Hochschule fr Musik Basel

Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel

Analysis paper for minor in composition

Teacher: Georg Friedrich Haas

Open Sesame:
Henry Cowell's piano music and twentieth century composition

Written by Rebekkah Laeuchli

Claragraben 54, 4058 Basel

Basel, Switzerland. 23 April 2012.

Henry Cowell was for many years the open sesame for new music in America...His
early works for piano...by their tone clusters and use of the piano strings, pointed
towards noise and a continuum of timbre.
John Cage1

1 John Cage. History of Experimental Music (1959) in Silence, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961,
pp 67-65

Contents
Introduction

...4

Life of Henry Cowell

...5

Early Life and Influences

...5

Imprisonment

...6

Later Life

...6

Analysis of Piano Scores

...8

The Tides of Manaunaun (1917)

...8

Aeolian Harp (1923)

...11

The Banshee (1925)

...13

Sinister Resonance (1930)

...15

Cowell's Influence on American Music

...18

The Playing Techniques

...18

Spirit of Innovation

...20

Cowell's Writings and Advocacy

...22

Conclusion: Open Sesame

...24

Bibliography

...25

Introduction
The piano to the contemporary composer is not just a keyboard instrument. The strings are
there to be strummed or plucked by hand, muted and swept along. Objects can be placed within the
strings to completely change the sound of each individual note the pianist then strikes. The pianist
may play standing up to reach into the innards of the piano, or sit and press the keys so quietly that
no sound issues forth until he brings his fist or arm down with a bang to sound as many notes as
possible. These techniques are commonplace now but a hundred years ago they were far from being
part of a composer or performer's vocabulary. The man who first began to intensively develop these
techniques and incorporate them into contemporary composition is one whose name has faded from
most musicians' consciousness: Henry Cowell. Primarily self-taught, and with a seemingly
boundless initial enthusiasm for exploring new possibilities, Cowell exerted an influence on the
development of American music that is hard to grasp today. His book New Musical Resources was a
seminal text for composers working in the first half of the twentieth-century and his playing
techniques were adopted by his students and then spread to become common tools of expression in
modern music.
This paper analyzes four of Cowell's piano pieces and then examines how a composer whose
output is not generally deemed to be among that of the greats could nevertheless have such a vital
role to play in the evolution of his country's music. Cowell's role was one of innovation, inspiration,
and exploration, and without this the face of contemporary music might look very different today.
Countless American composers were influenced by him as they searched for their own musical
language. The various paths that he began to explore and the trends that he anticipated affected the
outcome of how contemporary music progressed throughout the last century. The reach of his
influence extends into our own time and we through his work are affected in how we think about
music's capabilities.

Life of Henry Cowell

Early Life and Influences
Henry Cowell was born in California in 1897 and did not own a piano until he was fourteen
years old when he managed to save the $60 needed to buy one.2 His upbringing was
unconventional: his parents (his father an Irish immigrant and his mother from a Midwestern family
also of Irish descent) did not hold with traditional schooling and Cowell sampled public education
only briefly and was otherwise an early partaker of homeschooling.3 His parents divorced in 1903
and his mother Clarissa Cowell, a writer, taught her son at home and saw to it that he read
extensively. Cowell passed most of his youth in San Francisco, with a brief interlude in Iowa, New
York, and Kansas. Initially he began lessons on the violin but health problems caused him to stop
and instead he turned to piano and composition. As a teenager Cowell worked at weeding lawns,
tending cows, and as a janitor to aid in supporting his mother and himself. Eventually his musical
talents attracted the attention of Stanford professor Samuel S. Seward who organized a fund to help
pay for the family's subsistence and also Clarissa Cowell's medical care. She died of cancer in 1916.
In 1914 Cowell's father, Harry, took him to UC-Berkeley to begin formal music training. Cowell's
most influential association there was with Charles Seeger (1886 1979), who took an interest in
the young boy's development and encouraged him to develop his radical ideas while pursuing a
grounding in traditional harmony and counterpoint.
Before beginning his studies at Berkeley Cowell was already experimenting with such
techniques as tone clusters as part of his compositions. Cowell went briefly to New York in 1916,
where he met Leo Ornstein (1893 2002), another pianist-composer who incorporated clusters into
his work, but who eventually faded from the public concert scene until a revival much later in his
life. Back in California, Cowell began work on his book, New Musical Resources, which was to
become one of the most influential musical texts of the first half of the twentieth-century. It was
published in 1930 and outlined his ideas on rhythm, pitch, and harmony. Cowell would continue to
write articles and edit publications on modern music throughout his career.
As a child Cowell was exposed to the Irish songs and ballads that his parents were familiar
with and also to music from other cultures that were pervasive in San Francisco when he was
growing up. Immigrants brought Chinese, Indonesian, and Japanese music to their adopted city4 and
Cowell was to preserve a lifelong interest in the music of other cultures and was one of the earliest
proponents of multiculturalism. After coming in contact with Irish-American poet John Varian
2 Alan Rich, American Pioneers, London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1995, p 110
3 David Nicholls, Cowell, Henry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, London:
MacMillan, volume 14, 2011, pp 620-621
4 Alan Rich, Op. cit p 113

