Maud Cuney Hare
Image from: “Norris Wright Cuney; a tribune of the black people,” by his daughter, Maud Cuney Hare; with an introduction by James S. Clarkson. New York, The Crisis Publishing Company, 1913.
Maud Cuney Hare (1874-1936) was a Black American musicologist, pianist, teacher, composer, and playwright. After studying piano at the New England Conservatory of Music, she taught at the Texas Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institute for Colored Youths at Austin, the settlement house of the Institutional Church of Chicago, and Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College for Negroes.
Hare’s 1936 Negro Musicians and Their Music was the first major twentieth-century survey of Black music, and she was the foremost authority on Black American music during her lifetime. In the book, she documents the development of Black American musical traditions, beginning with its origins in Africa and tracing it through the diaspora to the United States and elsewhere. She also covers specifically American traditions, including spirituals, blues, and jazz. The book includes meticulous coverage of the lives and music of Black musicians in the Americas and abroad.
Her research included extensive travels throughout Louisiana, Mexico, and the Caribbean, where she collected folk songs and musical instruments. In addition to her book, she published articles about Black music and the arts in the Musical Observer, The Musical Quarterly, and Christian Science Monitor and was the music critic of The Crisis.
As a pianist, Hare toured frequently, giving lecture recitals across North America with baritone William Richardson for twenty years. They were the first POC to perform on the concert series at Boston Public Library in 1919. Hare’s 1921 collection of Six Creole Folk Songs was derived from her musicological research. Hare collected the folk song melodies and arranged them for voice and piano. She also translated the texts and wrote detailed critical commentary.
Sources
Love, Josephine Harreld, ed. “Introduction”. Negro Musicians and Their Music. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1996.
Wright, Josephine. “Hare, Maud Cuney.” Grove Music Online. 2010.
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