Charles Tomlinson Griffes


Charles Tomlinson Griffes was an American composer for piano, chamber ensembles and voice.

Musical career

Griffes was born in Elmira, New York. He had early piano lessons with his sister Katherine and later studied piano with Mary Selena Broughton, who taught at Elmira College. Broughton had a profound impact on his personal and musical development. After early studies on piano and organ in his home town, on recommendation of Broughton, he went to Berlin to study with pianist Ernst Jedliczka and Gottfried Galston at the Stern Conservatory. Although recognised as a performer, Griffes grew more interested in composition. Despite being advised against it by Broughton, he left the conservatory and was briefly taught by composer Engelbert Humperdinck. During his time in Berlin he composed several German songs and the Symphonische Phantasie for orchestra.
On returning to the U.S. in 1907, he became director of music studies at the Hackley School for boys in Tarrytown, New York, a post which he held until his early death thirteen years later. His post has been described as "grim and unrewarding", though it gave him financial stability. He continued to compose at Hackley in his free time and promoted his music during the summer.
Griffes' initial works are influenced by German Romanticism, but after he relinquished the German style, his later works make him the most famous American representative of musical Impressionism. He was fascinated by the exotic, mysterious sound of the French Impressionists, and was compositionally much influenced by them while he was in Europe. He also studied the work of contemporary Russian composers, whose influence is also apparent in his work, for example in his use of synthetic scales.
His most famous works are the White Peacock, for piano ; his Piano Sonata ; a tone poem, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan, after the fragment by Coleridge, and Poem for Flute and Orchestra. He also wrote numerous programmatic pieces for piano, chamber ensembles, and for voice. The amount and quality of his music is impressive considering his short life and his full-time teaching job, and much of his music is still performed. His unpublished Sho-jo, a one-act pantomimic drama based on Japanese themes, is one of the earliest works by an American composer to show direct inspiration from the music of Japan.

Personal life

Griffes died of influenza in New York City during the worldwide pandemic at the age of 35 and is buried in Bloomfield Cemetery in Bloomfield, New Jersey. His papers passed to his younger sister Marguerite, who chose to destroy many that explicitly related to his life as a homosexual. Donna Anderson is his current literary executor.
Griffes kept meticulous diaries, some in German, which chronicled his musical accomplishments from 1907 to 1919, and also dealt honestly with his homosexuality, including his regular patronage of the Lafayette Place Baths and the Produce Exchange Baths.
During his time as a student in Berlin he was devoted to his "special friend" Emil Joèl. In later life, he had a long term relationship with John Meyer, a married New York policeman.

Musical compositions

Stage works

  1. The Lake at Evening
  2. The Vale of Dreams
  3. The Night Winds
  1. La fuite de la lune, 1912
  2. Symphony in Yellow, 1912
  3. We'll to the Woods, and Gather May, 1914
  1. This Book of Hours
  2. Come, Love, across the Sunlit Land
  1. Le jardin, 1915
  2. Impression du matin, 1915
  3. La mer, 1912, new setting 1916
  4. Le réveillon, 1914
  1. In a Myrtle Shade
  2. Waikiki, E. Gauthier, M. Hansotte, New York, 22 April 1918
  3. Phantoms
  1. So-fei Gathering Flowers, 1917
  2. Landscape, 1916
  3. The Old Temple among the Mountains, 1916
  4. Tears, 1916
  5. A Feast of Lanterns, 1917
  1. An Old Song Re-Sung, 1918
  2. Sorrow of Mydath, 1917
  1. The Lament of Ian the Proud
  2. Thy Dark Eyes to Mine
  3. The Rose of the Night
  1. Am Kreuzweg wird begraben
  2. An den Wind
  3. Auf ihrem Grab
  4. Auf dem Teich, dem Regungslosen
  5. Auf geheimen Waldespfade
  6. Das ist ein Brausen und Heulen
  7. Das sterbende Kind
  8. Der träumende See
  9. Des müden Abendlied
  10. Elfe
  11. Entflieh mit mir
  12. Es fiel ein Reif
  13. Frühe
  14. Gedicht von Heine
  15. Ich weiss nicht, wie's geschieht
  16. Könnt’ ich mit dir dort oben gehn
  17. Meeres Stille
  18. Mein Herz ist wie die dunkle Nacht
  19. Mir war, als müsst’ ich graben
  20. Nacht liegt auf den fremden Wegen
  21. So halt’ ich endlich dich umfangen
  22. Winternacht
  23. Wo ich bin, mich rings umdunkelt, c1903–11
  24. Wohl lag ich einst in Gram und Schmerz
  25. Zwei Könige sassen auf Orkadal, before 1910