..... a true American original, and one of the most important figures in American music of the twentieth century. Born in Menlo Park, California in 1897 to a family of philosophical anarchists, he was recognized early as an uncommonly gifted child. From an early age, he studied the violin, mastered the piano, and read extensively in many fields. Home-schooled by his mother Clarissa, he received little formal education until, at the age of seventeen, he had the good fortune to be sent to study with Charles Seeger, who had been recently appointed Chairman of the Music Department at UC Berkeley....
One of Cowell's most famous early compositional innovations was the tone cluster (thick chords made up of major and minor seconds) which he played all over the piano with his forearms and fists. Bartok later wrote to ask Cowell's permission to compose with them. Cowell invented a variety of other groundbreaking techniques for stroking, strumming and plucking inside the piano, directly on the strings, which he dubbed the string piano. He also developed a complex pitch-rhythm system (detailed in his book) that correlated the mathematical ratios of the pitches of the overtone series with rhythmic proportions, thereby anticipating similar concepts and procedures used by Conlon Nancarrow, Elliot Carter, [and] Karlheinz Stockhausen...
Throughout his life, Cowell worked tirelessly on behalf of the music of other composers In 1925, he founded the New Music Society of California, which presented premieres of many American and European modernist works. It also published New Music, a quarterly edition of scores with a broad range of contemporary styles. In 1934, Cowell established New Music Quarterly Recordings, which issued some of the first recordings of major American experimentalists, including Ives, Varese, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Johanna Beyer, and others....
Charles Ives, with whom Cowell had a close musical and personal relationship, supported ...[ such] activities both artistically and financially (though the latter, discreetly). Cowell, ...later wrote a biography of Ives, the first such study of that major American composer. In 1933 Cowell published the book American Composers on American Music, for which he invited a number of composers to write on each other's music. It remains an invaluable document of an exciting period in American music....
Cowell's interest in the musics of other cultures grew throughout his life. In 1928 he was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research in New York, where, in addition to teaching contemporary music, Cowell offered a courses entitled "Music of the World's People's," probably the first "world music" course taught in this country. In 1930 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at the famous Hornbostel Archive at the University of Berlin where he devoured the huge collection of recordings of non-western music. While there he took lessons on Javanese and Balinese gamelan instruments and attended Schoenberg's composition seminar at the latter's invitation....
Cowell's extraordinary activity in the 1930s was shockingly interrupted in 1936, when he was arrested in California and convicted of a trumped up morals charge involving a consenting young adult man. Initially sentenced to fifteen years, Cowell was released after serving four years in San Quentin, where, remarkably, he had continued to compose, wrote a book on melody and taught and conducted ensembles of inmates. Through the efforts of Sidney Robertson, a brilliant folklorist and pianist whom he later married, Cowell was pardoned by the governor of California....
Cowell's students included some of the major figures of American music, including John Cage (who proclaimed him the "open sesame of new music in America"), Lou Harrison, (who called him the "mentor of mentors"), George Gershwin and Burt Bacharach. Later in life he taught at several institutions, including Columbia, Eastman and Peabody.
Henry Cowell died in 1965 at the charming house where he and Sidney lived for many years in Shady, New York. He composed almost to the very end.
Here is a photo of a wonderful artist.
Throughout his life, Cowell worked tirelessly on behalf of the music of other composers In 1925, he founded the New Music Society of California, which presented premieres of many American and European modernist works. It also published New Music, a quarterly edition of scores with a broad range of contemporary styles. In 1934, Cowell established New Music Quarterly Recordings, which issued some of the first recordings of major American experimentalists, including Ives, Varese, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Johanna Beyer, and others....
Charles Ives, with whom Cowell had a close musical and personal relationship, supported ...[ such] activities both artistically and financially (though the latter, discreetly). Cowell, ...later wrote a biography of Ives, the first such study of that major American composer. In 1933 Cowell published the book American Composers on American Music, for which he invited a number of composers to write on each other's music. It remains an invaluable document of an exciting period in American music....
Cowell's interest in the musics of other cultures grew throughout his life. In 1928 he was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research in New York, where, in addition to teaching contemporary music, Cowell offered a courses entitled "Music of the World's People's," probably the first "world music" course taught in this country. In 1930 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at the famous Hornbostel Archive at the University of Berlin where he devoured the huge collection of recordings of non-western music. While there he took lessons on Javanese and Balinese gamelan instruments and attended Schoenberg's composition seminar at the latter's invitation....
Cowell's extraordinary activity in the 1930s was shockingly interrupted in 1936, when he was arrested in California and convicted of a trumped up morals charge involving a consenting young adult man. Initially sentenced to fifteen years, Cowell was released after serving four years in San Quentin, where, remarkably, he had continued to compose, wrote a book on melody and taught and conducted ensembles of inmates. Through the efforts of Sidney Robertson, a brilliant folklorist and pianist whom he later married, Cowell was pardoned by the governor of California....
Cowell's students included some of the major figures of American music, including John Cage (who proclaimed him the "open sesame of new music in America"), Lou Harrison, (who called him the "mentor of mentors"), George Gershwin and Burt Bacharach. Later in life he taught at several institutions, including Columbia, Eastman and Peabody.
Henry Cowell died in 1965 at the charming house where he and Sidney lived for many years in Shady, New York. He composed almost to the very end.
Here is a photo of a wonderful artist.
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