aworks :: "new" american classical music

Synchrony (1931). Henry Cowell #q2 #sfs

Q2 has the new San Francisco Sympyhony recording from the American Mavericks Festival up on SoundCloud:

Some Music (1922). Henry Cowell /from menlo park/

After Henry Cowell was convicted of a felony, the town of Menlo Park didn't really claim the composer as one of its own. Still, a local citizen recollects the composer:

He remembers when there were only three houses per block along Cedar Avenue, where he grew up. In one of the houses down the street lived renowned composer Henry Cowell, who would drop by to play the piano and also play music "on my mother's crystal goblets."

This also reminds me to check Amazon for the new Cowell biography by Joel Sachs.

Mostly unrelated, can music save your life?

Hilarious Curtain Opener (1939). Henry Cowell /prolific and neglected/

Menlo Park Image via Wikipedia

Mark Swed complains that California music festivals pretty much ignore our region's composers. Since I live within walking distance of both the Music@Menlo festival and the ol' Henry Cowell homestead, I particularly enjoyed this section:

Music@Menlo can be especially annoying in its East Coast and European provincialism. Founded in 2003 by cellist David Finkel and pianist Wu Han (who also head the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center), they seem eager enough for Silicon Valley support just as long as they don't have to acknowledge anything about the important musical history of the area.

Menlo Park happened to be the birthplace of Henry Cowell in 1897. The father of West Coast music, he invented tone clusters and was the first to play directly on the piano strings. He was a pioneer in percussion music and, most important of all, a pioneer in creating an interest in world music. He was a mentor to George Gershwin, John Cage, Lou Harrison and many others. A boy genius, he was the subject of Stanford University psychology studies. Ignoring Cowell, a prolific and neglected composer, and his world in Menlo Park might be likened to not acknowledging Mozart and his world at the Salzburg Festival.

Note that Cowell didn't actually live in the city limits of Menlo Park but slightly west of town. And that he was convicted of child molestation means the city does nothing to recognize him, despite his ultimate pardon.

I did find this 1998 article in the local Menlo Park weekly paper regarding Cowell's conviction and ultimate redemption. And I posted in 2006 about an article on Cowell's prison years and the impact on his friendship with Charles Ives.

And the new John Cage biography by Kenneth Silverman has this to say about Cage visiting Cowell in prison:

Several times Cage visited San Quentin, expressing his affectionate loyalty to Henry Cowell. In 1936 his mentor -- a passionate believer in the future of percussion music -- had been arrested on charges of conducting sexual activities with some boys at the pool behind his Menlo Park cottage. Pleading guilty, he received a one-to-fifteen-year sentence, but was paroled after four.

While imprisoned, Cowell composed Hilarious Curtain Opener and other pieces for the Cornish production of The Marriage at the Eiffel Tower. Other parts of the score were written by Cage and George McKay with libretto by Jean Cocteau.

 

The Symphony Orchestra and Its Instruments (1959). Henry Cowell /unexpectedly conventional/

Early Cowell image via Wikipedia

I continue to be pulled into the lala orbit.

The latest discovery: The Symphony Orchestra and Its Instruments by the late Henry Cowell. I knew Cowell had taught but I'm surprised that such an unconventional composer would write for such an orthodox project.

I'm still listening but presumably there won't be any demonstrations of tone clusters or forearm piano effects.

I'm also impressed that lala would have this recording. It looks like what you might find in the LP bargain bin:
The Symphony Orchestra and Its...

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Update: I really wonder if this was composed by Cowell. It's also surprisingly boring to actually listen to.

The Tides of Manaunuan (1917). Henry Cowell /thanks, mr. mushroom/

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.

Dynamic Motion (1914). Henry Cowell /otherworldly yet noisy/

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).

Song in the Songless (1921). Henry Cowell

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 (1917). 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.

Washington's Birthday (1909). Charles Ives /cowell in prison/

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.

The Banshee (1925). Henry Cowell /best works/

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

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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.