1. The program she reviewed was a Saturday Morning Musicale given by Adolf Tandler's Little Symphony on January 9, 1926, of music by Bach, Sibelius, and Cowell. Two months earlier, on October 22, 1925, Tandler and his orchestra had participated in the first concert of Henry Cowell's New Music Society, which was presented in Los Angeles. Rita Mead, Henry Cowell's New Music 1925-1936: The Society, the Music Editions, and the Recordings (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), chap. 3, "The New Music Society," 31-49. That program, which both Arvey and Forsythe probably attended, consisted of Dane Rudhyar, "Surge of Fire"; Varèse, "Octandre"; Ruggles, "Angels"; and Schoenberg, "Sechs kleine Klavierstücke."

2. Los Angeles before the famous émigrés from Hitler had its own style of modernism, described for music in Catherine Parsons Smith and C. S. Richardson, Mary Carr Moore, American Composer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978). See especially chap. 12, "The First Los Angeles School," and chapters 17-19, "The Federal Music Project," "The Ultra-Moderns," and "Musical Americanism." For a more recent approach that involves art and architecture, see Paul J. Karlstrom, ed., On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996).

3. Jon Michael Spencer, "An Introduction to William Grant Still," in Spencer, Reader, 1-60. In "William Grant Still: Eclectic Religionist," Theomusicology: A Special Issue of Black Sacred Music: A Journal of Theomusicology 3, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 135-156, Spencer considers Arvey and Still's interest in spiritualism. Spencer was unaware of Forsythe's presence when he wrote these essays, and so did not speculate on Forsythe's connection with Still or Arvey.

4. Arvey, IOL . Little of the vital young adult is suggested in this infelicitous book. In the editing of the book, the few clues that might have illuminated her character and her pre-Still career were removed, along with considerable repetition. In an interview with Lance Bowling, April 3, 1987, Arvey described how her book had been edited. Most striking, she had prepared a long list of the prominent figures in music, film, and theater she had interviewed, going back to her high school years. In the published book, the list becomes a disproportionately long appendix entitled "Who's Who in the Life of William Grant Still," with new annotations that ignore both Still and Arvey. Arvey told Bowling: "That section at the end, you know, where I told about some of the people that I'd interviewed, . . . when the man came to write his notes, the explanatory notes, he said that all these people were known to William Grant Still. Well, they weren't, because I wrote those interviews before he came out here. . . . We didn't even see the galley proofs for that, you know."

For one critical reaction, see D. Antoinette Handy's negative review in AM 5, no. 4 (1987): 456-458.

5. Interviews with Carlton Moss, the author of the short story on which Blue Steel is based, and Harry Hay, an early associate of Forsythe and Arvey.

6. Donald Dorr, "Chosen Image: The Afro-American Vision in the Operas of William Grant Still," Opera Quarterly 4, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 1-23.

7. See below, Harold Bruce Forsythe, "William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions," n. 16.

8. Verna Arvey, "Time for the Old Ox," typescript, p. 88, Still-Arvey Papers, an early version of her memoir. This and several other quotations below were cut from In One Lifetime . (See n. 4.)

9. "Commencement memories," Arvey, Scrapbook #49, Still-Arvey Papers. In 1926 the campus of the University of California-Southern Branch was still on Vermont Avenue, although construction on the present Westwood campus was beginning. Students who wanted to study music theory and history or enroll for applied lessons studied across the street at the California Christian College (later Chapman College). The University of Southern California, a private institution, would have been beyond Arvey's financial reach.

10. Later scrapbooks, now at WGSM, reflect her increasing interest in race and politics.

11. Arvey's letter was addressed to a Chicago theater manager/film distributor. For information on Jacob Arvey, see Milton L. Rakove, Don't Make No Waves, Don't Back No Losers: An Insider's Analysis of the Daley Machine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 112-113, 144-145. Alex Gottfried, Boss Cermak of Chicago (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), describes Jacob Arvey's 1923 role in the shady financial dealings of Chicago machine politics.

12. "Present Day Musical Films and How They Are Possible," Etude (January 1931): 16-18, 61, 72.

13. These were, respectively, Victor Baravalle, Martin Broones, Arthur Kay, and Heinz Roemheld. Her article was featured in a two-page spread with photos of the individuals interviewed.

14. See column by Arthur Corey, American Dancer, November 1933.

15. Ruth Eleanor Howard, "Dancing in Southern California: Terpsichorean Los Angeles Takes Second Place Only to New York," in Bruno David Ussher, ed., Who's Who in Music and Dance in Southern California (Hollywood: Bureau of Musical Research, 1933), 52-53. Among those with whom Arvey was associated are Ernest Belcher, Melissa Blake, Rosa Buruel, Waldeen Falkenstein, Eleanore Flaig, Norma Gould, Michio Ito, Teru Izumida, Dorothy Lyndall, Manual Perez, Charles Teske, Bertha Wardell, and Charles Zemach. Belcher, Falkenstein, Flaig, Gould, Lyndall, Perez, Teske, Wagner, and Zemach are listed in Ussher. For more on dance in Los Angeles between the wars, see Naima Prevots, Dancing in the Sun: Hollywood Choreographers, 1915-1937 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987).

