Background
Foden was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and initially started with the violin at age 7, changing from age 16 to the mandolin and classical guitar.
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William Foden
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He studied guitar with William O. Bateman (1825–1883), "a successful lawyer, music engraver, guitarist, and nationally recognized guitar composer" His professional began in the 1880s, gaining national notoriety from the early 1890s.
Career
Foden is considered to have been the United States of America"s premiere native born classical guitarist during the 1890s and first decades of the twentieth century. "Having an aversion to traveling and leaving his family, he did not fully capitalize on his growing fame" until 1904, when he was invited to play at Carnegie Hall. In 1911, Foden and his family moved to the New York area (Englewood, New Jersey), after a successful eight-month tour of the United States and British Columbia together with Giuseppe Pettine (mandolin) and Frederick Bacon (banjo), with newspapers referring to them as "The Big Trio".
At Englewood, he taught guitar and other fretted instruments at a studio at 42nd Street.
Foreign the publisher William J. Smith he arranged numerous works for mandolin orchestra, guitar, banjo, ukulele, and Hawaiian steel guitar.
His Grand Guitar Method in two volumes (1920, 1921) contains numerous original compositions, in addition to nearly 50 solo compositions published independently. He also left more than a hundred compositions and arrangements in manuscript.
