Nevin, Ethelbert Woodbridge (1862-1901). American pianist and composer. Born in Sewickley, PA, near the Edgeworth station in suburban Pittsburgh, Ethelbert Nevin was the fifth of eight children born to Robert Peebles Nevin, publisher of the Pittsburgh Leader, and Elizabeth Duncan Oliphant, an accomplished pianist. He received musical training at home from his mother and would later study piano and composition in Boston, MA, Germany, and Italy. In 1888 he married Anne Paul in Boston, where, for a time, he was established as a performer and teacher; their son, Paul, was born there the same year. Their daughter, Dorothy, was born in Berlin in 1892. Nevin achieved success both as a performer and as a composer of pieces for solo piano, including “Narcissus” (1891), and songs accompanied by piano, especially “The Rosary” (1897), a setting for a Robert Cameron Rogers poem. In 1898, financial straits forced him to move his family to Vineacre, the family estate in Sewickley. At the time, Willa Cather worked for his father’s newspaper and she already knew his music; she quickly became his friend, proclaiming herself “prouder of his friendship than I have ever been of anything” (#0055). She reviewed his homecoming concert in Pittsburgh and wrote “An Evening at Vineacre” (1899) for the Lincoln Courier and “The Man Who Wrote Narcissus” (1900) for the Ladies Home Journal. Nevin died in in New Haven, CT, where he and his wife had gone to spend the winter of 1900-1901. He inspired several poems in April Twilights (1903) and is the prototype for Adriance Hilgarde in “‘A Death in the Desert’” (1903) and Valentine Ramsay in “Uncle Valentine” (1925).