Timeline

Lifetime: 1879 - 1941 Passed: ≈ 83 years ago

Title

Poet, Music Critic

Country/Nationality

Michigan
Wikipedia

Pitts Sanborn

Pitts Sanborn was born John Pitts Sanborn in Port Huron, Michigan. He dropped the "John" for most of his professional career. After graduating Harvard in 1900, he established himself as a music critic, writing for the New York Globe, New York Mail and finally New York World-Telegram. As a poet he was published in Trend, for which he served as an editorial staffer beginning in 1914. As a novelist, his 1929 novel Prima Donna was called by one New York Times critic “an amazing achievement; nothing quite like it has been done in this country before.” He went on to put Sanborn in the same league with Willa Cather, Edith Wharton and Thornton Wilder. Sanborn was remarked upon as one of the great originals of 1920s-1930s culture. Sanborn's wealth of connections in intellectual and cultural circles included Van Wyck Brooks, Rosa Ponselle, Mark Van Doren and Llewelyn Jones. His friendship with Wallace Stevens (whom he met at Harvard) included a great influence upon Stevens’ interest in music and thus his poetry. He was a good friend and sometimes lover of Carl Van Vechten, who he convinced to assume editorship of Trend. He was also a radio commentator for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Sanborn died at 61 of an apparent heart attack in his Greenwich Village apartment a few hours after he had attended a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House. He had just completed the first paragraph of his review.

Books by Pitts Sanborn

Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies  Cover image

Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies

Fantasy
Romantic Life Classics Music Songs Sketches

George Grove, whose name now stands atop music scholarship’s most important resource (the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), takes readers through the basic structure of each of Beethoven’s symphonies. Along the way, however, Grove provides wo...

Ludwig Van Beethoven Cover image

Ludwig Van Beethoven

The late Pitts Sanborn wrote this booklet under the title Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies... I have left Mr. Sanborn’s pages on the symphonies virtually intact and have only expanded the work a little by incorporating here and there matter about o...