THEODORA STURKOW-RYDER (PHILADELPHIA,
PENNSYLVANIA, AUGUST 11, 1876 – OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, AUGUST 3, 1958)
Theodora
Sturkow was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Chicago, the
daughter of Ferdinand Louis Wilhelm Sturckow and Elizabeth Symington Sturckow.
Her father was a baker and an amateur violinist who encouraged her musical
interests. Her mother was a writer who used the pseudonym “Elizabeth
Creighton”. Her sister was actress Elsie Esmond. Frederick Grant Gleason and
Regina Watson were among her teachers and mentors.
She was a
soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1920, when one reviewer admired
her as having “the strongest sort of rhythmic sense”, adding that “her search
for beautiful quality and fineness of interpretation is constant, and she never
allows for one moment either harshness or uncertainty to creep into her
playing.”
She was a
music critic for the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper, toured as a concert
pianist, and taught at the American Academy of Music in Chicago. She was a
member of the National Guild of Piano Teachers, the National League of American
Pen Women, the Chicago Woman’s Musical Club, and the San Francisco Musical
Club. Her performing schedule was busy enough to involve flying between cities
in 1922, still a novelty at the time. Later in her career, she represented a
radio manufacturer, giving concerts and demonstrations and promoting radio as a
tool for music education. From 1912 onwards, she was a pioneer in recording
hand-played player piano rolls, and her playing is preserved on many hundreds
of these rolls, recorded for the QRS, Ampico, and Aeolian companies.
Works
composed by Sturkow-Ryder included The Great Lakes and From the Family Album
(both symphonic suites), songs for piano and voice, and “twelve dances for
violin and piano”. She also co-wrote the music for a musical farce, Stockyards
Sally (1922). She may have used the androgynous pseudonym “Dorian Welch” on
some compositions and piano rolls. In 1935 she attended the American Women
Composers’ Conference in Chautauqua, New York.
Theodora
Sturkow married twice. Her first husband was Benjamin Hudson Ryder, an
electrical engineer from Pittsburgh; they married in 1906 and he died in 1925.
Her second husband was Frank J. Snite. Theodora Sturkow-Ryder Snite died in
1958, aged 82 years, in Oakland, California. Sturkow-Ryder’s papers are
archived in the Newberry Library.
TRACKLIST
QRS 720
(1919) Trovatore (Verdi) Miserere
QRS 80156
(1918) Minuet in G (Paderewski)
QRS 80740
(1919) Trovatore (Verdi) Perigliarti ancor languente… Il balen del suo sorriso
QRS 90123
(1916) Flotte Bursche (Suppé) Overture Robert S. Lee
QRS 90130
(1918) Light Cavalry (Suppé) Overture Robert S. Lee
