I don't normally care about seeing a performance but this YouTube video of Henry Cowell's forearm music makes a nice case for the visual:
noahmushroom also has videos for Julius Eastman, Charles Ives, Wolfgang Rihm, Arnold Schoenberg, and Toru Takemitsu.
Roger Bourland as Hector Berlioz writes another letter to singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright describing his (Roger/Hector's) recent conversation about the pop star with the late Charles Ives:
But he DID bail Henry Cowell out of prison, so perhaps he is more tolerant than he acts. He kept shouting obnoxious phrases like “take your dissonance like a man.”
Ok, presumably Roger, er Hector, didn't just talk with Charles Ives but it's easy to imagine Ives saying that.
In my mind though, it's the music of Cowell rather than Ives that tests tolerance for this type of harmony. Think of it as a spiritual tonic.
An Amazon reviewer suggests pianist Chris Brown performs Cowell's Dynamic Motion by doing "methodical full-body slams." Although we (I) may be living in chaotic times, tonight anyway I'm enjoying this piece. Next up this evening: Link Wray's Rumble followed by his rendition of the Batman Theme (although it's hard to top the Sun Ra version, if in fact it really is Sun Ra).
I'm listening to songs by Henry Cowell, a composer I associate with the unconventional and ultra-modern. And I find it odd that his setting of these songs are not, for the most part, odd. But the CD is good, nonetheless.
Note: his Mother Goose Rhymes was written while serving time under difficult circumstances in San Quentin.
database of recorded american music: songs of henry cowell
The Tides of Manaunaun is not for everyone:
tried listening to it, want/wanted to, but i couldnt hear more than two chords, my heart started beating fast and i felt lightheaded immediately and something inside me cried, i could hear myself sobbing in my head "no no stop it stop it make it stop, stop it dont listen stop it"
that was very scary
other unsafe cowell works: the banshee, concerto for piano and orchestra, the voice of lir, aeolian harp, anger dance, what's this. cowell streams.
The latest American Music has an article by Leta Miller and Rob Collins titled The Cowell-Ives Relationship: A New Look at Cowell's Prison Years. The thesis of the article is that even though Henry Cowell was imprisoned for a sexual act with a minor, Charles Ives, despite his anger and distress, may have still wanted to continue their friendship. There is a hard-to-decipher note written by Ives to Cowell indicating he didn't know what to say or do about the situation but wished him well for the future.
I don't know what to make of this. What I found more interesting in the short note was Ives describing his own travails (circa 1937; he lived another seventeen years):
As far as music is concerned, I'm through--can't see it, can't hear it well, & can't play it except both hands or both feet.
The article also has Cowell writing to Nicolas Slonimsky on making the best of the circumstances while serving in San Quentin prison:
"I have gotten in the score of his [Ives'] Washington's Birthday Symphony movement, and have been demonstrating it to a class of advanced students. They were mystified but highly interested."
Many of Cowell's friends wrote letters supporting his release, including from Ives. In 1940, Cowell was parolled and in 1942, received unconditional clemency from the California governor.
Not sure why, but Google Reader is showing me every post from Renewable Music, not the just the recent ones. This turns out to be a feature, not a bug as it provides the opportunity to re-read many interesting posts.
Some devices allow themselves to be dated with fair precision, and
first compositional usage can be determined with similar accuracy:
Cowell gets hands inside of the piano, Cage gets nuts and bolts,
Stephen Scott gets bowed and stroked piano wire. Varese gets sirens.
