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'''Henry Cowell''' ([[March 11]], [[1897]] - [[December 10]], [[1965]]) was an [[United States|America]]n [[composer]], teacher, author, and impresario. He is one of the most influential musical artists and theorists of the early [[20th century]].
Born in rural [[Menlo Park, California]], Cowell demonstrated precocious musical talent and began playing the violin at the age of five. Though raised by his mother after his parents' divorce in 1903, the [[Celtic music|Gaelic]] music, [[Irish mythology|mythology]], and [[Culture of Ireland|folk culture]] he was introduced to by his Irish-born father would be touchstones for Cowell throughout his career. He began to compose in his teens, producing the [[piano]] piece [[The Tides of Manaunaun|''The Tides of Manaunaun'']] (ca. 1912), which calls for the performer to use the forearm to play many notes at once. This is one of the first important uses of the [[tone cluster]], a technique Cowell continued to employ liberally in his later works. A self-taught experimentalist, he received no formal musical education (and little schooling of any kind) until he was admitted to the [[University of California, Berkeley]], at the age of sixteen. There he studied under [[Charles Seeger]], who encouraged him to study traditional musical subjects such as [[harmony]] to complement his exploratory spirit.
In 1919, Cowell begin writing ''New Musical Resources'', which would finally be published after much revision in 1930. Focusing on the variety of innovative techniques he used in his compositions, it would have a powerful effect on the American [[experimental music|musical avant-garde]] for decades after. [[Conlon Nancarrow]], for instance, would refer to it years later as having "the most influence of anything I've ever read in music." In the 1920s, Cowell toured widely in North America and Europe as a pianist, playing his own experimental works, seminal explorations of [[atonality]], [[polytonality]], [[polyrhythms]], and non-Western [[musical mode|modes]]. ''Aeolian Harp'' (1923) is one of his first pieces for what is termed the "string piano"—rather than using the keys to play, the pianist reaches inside the instrument and plucks and scrapes the strings directly. This technique was later an inspiration to [[John Cage]] as he was developing the [[prepared piano]].
Cowell's interest in [[harmonic rhythm]], as discussed in ''New Musical Resources'', led him in 1930 to commission [[Léon Theremin]] to invent the [[Rhythmicon]] or ''Polyrhythmophone'', a [[transposition (music)|transposable]] keyboard instrument capable of playing notes in periodic [[rhythm|rhythms]] proportional to the [[harmonic series (music)|overtone series]] of a chosen [[fundamental frequency|fundamental]] [[pitch (music)|pitch]]. The world's first electronic [[drum machine|rhythm machine]], with a photoreceptor-based sound production system proposed by Cowell, it could produce up to sixteen different, complex [[rhythmic unit|rhythmic patterns]] simultaneously. Cowell wrote several original compositions for the instrument, including an orchestrated concerto, and Theremin built two more models. Soon, however, the Rhythmicon would be virtually forgotten, remaining so for a quarter-century until it was reintroduced by innovative pop music producer [[Joe Meek]].
[[Aleatoric music|Aleatoric]] (chance) procedures began to play an increasing role in Cowell's music, and he pursued a radical compositional approach through the mid-1930s. Solo piano pieces remained at the center of his output during this period—important works include ''The Banshee'' (ca. 1925) and ''Tiger'' (1928)—and much of his public reputation continued to be based on his trademark pianistic technique: a critic for the ''San Francisco News'', writing in 1932, referred to Cowell's "famous 'tone clusters,' probably the most startling and original contribution any American has yet contributed to the field of music."[http://www.o-art.org/history/early/_CowellN.Mus./NewMusic/NMIXrythmic.html] A prolific composer of songs (he would write over 180 during his career), Cowell returned in 1930-31 to ''Aeolian Harp'', adapting it as the accompaniment to a vocal setting of a poem by his father, ''How Old Is Song?'' During these years, he also produced a substantial oeuvre of chamber music, including the Adagio for Cello and Thunder Stick (1924) and the ''Mosaic Quartet'' (String Quartet No. 3) (1935), as well as forceful large-ensemble pieces such as the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1928).
A highly regarded teacher of composition and theory, Cowell's students included John Cage, [[George Gershwin]], and [[Lou Harrison]]. He was an early proponent of the music of [[Leo Ornstein]], [[Carl Ruggles]], and [[Edgar Varèse]], staging concerts of their works along with those of other avant-gardists, such as [[Wallingford Riegger]] and [[Arnold Schoenberg]]. In 1927 he founded the journal ''New Music'', which would publish many significant new musical scores under his editorship, both by those in his immediate circle—including a large number by his friend [[Charles Ives]] (among them, ''34 Songs'' and ''19 Songs'')—and many more beyond, including [[Ernst Bacon]], [[Paul Bowles]], and [[Aaron Copland]].
