HENRY COWELL. I assume that reasons for Cowell s awkwardness were from his years of

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1 Jordan Yee MUS SEMINAR HENRY COWELL I assume that reasons for Cowell s awkwardness were from his years of growing up in tough situations. His parents had both been writers who had stranger philosophies on life. Some characterized his parents as philosophical anarchists in the fact that they were both writers yet they did not believe in conventional schooling. His parents divorced when he was six years old in His mother became sick with cancer and when he was in third grade he was bullied and his mother brought him to home schooling. Very much like Charles Ives, Henry Cowell grew up in his adolescent years with unpleasant experiences. While Ives father perished while away at school, Cowell s parents divorced when he was young. Not that the pain for the divorce pushed him to be a better musician although it could have, it did place his behavior out of the norm, just as Charles Ives would attempt to fulfill what his father had not. A psychologist from Stanford met Henry and was fascinated by his by Henry s abilities through his great conversational abilities and knowledge while he was poor at spelling and math. 1 Anger Dance was his first uniquely written piano piece. This was written at the age twenty in For being an extremely unique piece, it follows much 1 USC

2 of the Western traditions of music in that it is played in tempos you can follow by its fluctuations. It is rhythmically very complex and sporadic yet it is found to have beauty in its chord structures and cadences that sound normal to a Westerners ear. This unique sound had never been heard before to the entertainment industries ears. His techniques were wild, advanced, penetrating and yet still comprehensive. Consecutively he wrote Dynamic Motion in Some may not be able to describe this piece in words because of its uniqueness and strangeness. Dynamic Motion was another piece that had never been officially written as a musical piece. The first time you hear it, it may sound like non-sense, yet it is crafted strategically with its dynamics and sporadic form. The piece sounds menacing with its liberated notations and brutal striking of the keys. What was Henry Cowell trying to express in this piece? It sounds like frustration at some points and at others it sounds like a joke or somebody comically toying with a piano as if an all star basket ball player were playing with a ten year old player. The whole forearm had to be used in order to play the piece completely and then using free had to do a melody. This piece explored a new style of music called the tone cluster. Dissonance I find brings out character in general. The composers like Ives, Cage, and Copeland who explored dissonance were not exactly stranger people, but they were people who brought new life to music. Paralleled with today, genres like rock music are exploring dissonance forms of music, like massive distortion, or even screaming as a vocal style. Styles of music that were once avoided were finally being explored.

3 A tone cluster is exactly what composers in the past have attempted to avoid. Complete dissonance, the Devil s chord, the chord that doesn t sound pleasant to the Westerner s ear. Chords that are smashed together chromatically are quite easy to recognize. Another way of playing a tone cluster is by playing chords that can be separated diatonically, pentatonically, or microtonally. 2 The first appearances of this style can be found back in the late 1600 s. 3 In the early 1900 s this form of playing actually became trendy for the creative composers that were popping up all over the globe. Two years prior to the creation of Dynamic Motion was a piece created by Leo Ornstein, a composer-pianist who was the first to ever play tone clusters consistently for an audience as entertainment. 4 Henry Cowell attended one of his concerts and valued his musicianship greatly. Charles Ives also created a piece called Hawthorne, in which the piece needs a wooden bar almost 15 inches long play. Ives however was not recognized and given the respect for his creativity like Cowell and the others. Cowell was seen as being revolutionary with his creations in music. In the 19 th century, composers were expected to have a very specific sound, and those who stepped out of the box in their creations were looked down upon. 5 Cowell on the other hand, displayed a plethora of styles and techniques through his music. Along side his musical peers that were dispersed across the planet, such as Ives, Stravinsky, Varese, Schoenberg, and others, Cowell can easily be 2 Wikipedia tone cluster 3 Answers 4 Answers 5 JSTOR

4 argued to be the most non-traditional thinking. Later in 1926, Cowell inspired a man named Bela Bartok to write with the methods Cowell officially created. 6 Bartok wrote a piano sonata in 1926 called Out of Doors using tone clusters and Aaron Copeland composed his Three Moods in Techniques Henry Cowell widely used in his compositions were of atonality, polytonality, polyrhythms, and non-western modes. 7 Atonality could be heard as a style that is unpleasant since it is focused to avoid having a central key or tonic to consistently return to. The style was wildly produced starting in Polytonality was another style that was strongly used in the very early 1900 s but was also used all the way back in 1673 with Biber s Battalgia or Mozart s Ein musikalischer Spass made in Polytonality is the process of composing more than one melody line that is played simultaneously. 8 Polyrhythms are two or more simultaneous rhythms playing in tempo. This technique is also greatly used in African music. Africans sought out a style of music just as Europeans did. Africans attempted to create massively polyrhythmic pieces whereas Europeans attempted to create massively harmonic and polyphonic pieces. 9 Modes are scales that make up a series of musical intervals. This form of music brought many ideas to the founding fathers of jazz. The use of more than one mode in a piece means the piece is polymodal. The different modes were named after Ancient Greek subgroups. The Greek modes were Ionian, Dorian 6 Answers 7 Wikipedia Henry Cowell 8 Polytonality 9 African Polyrhythms

