for the Governor of Illinois at the Governor's mansion in Springfield. In 1934 she performed at the White House in Washington, DC for Eleanor Roosevelt. In late 1937, Frances and daughter Louise went by steamship to France. They spent almost a year in Paris where Frances studied counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, one of the 20th century's most notable teachers of composition, and teacher of many American composers from George Gershwin to Leonard Bernstein.
A 1939 news item in the Chicago American said that Frances was about to give "the American Premier" of her new compositions, but we have no record of when or where that happened or what the titles of those compositions were. During the early 1940s Frances fought a battle with breast cancer — a battle that she lost in 1945.
A 1937 Winnetka Talk article indicated that Frances had written more than 100 songs, and had received awards for some of them. Unfortunately, much of this material has been lost. Following her death, the musical scores and other materials on hand at the time were taken for safekeeping by her daughters Jane and Louise. Growing older, in the 1990s they gave much of that material to me.
Growing older myself, I had a nagging concern about what would eventually happen to Frances's musical scores and memorabilia. As a writer myself, I was concerned that what still remained of her productive output might eventually be thrown out with the trash, and lost forever. Then, in the summer of 2006 an amazing thing happened. On a plane trip from Washington, DC to Philadelphia I found myself seated next to Sophia Ahmad, a Masters degree student at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. I told her about my grandmother Frances. Quite interested, Sophia told me about a "Women in Music" festival that she was involved with, an event to be held at the Eastman School in late March of 2007. I told her about my concern about Frances's musical legacy being preserved, and she indicated that the school's Sibley Music Library — the largest music library in the US— might possibly be interested in archiving the materials.
To make the proverbial long story short, David Peter Coppen, Archivist at The Sibley Music Library, not only agreed to take the 16 available musical scores and other materials, but in connection with the music festival put on a public display of "The Frances Copthorne Collection." Adding to my pleasure, on Monday March 26, the first day of the Festival, three of Frances's songs were performed by tenor Tom Vendafreddo, with Sophia Ahmad accompanying him on the piano. To my knowledge, this was the first public performance in 60 years of any of Frances's music.
I traveled to Eastman for that Monday concert, and was joined there by another member of the Copthorne clan, Samantha "Sam" Copthorne, who drove over from Cleveland. Sam and I both took pictures of the Sibley display and the performance, and Sam recorded the music and a couple of video clips. All that Eastman event material is now together on this website. For a tour of the March 26th event, click here.
There is more. Eager to find some of those missing compositions I launched a search. Appeals to some music scholars and music publishers yielded nothing. Later, however, in rummaging through boxes of my late parents' possessions I found treasure. Among my mother's things were many additional scores — some in ink, some pencil drafts. And among my father's were two audio tapes. On the first he had re-recorded some very scratchy direct-to-disk 78 rpm acetate disks of Frances herself at the piano playing, and I presume Norma Bosworth singing, several of Frances's songs. I believe these acetates were cut about 1942. The second tape was made in 1964 by my aunt, Louise Copthorne Kirtland. Here, singer and pianist friends of hers performed two of Frances's songs. From the tapes I created the four mp3 audio tracks below, using audio equalization and other techniques to improve the audio quality as best I could. ( Left-click to listen. Right-click and Save Target As to download.)
"The Waltz That Was Lost in a Dream" and "Your Voice" Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyrics (both pieces) by Francesca Falk Miller. Connie Knoll, piano. Mary Helmer, voice. Introduction by Louise Copthorne Kirtland. Taped February 1964 by Louise.
"Let us Walk in the Snow" (Presumed title.) Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyric composer unknown. Frances Copthorne, piano. Voice, probably Norma Bosworth. Recorded on acetate disk circa 1942.
"I Must Be In Love With You" (Presumed title.) Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyric composer unknown. Frances Copthorne, piano. Voice, probably Norma Bosworth. Recorded on acetate disk circa 1942.
"When Night Comes On" Music by Frances Copthorne. Lyric by Elsie Fowler. Frances Copthorne, piano. Voice, probably Norma Bosworth. Recorded on acetate disk circa 1942.
This newfound material is being sent to the Sibley Music Library to be added to the Frances Copthorne Collection. (Click here to see the complete list.) A longer-term project will involve scanning the scores to create computer readable files, and then making those files available on this website. Stay tuned. If you would like to write me about any of this, my email address is cop@copmacdonald.com.