Ferde Grofé (1892-1972)

Death Valley Suite • Hollywood Suite • Hudson River Suite

Ferde Grofé was born Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé, in New York City on 27th March, 1892. Shortly thereafter the family moved to Los Angeles. Ferde’s father was a baritone and actor, while his mother was a cellist and music teacher of some note, numbering the famous American cellist and conductor Alfred Wallenstein among her pupils. Ferde studied the piano, violin and harmony with his mother and the viola with his grandfather. He attended Los Angeles City Schools and later St Vincent’s College, now known as Loyola University. When his father died in 1899, he joined his mother in Germany (she had studied at the Leipzig Conservatory for three years). Upon their return to Los Angeles, Madame Grofé opened a music studio. It was during those very early years of this century that he wrote his earliest compositions, three piano rags, entitled Harem,