Salzedo gets a near-monopoly on harp effects. This Year's Model
He called up the lead examiner and said: "I can't grade this. I went to
Berkeley with La Monte Young. I saw La Monte Young brush his teeth on
stage!" Going Pro
I can well imagine that this was one of the problems that led Ligeti to give up on his operatic setting of The Tempest (he wanted to make an orchestral storm in the overture) and I've heard tell that John Adam has turned to acoustical absence to represent an even that, portrayed naturally, would certain be overwhelmingly present. Representation
The specialized new music press is dominated by necrologues and reports on music-making by the usual suspects of generations past and all as packaged in the familiar institutions. New music in Germany, nowadays
I did a quick count on the Sequenza 21 list -- I've heard 68 of the pieces listed (the Nancarrow Studies counted together as one), and surprisingly, I've heard most of them in concert, with only a handful encountered on radio, and only one or two of the pieces were heard only via recordings. Making lists, checking them twice, redux
from Philip K. Dick, Cantata-140: ... Softly, his tape deck played one of the cloud chamber pieces by the great mid-twentieth century composer, Harry Partch. Alternative Universes (1)
This decade offers some surprising juxtapositions of generations and styles, and while some works on my list still clearly reflect a "masterwork" ethic of works of great scale and moment, most of the pieces on this list challenge that ethic in some substantial way -- a single movement symphony, stripped-down, souped-up, or spaced-out orchestras, percussion and extended techniques, and radical miniatures of condensed expression. Best works of the 1920's
That last quote follows Daniel Wolf's list of best works of the 1920s, including Cowell's The Banshee. That work is probably the composer's most memorable (and maybe most radical) work of the time; it's possible I have underrated it. It does capture some of the essential energies flowing through Cowell.
Art of the States now has an RSS feed that includes announcements of new streamed recordings -- today, it's Chris Brown from the New Albion recording playing Henry Cowell's Exultation. Anthony De Mare plays it more metrically precise on the Wizards & Wisemen CD. Roger Shield's recording is a bit emphatic and the composer's own version is wobbly and way too fast in some places but the most spirited.
"This is the kind of walking-tune rhythm familiar in Ireland; it is in triple meter, so that the accent falls first on one foot and then on the other -- the Irish consider us silly to walk to a tune that accents only the left foot, so that 'one foot is worn out while the other is still perfectly good'!
Peter Kirn writes abou the birth of the drum machine, including Henry Cowell and Leon Theremin inventing the rhythmicon with Cowell writing two works for it: Rythmicana and Music for Violin and Rhythmicon. Music Mavericks still has their online rhythmicon as well as archived performances (arduous Java plugin installation may be required).
Did I ever mention the bumper sticker we bought by that guy outside the Hollywood Amoeba Records?
Drum Machines Have No Soul
While buying said sticker, someone else walked by and proclaimed that "hey, hip-hop was saved by the drum machine." I was in no position to judge.
Top 10 Tracks of the Week:
This is the only track by The Books that I have...Tower Records in Mountain View didn't have the Joanna Newsom CD so I am still listening to my one track for her as well...Paint the Silence is from the OC tv soundtrack, of all things...Cinema Volta is a daily ambient composition podcast Kyle Gann had pointed out...Vocal music by Cowell is as intense and as weird as you might expect. The liner notes call it a blend of the modern and the traditional and identifies Catherine Riegger as the daughter of the composer Wallingford Riegger...I hadn't heard the Harris symphony for maybe a year and I'm surprised how much I like it, in a melodic, organic way, reminding me a bit of the late British composer Robert Simpson.
Naxos of America reports five new releases of American music:
Rob Barnett reviews (and recommends) the Cowell CDs and says that Polyphonica "is for a small orchestra - an object lesson in dissonant counterpoint - always a model of clarity."
To quote Naxos on Cowell:
A startlingly innovative composer, an inimitable piano virtuoso who outraged or delighted his audiences, a brilliant writer, teacher, lecturer and organizer, Cowell almost single-handedly laid the foundations for American compositional life.
OK, I listened to more of Cowell's music last year than most humans and I will certainly buy the two CDs. And it's also true Cowell influenced other American composers. But isn't this "foundations" claim hyperbolic?
Similarly, in a post on the three Bs (Bach, Beethoven, and Stephen Foster), The Fredösphere questions a childhood book claiming Bach as "Father of Modern Music." Poignantly, The Fredösphere also describes his compositional life mission inspired by that same book.
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