16. Verna Arvey, "Trio: Music for Dancers," American Dancer, January 1933.

17. Verna Arvey, Choreographic Music: Music for the Dance (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1941), 433, end of chap. 29, the end of the text.

18. Bowling-Arvey Interview, 1987, p. 4. Arvey's younger sister, Dolly, remembered little music in the household, however.

19. Ussher, Who's Who in Music and Dance, 188. The entry in full: "Eachus, Ann J. Pianiste, Teacher; b. Duarte, Calif.; studied exclusively w. Thilo Becker; asst. teacher w. Thilo Becker many yrs; teacher of Marguerite Bitter, Margaretha Lohman, Bernice Morrison. Add.: 310 S. Hoover St., Los Angeles." Thilo Becker, a German-trained pianist of Australian origin, was the premier piano teacher in southern California from the turn of the century; his students included Paloma Schramm and Olga Steeb. There is no direct evidence as to when Arvey stopped studying. In 1932 she gave a recital at Eachus's studio.

20. American Dancer, June 1932. Review of an evening of dance by the Flaig group, signed "O.S.F." Arvey Scrapbook.

21. August 30, 1933. "Listening In with Ben Gross." The clipping is in Arvey's scrapbook. In response to Arvey's inquiry, Gershwin wrote that the tempos were too slow.

22. Undated letter, Still to Arvey, Still-Arvey Papers. The return address is 408 Manhattan Avenue, New York City.

23. "Time for the Old Ox," 91. She may have been referring to Forsythe.

24. Forsythe to Arvey, March 15, 1934, Forsythe Papers. This is from one of two letters bearing the same date.

25. See my article "Athena at the Manuscript Club: Reflections on John Cage and Mary Carr Moore," Musical Quarterly 79, no. 2 (1995): 351-367. Hay is now an important informant for me and for John Cage's biographer, Frans Van Rossum.

26. She had expected to give a recital with Benjamin Zemach, a dancer with whom she had worked in Los Angeles. Zemach backed out at the last minute, but Arvey went through with the concert anyway. According to her typewritten memoir, the backing and filling that went on before the concert-she rejected the theater booked for her initially by the Mexican government because the stage was too small to accommodate the anticipated dancer-put off her sponsors; neither the composers associated with the Conservatory nor the appropriate government officials actually attended the performance. "The govt officials were conspicuous by their absence, for Chavez, out of pique or something else, had called a 'junta' at which they all had to be present elsewhere." Typescript from notebook "Verna Arvey's scribblings from her notebook of subjects for future writings," courtesy WGSM.

27. The program, as given in Los Angeles, November 4, 1934, The Dance Theater, Norma Gould Studios, 118 North Larchmont:

28. Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, October 23, 1934.

29. Rob Wagner's Script (Beverly Hills, Calif.), November 10, 1934. A letter, this one from Forsythe, sheds some light too:

I cannot forego the pleasure of telling you briefly how much I enjoyed your recital. But strangely, Verna, I still think that you played that night at Eachus' better than ever before or since. You were possessed that night. Last evening I'll be darned if once or twice you didn't actually act as if you were indifferent to audience and music! . . . I just couldn't . . . forbear to mention Ravel and the minuet. This is exquisite music, and it was exquisitely performed. By far the high water mark of the program. . . . It was a beautiful moment, for once more your potential ability was made known to me. . . . Of course you played other things well too. . . . I thought the 2nd Gulablesse dance delicately done, and that amusing Brazilian Dance! and the opening Galuppi . . . intelligent, reserved, innately well bred.

. . . [Y]ears from now I'll be expounding the art of Verna Arvey and bragging that on page 344 of Frailest Leaves is a swell description of her approach to music. HBF

30. Letter, Cowell to Dear Miss Arvey, February 9, 1935, Still-Arvey Papers. The papers he listed whose critics were present included the Musical Courier, Musical America, and Musical Leader as well as Trend, Nation, New Republic, Daily Worker, and New Masses .

31. Postcard, Cowell to Arvey, Still-Arvey Papers. Unfortunately, there is no record of this event in the archives of the New School. I am grateful to Margaret Rose, Archivist/librarian, for searching the records in my behalf.

32. Hedi Korngold Katz, b. ca. 1890, Budapest, d. December 7, 1960. Katz, a violinist, graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, Vienna, and studied in London and Berlin. According to her obituary notice ( New York Times, December 8, 1960), she was first violinist of the Symphony Orchestra of The Hague from 1919 to 1923, when she came to the United States. She founded the music school of the Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1927 and was director for eight years; later she helped found two other music schools in New York City.

33. Letter, Mrs. Hedi Katz, director, The Music School of the Henry Street Settlement, NYC, to Miss Verna Arvey, Los Angeles, December 10, 1934, Still-Arvey Papers.

