Bruce Forsythe

1908 - 1976

About

Georgia-born Harold Bruce Forsythe, a composer, pianist, and author of the 1920s and 1930s, moved to Los Angeles during his youth. He remains underrepresented and relatively unknown in the canon of American classical music. Music scholars have noted that his contribution of specializing in art music and writing works during the Los Angeles Renaissance mainly drew from the following of the Harlem Renaissance in New York. Currently, Forsythe’s compositions, poetry, essays, and other literary texts, including several issues of an African American periodical, Flash are housed in the archives of The Huntington Library (San Marino, CA), and his songs are of extremely high quality and great variety. Forsythe set texts by some of the leading poets of the time, including Langston Hughes and James Joyce, and his trajectory through Juilliard promised a future career in composition as one of the leading lights in American music. He collaborated with the most prominent African-American composer of the time, William Grant Still (1895-1978) on a ballet, The Sorcerer, and an opera, Blue Steel. Nevertheless, ultimately Forsythe’s artistic productivity was limited by his health challenges (spinal infection and deafness) which had fully progressed by 1940. According to his son, at his death, Forsythe considered his art songs to be his most important artistic contribution.

Related Information

Photo by Fred Hartsook. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Works by Bruce Forsythe