Jeanne Boyd


Jeanne Margaret Boyd was an American pianist, composer, arranger, and music educator, based in Chicago.

Early life and education

Boyd was born in Mount Carroll, Illinois, and raised in Fremont, Nebraska, the daughter of James P. W. Boyd and Jane Hughes Boyd. She attended the Frances Shimer School, and studied music with Emil Liebling, Lyravine Votaw, and Edgar A. Brazelton.

Career

Boyd taught at the Frances Shimer School from 1909 to 1914, and at the Lyceum Arts Conservatory from 1914 to 1917. In 1922 she spent two months in residence at the MacDowell Colony. She taught at the Bush Conservatory of Music in the 1920s. She also led workshops for piano accompanists. Boyd gave recitals of her own works and those of other composers. She was a member of the Society of American Musicians. In the 1940s and 1950s she taught at the American Conservatory of Music.

Compositions

Instrumental

  • Symphonic suite
  • Song against Ease
  • Eleventurous dances
  • Introduction and fugue
  • Sonatine for Piano
  • ''Andante lamentoso''

    Vocal

Boyd set the works of several poets to music, including poems by Sharmel Iris, Wilbur D. Nesbit, and Alan Seeger. She wrote songs for school use, including a children's cantata, and patriotic songs. Several of Boyd's songs were compiled in a book, Songs.
  • "In Italy"
  • "Canzonetta"
  • "Your Flag and My Flag"
  • "At morning"
  • "The Lost Road"
  • "The Light" and "The Fairy Pool"
  • "To a Child"
  • "Mist of the Night"
  • "I Have a Rendezvous with Death"
  • "La Tarantella"
  • The Hunting of the Snark
  • "Flag of my Land"
  • "Wind from the South"
  • "When the Bobolink Sings"
  • "Psalm CXXXII"
  • "The Lord's Prayer"

    Arrangements and descants

In addition to her original compositions, Boyd arranged familiar European music, and wrote descants for popular hymns, including works by Charles T. Griffes, Cyril Scott, John Liptrot Hatton, Henry Smart, Edvard Grieg, Frederic Hymen Cowen, Joseph Barnby, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Émile Paladilhe.

Personal life

Boyd died in 1968, at the age of 78, at a rest home in Jonesboro, Arkansas.