Bassett Family Association Database

Karolyn Wells Bassett

Female 1892 -


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  • Name Karolyn Wells Bassett 
    Born 2 Aug 1892  Derby, New Haven County, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Female 
    _UID 51A118118DEBF541ABA72E8D8F8154BAF41B 
    Notes 
    • Bassett, Karolyn Wells, composer and singer, was born in Derby, Connecticut, August 2, 1892, the daughter of Harmon Sheldon and Charlotte Mortimer Bassett. Miss Bassett's father was born in Derby, Connecticut in 1867. Her maternal grandfather, Payson Mortimer, came from England and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1859. A great grandmother, Harriet Bassett, was a niece of Commodore Isaac Hull, of the "Old Ironsides" and a daughter of General William Hull.
      Karolyn Wells Bassett is one of the youngest in the group of American women composers. She has already established herself as a writer of songs that are unusually melodious and show the true creative gift; they possess a spontaneity and quaint, joyous originality which is very appealing. Her first set of songs were included in the Schirmer catalogue several years ago and have appeared on the programs of many distinguished concert affairs. A group, issued by Harold Flammer, notably Little Brown Baby, A Child's Night Song, and De Bogie Man, have met with great success because of their original charm and refinement, although perhaps The Icicle is best known. She has written a number of humorous songs for children and her negro melodies have the true lilt and swing. Miss Bassett has also a coloratura soprano voice of wide range and remarkable purity of tone. Her art is finished and her interpretation reveals depths of feeling and admirable intelligence.
      Karolyn Wells Bassett began her career as a composer at the age of four. It is told of her that she seated herself at the piano one day and, after striking they keys with a tentative finger, suddenly burst into tears. To her father, who rushed to see if she had pinched her finger, she sobbed out that she wanted to play something she heard in her head. Her father listened while she hummed the something and helped her work it out. At five, instead of drawing animals in a picture book, the little Karolyn declared she preferred to make pictures on the piano. Her mother asked her one day to make up a piece for a friend calling. The composition must have had merit as the caller was flatteringly skeptical and asked the child to make up a piece all on the black keys. She was able to convince her first critic that her work was genuine. Many stories are told of the little musician. At the age of five she played a Beethoven Sonatina in public. Afterwards, a gentlemen asked her about the performance - what she had played and by whom. "I don't remember very well," said the child, "but I think it was a Sonatina by Sonata!"
      At one of her first performances at the piano, under the Faeltons of Boston, little Karolyn at the age of six years, while playing a Krauss Sonata, put in a wrong chord which necessitated transposing three pages to finish the piece. The child knew she was not right, but she also had the instinct to know she must not stop playing, so she continued in the strange key, much to the delight of Carl Faelton, who caught her up when she had finished it and explained to the audience what she had done.
      When she was seven years old, the children in her school were thrilled to discover that she could "make-up" her own pieces on the piano and one day they begged her for a performance, with the result that she was discovered in the music room, telling them stories about runaway horses, wars, witches, and wild Indians, and illustrating them on the piano to a spellbound audience of youngsters, with eyes bulging from excitement.
      The child spent so much of her time at the piano that her mother finally took all music away from her. But the "something she heard in her head" persisted, and at the age of twelve she was allowed to begin the study of harmony. At this time she was a pupil in the Berkeley Institute, Brooklyn, and as she grew older at Madame Veltin's School, New York City. During her residency in Boston, Miss Bassett studied piano with Carl Faelton and Mrs. Rheinhold Faelton. When in the Brooklyn School she studied piano with Constance Mills, a pupil of MacDowell's, with Leona Clarkson, who had been Carreno's assistant, and when in Berlin, with Vera Maurina of the Russian Trio. Her composition teachers were Constance Mills, New York, Theodore Holland, Berlin, and later Bryceson Treharne, New York.
      Miss Bassett tells an amusing incident of her early career in Berlin. When a child of thirteen, she attracted attention in the Berlin musical circle as a composer, and one of the critics, attending a concert where her violin and piano composition was being performed, asked her if she had been composing very long. "Oh yes," said the little Miss Bassett, "ever since I was a baby, but this is the first really big thing I have ever written!" "So," said Mr. Critic, "you consider that this is a big composition, eh?" Where upon, Miss Bassett declares, from that moment she became modest.