(1863 1931) Cowell was inspired to incorporate Irish mythology into his compositions.
Perhaps the very fact that he did not own a piano until his teenage years contributed to
Cowell's bent towards exploring the piano's extended capabilities. If he had begun piano lessons at
the normal age of five or six he might have treated the piano with the acquired reverence of a child
instructed according to traditional instrumental training. Instead he never lost the spirit of
exploration and experimentation that children show when first introduced to the piano, when they
hit it, look inside it, play with the pedal, press the keys as softly as possible, and in general try out
what myriad of sounds it can produce. Cowell developed playing techniques, such as strumming on
or muting the strings, that became a part of contemporary composition and he was doing it long
before these techniques became common place.
Imprisonment
The majority of Cowell's most influential pieces, the ones whose techniques inspired and
influenced a whole generation of composers, was composed before 1936. In this year Cowell was
imprisoned on charges of immorality. A bisexual in an era of strict sexual taboos, Cowell spent the
next four years in San Quentin. The piano pieces analyzed in this paper were all produced before
this, as were other influential works such as the Mozaic Quartet (1935) where he experimented with
indeterminacy. His more radical and groundbreaking articles were also written before his stay in
prison.5 After these four years his impulses towards exploration seem to have decidedly tapered off.
After his release from prison he married ethnomusicologist Sidney Hawkins Robertson and moved
to New York. The mid-forties found him composing Hymns and Fuguing Tunes, pieces based on
congregational Protestant hymns.6 His compositions from now on would incorporate more and more
elements from American traditional and other folk music and his days of establishing radical new
techniques were over. Perhaps it was also the country that had changed: World War II broke out
during Cowell's time in San Quentin. As America closed its borders perhaps the musical
environment began to close as well.7
Later Life
Cowell's reputation evolved over his lifetime from radical young innovator to a Grand Old
Man of American Music.8 He suffered health problems throughout his later life but continued to
produce many works, albeit primarily in traditional genres. He accrued awards and honorary
degrees and made trips abroad to Iran, India, and Japan, sponsored in part by the U.S. State
5 Kyle Gann, Subversive Prophet: Henry Cowell as Theorist and Critic in The Whole World of Music A Henry
Cowell Symposium, ed. David Nicholls, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997, p 190
6 Wayne D. Shirley, The Hymns and Fuguing Tunes in The Whole World of Music A Henry Cowell Symposium,
ed. David Nicholls, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997, p 97
7 David Nicholls, Op cit. p 623
8 Harold Schonberg, Lives of Great Composers, 3rd edition., New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1997, p 597

Department. In 1963 he recorded some of his piano music for Smithsonian Folkways and included
his own comments on an extra track at the end. This recording is one of the sources utilized in this
paper. Cowell died in Shady, New York in 1965, two years after the recording was made.

Analysis of Piano Scores

The Tides of Manaunaun (1917)
One of Cowell's early works, The Tides of Manaunaun was composed as a prelude for an
opera derived from Irish mythology. The piece was written to accompany The Building of Banba,
based on poems by Varian, whose interest in Irish myths influenced the young Cowell. The
composer would go on to write a number of pieces based on themes from Irish mythology, such as
The Voice of Lir (1920) or The Hero Sun (1922), but The Tides of Manaunaun remained one of his
most popular works. It was also the piece that first disseminated his use of clusters into the
contemporary conscience.
Manaunaun, according to Irish mythology and as referenced by Cowell in his comments to
the Smithsonian Folkways recording of his works9, was the god of motion and before the universe
was built was responsible to keep moving the particles that made up the material of creation. He
sent waves throughout the cosmos to keep the particles fresh and in flow until the gods were ready
to start the business of creation.
The bass line is made up of cluster chords and is notated using the symbols that Cowell
developed for his clusters. Other composers using clusters, such as Leo Ornstein, mentioned above,
tended to write out each note of the cluster. Cowell instead used a symbol that blocked out the range
of the chord, with the default being a chromatic chord and the use of a sharp or natural sign
denoting when only black or only white keys should be played. The chords in The Tides of

Henry Cowell: Tides of Manaunaun, bars 1-9

9 Henry Cowell. Henry Cowell Piano Music [Audio CD]. Washington DC: Smithsonian/Folkway Recordings, 1993

Manaunaun initially extend over one octave, gradually increasing to two octaves and then to two
octaves plus a fourth. Over the chords comes a melody in B flat Aeolian mode. The melody moves
in seconds and thirds with the occasional fourth and opens with a few chromatic notes (E natural
and A natural in bars 5 and 6) that give a slight air of harmonic minor but afterward sticks to
Aeolian. The chords in the right hand that accompany the melody are built in thirds over B flat (B
flat minor 7, D flat 7, F minor) and E flat (E flat minor 7, G flat). The outer notes of the cluster
chords throughout most of the piece are simply A flat and D flat, moving in time values of half
notes. The rhythm of the melody includes quarter note triplets but nothing that is challenging to
play against the steady half notes of the left hand.
The form is supplied primarily through dynamics: the piece begins in pp, builds up to ffff,
and then decreases to ppp at the end. At the dynamic climax (bars 22 25) the time signature
expands from four four to four two and the cluster chords also begin moving in quarter note triplets
and to abandon their previous limitation of the perfect fourth (A flat to D flat) and instead to move
up the Aeolian scale.

