Violinist, Lucie Bigelow Rosen.....

[Peter Pringle]

I thought it might be of interest to some of the people here - particularly to Sarah Rice who is going to be giving a talk at Caramoor on July 31st about the life and music of the late Lucie Bigelow Rosen - to know that Lucie studied violin with the celebrated violinist, Alfred De Sève, in Montreal. I know nothing of the details of this, but De Sève died in 1927, so I imagine Lucie would have worked with him sometime around 1910, when she would have been about 20 years old…..(pure speculation) and he was professor of violin at McGill University. 

Lucie was a violinist! …….Who knew!

This little tidbit of biographical info was revealed by levnetter David Curtis, who knows everything about everybody.

Here is the Wikipedia article on Monsieur De Sève:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_De_Sève

[mpic...@earthlink.net]

Thanks Peter for the interesting Lucie tidbit! 

Rob S. may also find it useful for his talks at Caramoor as well, since he is doing several of them.

S

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[Rob Schwimmer]

Thanks, Sarah & Peter!

Rob

[Peter Pringle]

I’ll see if I can get David Curtis to dig up some of the details of Lucie’s relationship to violinist Alfred De Sève.

I do know that Lucie Rosen had a Montreal connection, and some of her descendants (through her late daughter Anne Bigelow Rosen Stern) live there to this day. Lucie’s parents (Flora Bigelow and Charles Dodge) divorced in 1902 when Lucie was 12, and her mother remarried a man by the name of Lionel Guest and moved to Montreal for a brief period. I imagine it was during this time (perhaps somewhere between 1904 and 1910) that Lucie, then a teenager, fiddled with Alfie.

Attitudes have changed in the last 50 years and it is perhaps difficult for us to appreciate the social impact of Lucie Bigelow’s marriage to Jewish financier Walter Rosen. There was a virulent but silent antisemitism in stuffy, upper class American society and Lucie Dodge, a daughter of one of the finest and wealthiest families in America, was considered a renegade for marrying Walter.

As hard as it is to believe in this day & age, up until the 1960’s, McGill University in Montreal imposed a quota on the number of Jewish students permitted to study there. I suspect that the reason for it was not race, nor was it some medieval notion that the Jews killed Jesus. Montreal has a large Jewish population and the University realized that if it were to allow enrolment based strictly on academic achievement, the University would be 90% Jewish! 

Mazel tov!

Those who have seen the documentary film ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY will recall that Lev Termen, who had been the darling of New York society, became a social outcast overnight when he married black dancer Lavinia Williams in 1938. His friends abandoned him and within a year Lev disappeared.

[David Curtis]

A few bits and pieces from my research files.

1. Lucie Bigelow Rosen and her early musical studies

source: Schenectady Gazette [NY], Wednesday Morning, May 3, 1933, p. 11 [excerpt]

Lucie Rosen came of a musically gifted family. Her mother played several instruments, and sang naturally a large repertoire of 

songs for which she was well known and even composed some. Lucie herself studied the violin and piano as a small child in the old 

Lexington Avenue Conservatory of Music in New York, of which Dr. Lambert was the head. She studied dancing also, and loved 

anything to do with music. The piano was less her instrument then the violin, and she learned her mother's songs.

When the family left New York, she continued to study the violin for eight years. One of her most beloved teachers was an 

Italian, the late Rose Anchona [i.e. Ancona]. She entered the McGill University Conservatory of Music for two years, and studied 

the piano again with Dr. Hans Harthan and the violin with Alfred de Seve, and played in the school orchestra.

source: The Putnam Country Courier [Carmel, NY], Thursday Afternoon, June 7, 1945, p. 12 [excerpt]

Lucie Bigelow Rosen's musical education began as a child in Dr. Alexander Lambert's Conservatory of Music in New York City where 

she studied piano and harmony. Soon she transferred all her time to the violin under the Italian teacher, Ancona, and later 

Alfred De Seves [sic] in the Royal Conservatory of Music in Montreal. She was also interested in experiments with sound without 

words as communication of ideas and emotion. This point of view took her naturally into analysis of timbre in the human voice, 

touch on the keyboard, and the effect of bowing on the violin. She was still wondering why so much was left unsaid in music when 

she heard the first electrically produced sound, and realized that there was the subtlest medium yet discovered. 

Even in its original simplicity, as he first showed it, this musical invention of Professor Theremin showed elements of lasting 

beauty and use for an art of the future.

Mrs. Rosen has taken the Theremin on two European tours as well as having played it in New York, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo and 

Philadelphia. She finds that increasing audiences hear in the theremin voice the deeply human and moving quality that first 

touched her.

2. A letter to the editor re: suffrage (worth tracking down if you can)

New York Times - 20 Oct 1916 - 8 (LBR - Letter to editor - vote for women)

3. Images

If you search Gallica, the digitized collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, you will find 2 issues of Vogue, each 

containing full page portrait photographs of LBR. The one from 1922 is particularly stunning.

Vogue - 52.06 (Sep 15, 1918) - 49 (LBR and her daughter Anne (misidentified as Lucie))

Vogue (Paris) - 1922-12-01 (VOL4 N17) - (LBR - portrait photo - p.24 (p. 52 in the pdf))

[\js]

On 06/28/2015 07:33, Peter Pringle wrote:
> Montreal has a large Jewish population and the University realized that
> if it were to allow enrolment based strictly on academic achievement,
> the University would be 90% Jewish!

really?

> Those who have seen the documentary film ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY will recall
> that Lev Termen, who had been the darling of New York society, became a
> social outcast overnight when he married black dancer Lavinia Williams
> in 1938.

plenty of this interracial sex nonsense all over many parts of USA
empire, including recent idiot shooter. i guess the notion of consenting
adults is irrelevant here ...


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\js [http://or8.net/~johns] (let (listen t) ())

[Peter Pringle]

I toldja! 

David Curtis knows everything about everybody!

[mpic...@earthlink.net]

Fascinating social commentary.

Thanks, Peter.

[mpic...@earthlink.net]

Thanks fellahs! I only have 10 minutes tops to talk about them both, then demonstrate the theremin and play a little mini concert, but this is all so interesting!

Sarah

[Uncle Howie]

Leveren:
 Stan Lee Broza, a Philadelphia morning radio host, back in my day, had a son Elliot Lawrence. Lawrence was the band leader for the house band for WCAU radio and had Lucie Rosen in the studio to record a song called GIGOLETTE.
 Here is a link to her recording of this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSKu_CM-2ac
 How Lawrence and Lucie got together is still a mystery to me.
 Uncle Howie
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
  

-----Original Message-----
From: mpickford <mpic...@earthlink.net>
To: levnet <lev...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Jun 29, 2015 2:59 pm
Subject: Re: [levnet] Violinist, Lucie Bigelow Rosen.....

[mpic...@earthlink.net]

Yes, I have heard this. Life is so interesting...