      It was when humming her own songs quite recently that she discovered that she had a voice, which she began to develop without publicity, training with Clara and Grace Carroll, New York City, with characteristic seriousness. Beginning so quietly, she has rapidly risen to notice as a concert singer, although she declares that she made her debut before she really intended it. She is a most conscientious young woman, setting great aims for herself. She declares that it is harder to sing her own songs because she never thinks of working on them and one cannot accomplish anything without giving it full attention. That is a part of her creed, to do anything as well as it is in her to do it and never to accept failure.
      Miss Bassett likes to pass on the lessons she had learned to help others who are struggling with their first efforts. She warns against promiscuous composing, the usual temptation to please.
      "There was a time," she laughingly declares, "when, if any one said to me, 'Will you set these words to music for me?' that I would do so even when the words did not impress me. Now, I do not write except when something is clamoring to be put down. Sometimes I feel for weeks that a thing is coming before it actually takes concrete form." Miss Bassett believes that one of the advantages of studying in Europe is that it takes a girl from her friends, who keep her from work, distract her and disturb the concentration that is so necessary to success.
      Miss Bassett lives in the lovely old colonial home "The Elms" at Briarcliff Manor. It is situated on a hill overlooking a broad sweep of valley. This home is her inspiration. One feels a closeness to nature in all her work. The cold bleakness of winter, silent and grey; spring and the soft wind in the elms sighing over the lilacs and early bulbs in the old garden; the warm sun of summer, the buzz of happy bees, the brilliant flowers on the hillside, the haying in the nearby meadows; then the blue haze of autumn, the flame of painted forest, leaves burning, the first crisp air. The familiar things of country living, they all appear in the emotional quality of her music, vigorous yet tender. Inspiration comes to her at the oddest moments. She may be weeding in the garden or putting up one of her painted bird houses for the innumerable birds that abound in the place, when an idea comes. Everything is dropped right there and she flies to her piano to be absorbed for hours. Her mother comes first in her life and that mother seems to know when the gifted daughter is in a creative mood and never allows her to be disturbed. And she is the first to hear the song, when completed, for her valued criticism and encouragement.
      Miss Bassett's relaxations are her Arabian horse and her Airdale and they are often off together for hours at a time. She has a long grey car, too, and is a skilled chauffeur, being proud of the fact that she does all the driving on long motor trips. Miss Bassett loves outdoor life and, besides her riding, is quite an adept at tennis, swimming, snow-shoeing and skating. She says that she does not play golf because she is unable to take so much time from her work. Miss Bassett loves her garden and spends much time in it. She paints her own bird houses, also does a little portrait work but has given up most of the latter work since the voice developed.
      Miss Bassett is expected to go far as a concert singer. She is likened to Patti in voice and spirit and charm, and is making a specialty of Patti programs, in costume. But she declares that no matter what else she does she will keep on writing songs. She wants her songs to do two things, paint pictures and make people happier. In her song Take Joy Home, she hopes the audience will really go home with joy in their hearts. Many celebrated singers are using Miss Bassett's songs.
      Miss Bassett has appeared in Palm Beach concerts for two seasons and in concerts at St. Augustine; as soloist with choral art societies, in Westchester; concerts at Carnegie Hall and at the Strand Theatre; in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel; in the big Springfield auditorium; and is very popular over the radio.
      In the list of songs she has composed are especially noted: The Icicle; Mister Mockin' Bird; Take Joy Home; Passion Flowers; De Bogie Man; Little Brown Baby; A Child's Night Song; Lullaby Prayer; Yellow Butterfly; Laddie; The Whipporwill; The Moon of Roses; My Mother; Optimism; Serenade; Called Away.
      Miss Bassett belongs to the Author's League of America; League of American Pen Women; American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; the Audubon Society; S.P.C.A.; and was at one time secretary of the Briarcliff Suffrage Club for two years.
      Miss Bassett has been interested in suffrage work, belonging to the suffrage club of her town, and has enjoyed work in the garden clubs and been otherwise active in many ways. She is a member of S.P.C.A. and the Audubon Society. But the growing demand of her concert work is eliminating most of her club activity.
      Of the Bassett family, the earliest record is of an ancestor, Baset, with the Duke of Normandy on the Loire in 895. A Baset accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. In England records of the family are kept to the present. On her mother's side, the Mortimers are descended from Norman stock also, Ralph de Mortimer accompanying William I, in 1066.
    Person ID I2761  1B John Bassett of Connecticut
    Last Modified 29 Dec 2012 

    Father Harmon Sheldon Bassett,   b. Abt 1867, Derby, New Haven County, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Mother Charlotte Mortimer 
    Family ID F1023  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart