Ruth Crawford Seeger was born in 1901 and was a U.S. composer and folk music researcher. She studied with musicologist and composer Charles Seeger, whom she later married. With her husband, she devoted much of her time to collecting, arranging, and researching American folk songs. It was not until shortly before her death from cancer in 1953 that she turned again to composition. Her style remained unchanged modern; her mostly quite short works are atonal, dissonant and perfectly structured.