Growing up on the West Coast of the United States, Cowell was exposed to a great deal of what is now known as "world music"; along with the Irish music of his heritage, he had encountered Chinese, Japanese, and Tahitian musics, among others. These early experiences had a strong influence on his unusually eclectic musical outlook, best summarized by his famous statement "I want to live in the whole world of music."[http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/compbio.pl?compname=cowellhenry] He went on to investigate [[Indian classical music]] and, in the late 1920s, began teaching courses in world music at universities in California and New York. In 1931 he was awarded a [[Guggenheim fellowship]] that allowed him to study comparative musicology (the predecessor to [[ethnomusicology]]) with [[Erich von Hornbostel]] in Berlin. He studied [[Carnatic music|Carnatic theory]] and [[gamelan]], as well, with leading Indian and Javanese instructors.[http://www.sc.edu/library/music/hc_bio.html]
Cowell, a bisexual, was arrested and convicted on a "morals" charge in 1936. Sentenced to a decade-and-a-half imprisonment, he would spend the next four years in [[San Quentin State Prison|San Quentin Penitentiary]]. While in prison he wrote music—most memorably, the sepulchral percussion piece ''Return'' (1939)—taught fellow inmates, and directed the prison band. His cause was taken up by composers and musicians around the country, although a few, including Ives, ceased contact with him. Cowell was eventually paroled in 1940 and pardoned two years later. He soon married Sidney Hawkins Robertson (1903-1995), a prominent folk-music scholar who had been instrumental in winning his freedom.
Despite the pardon—which allowed him to work at the Office of War Information, creating radio programs for broadcast overseas—arrest, incarceration, and attendant notoriety had a devastating effect on Cowell. Conlon Nancarrow, on meeting him for the first time in 1947, reported, "The impression I got was that he was a terrified person, with a feeling that 'they're going to get him.'" The experience took a lasting toll on his music: Cowell's compositional output became strikingly more conservative following his release from San Quentin, with simpler rhythms and a more traditional harmonic language—many of his later works are based on [[old-time music|American folk music]], such as the series of seventeen ''Hymn and'' [[fuging tune|''Fuguing Tune'']]s (1944–64). And, as Nancarrow noted, there were other consequences to Cowell's imprisonment: "Of course, after that, politically, he kept his mouth completely shut. He had been radical politically, too, before."
No longer an artistic radical, Cowell nonetheless retained a progressive bent and continued to be a leader (along with Harrison and [[Colin McPhee]]) in the incorporation of non-Western musical idioms, as in the Japanese-inflected ''Ongaku'' (1957), Symphony No. 13, "Madras" (1958-59) (which had its premiere in the eponymous city), and ''Homage to Iran'' (1959). His most compelling, poignant songs date from this era, including ''Music I Heard'' (to a poem by [[Conrad Aiken]]; 1961) and ''Firelight and Lamp'' (to a poem by Gene Baro; 1962). Despite the break in their friendship, he went on to write the first major study of Ives's music and provided crucial support to Harrison as his former pupil championed the Ives rediscovery. Cowell resumed teaching—[[Burt Bacharach]] was one of his postwar students—and served as a consultant to [[Folkways Records]] for over a decade beginning in the early 1950s, writing liner notes and editing such collections as ''Music of the World's Peoples'' (1951-61) (he also hosted a radio program of the same name) and ''Primitive Music of the World'' (1962).[http://www.mcphersonco.com/cs.php?f%5B0%5D=shh&pdNM=Essential%20Cowell:%20Selected%20Writings%20on%20Music] In 1963 he recorded performances of twenty of his seminal piano pieces for a Folkways album. Perhaps liberated by the passage of time and his own seniority, in his final years Cowell again produced a number of impressively individualistic works, such as ''Thesis'' (Symphony No. 15) (1961) and ''26 Simultaneous Mosaics'' (1963).
Cowell was elected to the [[American Institute of Arts and Letters]] in 1951. He died in 1965 in [[Shady, New York]], after a series of illnesses.
==References==
*Cowell, Henry (2002). ''Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music''. Edited, with an introduction, by Dick Higgins. Preface by Kyle Gann. Kingston, N.Y.: Documentext.
*Gann, Kyle (1993). ''The Overtone Series's Influence in American Music.'' Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn College Institute for Studies in American Music.
*Gann, Kyle (1995). ''The Music of Conlon Nancarrow.'' Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. (Nancarrow on Cowell: pp. 43, 44.)
*Hicks, Michael (2002). ''Henry Cowell, Bohemian.'' Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
*Lichtenwanger, William (1986). ''The Music of Henry Cowell: A Descriptive Catalogue.'' Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn College Institute for Studies in American Music.
* Nichols, David (1990). ''American Experimental Music 1890–1940.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Saylor, Bruce (1977). ''The Writings of Henry Cowell: A Descriptive Bibliography.'' Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn College Institute for Studies in American Music.
==External links==
===Listening===
*[http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=117 Art of the States: Henry Cowell] six works by the composer
*[http://www.epitonic.com/artists/henrycowell.html Epitonic.com: Henry Cowell] featuring tracks from ''New Music''
[[Category:1897 births|Cowell, Henry]]
[[Category:1965 deaths|Cowell, Henry]]
[[Category:20th century classical composers|Cowell, Henry]]
[[Category:American composers|Cowell, Henry]]
[[Category:Bisexual musicians|Cowell, Henry]]
[[Category:Modernist composers|Cowell, Henry]]
[[de:Henry Cowell]]
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