5 and Hypodorian, Phrygian and Hypophrygian, Lydian and Hypolydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. Plato the great philosopher thought that modes gave off certain types of feelings. He suggested that soldiers should listen to the Dorian and Phrygian modes to help make them stronger and to avoid listening to Lydian, Mixed Lydian or Ionian modes to avoid becoming soft. Plato stated, The musical modes differ essentially from one another, and those who hear them are differently affected by each. Some of them make men sad and grave, like the so called Mixolydian; others enfeeble the mind, like the relaxed modes; another, again, produces a moderate or settled temper, which appears to be the peculiar effect of the Dorian; and the Phrygian inspires enthusiasm. 10 In relation to Plato s thoughts, this is absolutely true of music. Certain types of modes do cause certain behaviors and thoughts. The distinct resonation of chords that revolve around a minor or major tonic certainly has a different instinctual feeling. Deep down inside of us I think we have a spiritual connection with sounds. Even animals are affected by sound. A lion can roar and scare away an enemy, if it is able to inflict fear with sound, other sounds should be attractive. When a lion roars, it is a constant vibration of air that is dissonantly penetrating the ear. According to a news article Brian Wilson gave the Theory Form and Analysis class, Mozart s music helps prepare the mind for learning and taking tests better than no music at all. The structure and preciseness of 10 Wikipedia modes

6 Mozart s masterpieces displays his ability to create music that is within a well developed theoretical formula. In relation to Henry Cowell, he decided to step outside the box even more by using non-western modes and experimented with dissonance as a pleasing sound. What then does a foreign sound and experiment do for those who listen? Do we actually enjoy a song because it feels good inside our head, or is it the fact that we have tuned our ears to enjoy a specific formula? I think it is a combination of both. Never before had an audience seen a composer reach into a piano and made a production of playing with the metallically coiled strings. This new style that Cowell had officially used into his works was called stringed piano. One technique that is largely emphasized in stringed piano is plucking, or pizzicato. This technique is mainly heard on bow played instruments like the stand up bass, cello, or violin, and the guitar. 11 Sweeping with the fingers or finger nails is was also heard in the piece Aeolian Harp made in Harmonic pitches are attainable by reaching in the piano as well and placing your hand on specific parts of the string while plucking with the other hand. Tone clusters and chords are played by placing your hands on the keys without striking the strings with the hammers, and then using one of the plucking or strumming techniques will sound the piano. The sustain and soft pedals are also used to create different sounds. Cowell attempted to completely rethink ways of playing the piano. He would place weights on the pedals in order to play freely without standing directly in front of the keys. He also would use different items to attack the stings, such as bows or metal objects very similar to a guitar pick which would create a glissando 11 pizzicato

7 effect. 12 With new technologies, and the familiarities of magnetism, electricity has opened thousands new opportunities of ways to find beauty in music like the E-bow, which is used on a guitar to vibrate the string without physically touching it, giving it a violin like sound. There have always been names for certain playing styles. An instrument capable of the glissando effect is able to continuously slide from one pitch to another. Instruments that are easily played in glissando would be a stringed instrument like the cello, violin or bass, guitar, even human vocals. The easiest brass instrument with this capability is the trombone. With brass instruments such as the trumpet or flute, one can alter the wind pressures to attain the bending sound. The clarinet is also able to accomplish this by slowly pulling fingers off of the tone holes. Percussion instruments can also bend notes by bending the strings to alter the tightness of their heads when struck. Portamenti are effects when all of the semitones of an instrument are audible when sliding. This can be easily heard on a harp or a piano. 13 Cowell opened these techniques of to his string piano pieces. Cowell was greatly inspired by another musician at the time named John Cage. Cage had elaborated on prepared piano more than any other known musician before his time. Prepared piano is very similarly related to guitar effects pedals today. Just as piano synthesizers have further stepped into invention of new sounds or imitations of other instruments, as have prepared piano by John Cage. Cage had been writing for a percussion ensemble when he was asked to 12 String piano 13 Glissando

