From the Press of A. P. Schmidt

In an era when most of the best-known American composers had traveled to Europe for rigorous conservatory training, Arthur William Foote (1853–1937) was among the first to be educated almost exclusively in the United States. One of his principle teachers was Harvard professor John Knowles Paine. In fact, the university granted Foote the very first master’s degree in music to be awarded by an American educational institution.

Like Foote himself, Arthur P. Schmidt was keen to challenge the prevailing assumption that the best music was European music. Given their shared aims, Schmidt soon became Foote’s primary music publisher. He issued a number of the composer’s most significant works, including the symphonic prologue “Francesca da Rimini,” Op. 24 (1892), and the popular Suite in E Major for String Orchestra, Op. 63 (1909).

Schmidt published Foote’s Piano Quartet in C Major, Op. 23, in 1892. As the images above make clear, a piano quartet calls for violin, viola, cello, and piano. This instrumentation was first explored by Mozart and Beethoven in the late eighteenth century before Robert Schumann took the combination to new heights with his Piano Quartet, Op. 47, of 1842. For at least one critic, Foote’s own quartet was an admirable contribution.  “The motives are robust and virile, and present a rhythmic vigor worthy of Schumann,” wrote Wilson G. Smith in The Musician (May 1899). “I have no hesitation in ranking it among the best of similar modern works.”

🔎 View full score at the International Music Score Library Project.