Charles Wakefield Cadman

Charles Wakefield Cadman (December 24, 1881 – December 30, 1946) was an American composer.

Cadman’s musical education, unlike that of most of his American contemporaries, was completely American. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he began piano lessons at 13. Eventually, he went to nearby Pittsburgh where he studied harmony, theory, and orchestration with Luigi von Kunits and Emil Paur, then concertmaster and conductor, respectively, of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. This was the sum of his training. He was named a national honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity in 1915.

In 1908 Cadman was appointed the music editor and critic of the Pittsburgh Dispatch. He was greatly influenced by American Indian music and went to Nebraska to make cylinder recordings of tribal melodies for the Smithsonian Institution. He lived with the Omaha and Winnebago tribes on their reservations, learning to play their instruments. He used elements of traditional music in the form of his compositions of 19th-century romantic music.

Publishing several articles on American Indian music, Cadman was regarded as one of the foremost experts on the subject. He toured both the United States and Europe giving his then-celebrated "Indian Talk". But his involvement with the so-called Indianist movement in American music contributed to some critics failing to judge his works on their own merits.

Cadman's early works enjoyed little success until the famous American soprano Lillian Nordica sang his "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water," one of several compositions by Cadman with Indian influences. Another such song which became well known in the 1920s, was "At Dawning".

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