8 write for one but the room that it would be played in was too small. There however was a grand piano inside the room, so he altered the piano to make percussion sounds, just like the typical format of drum sounds for MIDI keyboards. Preparations would include using nuts, bolts, screws, strategically placed rubber, in order to creative more percussive dull sounds or altered ringing sounds like bells. Alteration of instruments has echoed through out the creation of music ever since then. Electric guitars are constantly being tested with new modulating effects pedals and amplifiers. As for today recent composers such as include Philip Corner, Carson Kievman, Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), Jason Moran and Stephen Scott. Just as Cowell was inspired by cages techniques, Cage was by Cowell s stringed piano techniques. 14 Prepared piano experiments are continuing still to this day such as the recently created electromagnetically prepared pianos, which are regarded to be as the middle ground between a regular piano and a synthesizer. Racks of transducers are placed over the metallic strings. The tubular electromagnet will be placed over the metallic string and it will create a magnetic force to sound the piano. This experiment was done so that the piano is able to sound without and hammers, instead you are able to play the metallic strings by simply pushing keys on a laptop. 15 Luckily, Cowell was supported and sponsored by rich people, providing him the opportunities to make new inventions and find new ways of playing music. Another new form of music that Cowell had not felt was explored enough 14 Prepared Piano 15 Electro Magnetically- Prepared Piano

9 on was harmonic rhythm. Harmonic rhythm is a technique elaborating on the rate at which chords change. The arrival of chords at certain volumes greatly affects the texture, and given this at constant rates is quite difficult for the brain to manage. When rhythms seem to have faster changes it can give the music a more high temperature feeling, whereas the slower the rhythms change the cooler the song can feel. Another way to bring out harmonic rhythm is to use modulations. The listener is expecting to hear a change in rhythm and form through non-tonal chords. 16 Pieces of music that are difficult to play melodically are completely different in difficulty when learning to play a rhythmically challenging piece. Through Cowell s interests in harmonic rhythm, he commissioned Leon Theremin to invent the Rhythmicon. The Rhythmicon was also known as the polyrhythmophone which was the first electric drum machine. Henry Cowell stated, My part in its invention was to invent the idea that such a rhythmic instrument was a necessity to further rhythmic development, which has reached a limit more or less, in performance by hand, an needed the application of mechanical aid. The which the instrument was to accomplish and what rhythms it should do and the pitch it should have and the relation between the pitch and rhythms are my ideas. I also conceived that the principle of broken up light playing 16 Principles of movement, interest and variety

10 on a photo-electric cell would be the best means of making it practical. With this idea I went to Theremin who did the rest - he invented the method by which the light would be cut, did the electrical calculations and built the instrument. (Notice too, that his grammar skills are not the best). This quote shows his passion and enthusiasm for discovering and creating new musics. The transposable machine had seventeen keys. As long as you held down the key, the machine would work to memorize its time length. Cowell wrote many pieces for the machine including Rhythmicana and Music for Violin and Rhythmicon. Once Cowell became more interested in ethnic music, he grew bored with the Rhythmicon and discarded it from his musical experiments. This mechanical instrument in later years became a musical relic being used in movies such as The Rains of Ranchipur, or rumors of the epic rock band Pink Floyd using it in their song Atom Heart Mother. 17 Elaborating more on his lifestyles, Cowell was a bisexual who had been arrested at his home in Menlo Park on moral charges. He was imprisoned in San Quentin Penitentiary for four years. Even though he was in prison he still managed to keep busy by writing two books, The Nature of Melody and Rhythm, which were both unpublished. Not only did he write but he also composed, taught and rehearsed the prison band. Aside from being bisexual, he still had relationships, which some ended tragically for example: Edna Smith who was killed in a car accident in 1922, and Elsa Scholke who was stuck inside Germany 17 The Rhythmicon

11 because of Hitler s rule. After his imprisonment, he settled down and married a woman named Sidney Robertson, who brought stability into his life. 18 Sadly, Cowell s experience in San Quentin hurt his creative side. He became more conservative in his writings, pertaining to more traditional harmonic languages. Cowell was also plague by a sickness for the last ten years of his life. This however did not stop him from pursuing music as his passion in life. Nine out of the twenty symphonies he had written were in that time period and so were 150 other works. 19 Henry Cowell also tour across the globe. In his younger musician years, he toured the years 1923, 1926, 1929, 1931, and 1932 in Europe. In 1930 he toured and visited Cuba. For the first time ever, the USSR had requested his performances and he toured there in May From he toured Iran, Persia, India and Japan while he was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US State Department. He became an instant hit being praised across the globe as an international super musician Grove s 19 Wikipedia Henry Cowell 20 Grove s

12 Bibliography African Polyrhythms Answers.com Electro Magnetically- Prepared Piano Glissando Grove s Online Music Dictionary Jstor I&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage Musical Modes Pizzicato Polytonality Prepared Piano Principles of movement, interest and variety kin/bk.h/h4.html+harmonic+rhythm&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us The Rhythmicon or "Polyrhythmophone" (1930) String piano Tone Cluster USC music library