34. Letter, Artie Mason Carter to Verna Arvey, August 12, 1935, Still-Arvey Papers.

35. Letter, August 16, 1935, letterhead "Charles E. Pemberton, Mus.M., University of Southern California / Private Studio," to "My dear Miss Arvey,'" Still-Arvey Papers.

36. Further information from pp. 248-249, incomplete typed memoir in Still-Arvey Papers. Rogers later performed The Book of the Hanging Gardens at an Evenings on the Roof concert.

37. High school commencement brochure, Still-Arvey Papers.

38. See quotations in "An Unknown 'New Negro,'" above.

39. An earlier version exists in the Forsythe Papers.

40. Please see "'Dean of Afro-American Composers' or 'Harlem Renaissance Man,'" "An Unknown 'New Negro,'" and Forsythe's "A Study in Contradictions," elsewhere in this volume.

41. Letter, Forsythe to Arvey, March 15, 1934, one of two bearing this date, Forsythe Papers.

42. This and other quotations from Arvey's letters to Forsythe appear in several pages of such quotations at WGSM. She must have excerpted them later from carbons she kept of her letters to him. None of her letters to Forsythe survive.

43. The example she chose to illustrate one of these "nuggets" was her experience of interviewing Francis Joseph Hickson, director of an otherwise unidentified experimental little theater. Hickson gave her a pattern for the development of a drama; she reports, "Years later, when I began to write libretti for my husband's operas, these simple precepts helped in the formation of our ideas."

Act i: The characters and situation are presented.

Act ii: The conflict develops and is left unresolved at the end of the act.

Act iii: The characters unravel their difficulties and arrive at a satisfying conclusion.

44. Eleanora Flaig, quoted in "Time for the Old Ox," 94, Still-Arvey Papers.

45. Letter, Harry Hay to the author, March 19, 1994. Hay returned to Los Angeles ca. 1950. Falkenstein and Izumida were dancers whose recitals Arvey had accompanied on several occasions.

46. Carl Van Vechten letters, JWJ. There are no pre-1940 letters from Van Vechten to Arvey or Still in the Still-Arvey Papers.

47. See "Finding His Voice," above.

48. Letter, Arvey to Langston Hughes, n.d., Langston Hughes papers, JWJ. The letter is written on Arvey's own letterhead, and includes a copy of a program dated November 21, 1937. It may have been written after Still filed for divorce in May 1938, however; the filing received front-page treatment in the Pittsburgh Courier .

49. Typescript, undated autobiography of Still, p. 212, Still-Arvey Papers. Pages 11-151 are missing.

50. Several boxes containing dozens of scrapbooks on these two topics alone are at WGSM.

51. MS autobiography, Still-Arvey Papers.

52. Verna Arvey, "Memo for Musicologists," reprinted in Fusion 2, 21-25. To judge from the citation in the Bio-Bibliography (A30), which quotes a sentence reproduced in the quotation here, it is probably an expansion of Arvey's "Afro-American Music Memo," Music Journal 27 (November 1969): 36, 68. Arvey goes on to discuss Dvorak's * use of "national American melodies" in the symphony From the New World, in her view strongly influenced by the singing of "Plantation songs and Hoe-downs" by Harry T. Burleigh.

53. Although the original story seems to have called for an appearance by the Virgin, who shows the two men the way to safety, she does not appear in the opera.

54. Postcard, Still to Langston Hughes, December 16, 1935, JWJ.

55. Still to Bontemps, 1939, Still-Arvey Papers. For details of the Chapin collaboration, see Wayne D. Shirley, "William Grant Still's Choral Ballad And They Lynched Him on a Tree, " AM 12 (Winter 1994): 425-461.

56. Carbon copy, letter, September 20, 1949, WGS to Howard Taubman, Still-Arvey Papers.

57. "Music in Films, a Symposium of Composers," Films 1, no. 4 (Winter 1940): 5-18.

58. Catherine Parsons Smith, "'A Distinguishing Virility': On Feminism and Modernism in American Concert Music," in Susan Cook and Judith Tsou, eds., Cecilia Reclaimed: Essays on Gender and Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). Literary critics have documented this even more fully. See, for example, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1, The War of the Words (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

59. See, for example, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: William Morrow, 1963); Albert Murray, The Hero and the Blues (1973; New York: Vintage Books, 1995); Paul Oliver, Blues Fell this Morning, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

60. Bio-Bibliography . The number 168 is Judith Anne Still's count of her mother's work.

61. Bonnie G. Smith, "Historiography, Objectivity, and the Case of the Abusive Widow," in Ann-Louise Shapiro, ed., Feminists Revision History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 24-46.

62. See Smith, "'A Distinguishing Virility.'"

63. Published by New Music Edition.

64. Forsythe's poem is attached to the draft score of Dismal Swamp in the Still-Arvey Papers; Arvey's appears in the published score (1937).