Background
Deems Taylor was born in New York City in 1885. He was the son of Joseph Schimmel Taylor, superintendent of schools in the Bronx, and Katherine Moore Johnson, a schoolteacher.
Deems Taylor was born in New York City in 1885. He was the son of Joseph Schimmel Taylor, superintendent of schools in the Bronx, and Katherine Moore Johnson, a schoolteacher.
He received his elementary education at the Ethical Culture School and graduated with a B. A. from New York University in 1906. He took piano lessons in 1906, but he was largely self-taught.
Taylor received honorary degrees from New York University (1927), Dartmouth College (1939), the University of Rochester (1939), the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (1941), Syracuse University (1944), and Juniata College (1931).
Taylor wrote the music for four comic operas with William Le Baron. The Echo was produced on Broadway in 1909 by Charles Dillingham, with the actress Bessie Love. On the advice of Victor Herbert, who was impressed by The Oracle, a comic opera, he studied harmony and counterpoint with Oscar Coon, a bandsman of Oswego, N. Y. , in 1908-1911.
Taylor's early musical efforts included a library of traditional vocal music that he prepared for the Schumann Club and his friend Percy Rector Stephens, the conductor of the women's choral group. In 1913 he won first place in the National Federation of Music Clubs competition with The Siren Song, an orchestral composition. The following year, he contributed a setting for women's voices and orchestra of Alfred Noyes's poem The Highwayman to the MacDowell Festival at Petersboro, N. Y. He created one of his most celebrated works, Through the Looking Glass, for chamber orchestra in 1917, later arranging it for full orchestra. Taylor was on the staff of the Nelson Encyclopedia in 1906-1907 and moved to the Encyclopaedia Britannica the following year.
A man with a keen sense of wit, which found expression in his music as well as his writing, he wrote a humorous column for the New York Press. He also was an assistant editor of the New York Tribune Sunday magazine in 1916, becoming its war correspondent in France in 1916-1917. He was the music critic of the New York World (1921 - 1925), the editor of Musical America (1927 - 1929), and the music critic of the New York American (1931 - 1932).
In 1922, Taylor became interested in writing music for the Broadway theater. For two years he wrote incidental, thematic, and background music for such theatrical works as Molnar's Liliom (1921) and George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly's Dulcy (1921) and Beggar on Horseback (1924). In 1925 he produced Jurgen, a symphonic poem based on James Branch Cabell's novel, and Circus Day for jazz orchestra, which was arranged for full orchestra by Ferde Grofé. Taylor received a commission from the Metropolitan Opera in 1925. He turned to the great lyric poet Edna St. Vincent Millay for the libretto of what became known as The King's Henchman. Its premiere on Feb. 17, 1927, was described by the historian John Tasker Howard as "one of the most dazzling. " The audience response was so strong that the work had fourteen performances between 1927 and 1929. His opera Peter Ibbetson, commissioned by the Met, was based on a novel by George du Maurier.
Taylor wrote his own libretto. Although it was not well received by the critics, audiences loved the opera, which the Met performed sixteen times between 1931 and 1935. He wrote two other operas: Ramuntcho (1942) and The Dragon (1958). In 1931, Taylor was invited to broadcast a series of radio talks on opera over the National Broadcasting Company, and from 1936 to 1943 he was an intermission commentator for national broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also a regular panelist on the "Information Please" radio program and in 1940 served as the narrator for Walt Disney's Fantasia. Taylor's published writings include Of Men and Music (1937), The Well-Tempered Listener (1940) and Music to My Ears (1949), which were all based on his radio talks, and Some Enchanted Evenings: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein (1953).
As a composer, Taylor found nothing attractive in twentieth-century avant-garde trends and resisted them, except in the area of orchestration. He said, "The test of music is not the mathematics behind it, but how it sounds. Too many modern composers are trying to make technical innovations take the place of musical ideas. " Howard felt that he gained recognition "merely because he [wrote] beautiful music, worthy to rank with the great works of the world. "
He joined the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1927 and was elected a director in 1933, serving until his death. From 1942 to 1948 he was president of ASCAP.
Taylor was married three times: in 1917 to Jane Anderson, from whom he was divorced after a few years; on July 11, 1921, to Mary Kennedy, from whom he was divorced in 1934; and on April 17, 1945, to Lucille Watson-Little, a costume designer, a marriage that was annulled in 1952. He and Kennedy had one child.