Henry Cowell: Tides of Manaunaun, bars 22-25

The melody makes its one and only jump of a perfect fifth at this point as well and as the
dynamic reaches the highest point (ffff) the cluster chords become arpeggiated and extend to their
greatest range of two octaves plus a fourth. As the dynamic fades back to pianissimo the chords in
the right hand become mere accompanying thirds, seconds or fifths and then gradually a mere
melodic line that ends with a falling third of D flat to B flat, while the last cluster chords change
9

their direction of an ascending to a descending fourth (D flat to A flat). This simple form of a
material gradually building up out of a very quiet dynamic into a loud climax and then fading again
is one that Cowell favored for several of his pieces when introducing a new playing technique (such
as The Banshee and Aeolian Harp).

Henry Cowell: Tides of Manaunaun, bars 31-36

The structural and harmonic material of The Tides of Manaunaun are simple and easily
grasped; they can hardly be described as groundbreaking. It was rather Cowell's approach and
treatment of clusters that added something new to contemporary composition. As mentioned above,
other composers such as Ornstein and Charles Ives had used clusters as well. But it was Cowell who
first approached the cluster as harmony rather than as a sound effect. In his book New Musical
Resources10 Cowell outlines his ideas of the harmonic possibilities of the cluster. In his view, chords
built on seconds were the obvious next step in the evolution of harmony. Cowell derived this idea
from the natural overtone series: according to him it was thus natural that early harmony was based
on fifths, fourth, and octaves as the first overtone intervals. The next development followed the
overtone series by the establishment of classical harmony based on thirds. According to Cowell, the
next logical step was to create chords built on seconds, as the interval following the thirds in the
overtone series. Cowell's second or cluster chords include both major and minor seconds, just as
triads are built on major and minor thirds. Cowell recommends large clusters rather than ones just
built of a few notes, as the greater size allows for more possibilities in moving the parts within the
chords. Emphasis is put on the outer notes of the cluster chord, providing as they do melodic
potential or counterpoint against each other. Cowell finished a draft of New Musical Resources in
1919, when he was only in his early twenties (the book was published in 1930 as Cowell continued
to revise it over the years). His exploration of material available to the then modern composer had a
strong effect on the contemporary scene as he investigated such resources as the overtone series and
cluster chords. However his treatment of the material was not as groundbreaking as the material
itself: he recommends writing standard harmonic exercises using clusters instead of traditional
chords, for example. The cluster chords in The Tides of Manaunaun are beautiful and opened up
10 Henry Cowell, New Musical Resources, 3rd edition, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp 111-139

10

new areas of piano exploration, but the interval they give to the bass line is a perfectly normal
ascending perfect fourth, so as you would find in any dominant-tonic cadence. But their use as an
integral part of the harmonic and melodic structure of the piece, rather than as a mere sound effect,
represented an expansion of material available to composers, as did the notation that Cowell
developed which expanded the range and flexibility of the cluster. As to developing the
performance method of playing them with the arm or fist, Cowell in his CD comments states:
This is not done from the standpoint of trying to devise a new piano technique, although it
actually amounts to that, but rather because this is the only practicable method of playing such large
chords. It should be obvious that these chords are exact and that one practices diligently in order to
play them with the desired tone quality and to have them absolutely precise in nature.
Bla Bartk (1881 1945) was among the many composers influenced by Cowell's work to
begin composing with clusters, and in fact wrote to Cowell asking his permission to incorporate
clusters into his own work. Cowell's students, Lou Harrison (1917 2003) and John Cage (1912
1992) both used clusters in their compositions and the technique gradually spread throughout the
twentieth-century music scene.
Aeolian Harp (1923)
The aeolian harp, initially an instrument of the ancient Greeks, as described by Cowell11 is a
small harp of silk strings to be hung in the window and played by the wind. Cowell found the sound
produced by piano keys hitting the strings to be too crass to mimic the sound of the harp and thus
formed the idea of playing inside the piano, directly on the strings themselves. The chords are
played by pressing the keys of the chord soundlessly and then sweeping along the strings with the
finger, an arrow indicating whether the arpeggio should go up or down. The pedal is pressed as soon
as the strings have been swept, prolonging the sound giving the harp-like effect of the title. The
piece is built on a sequence: a major triad (D flat at the beginning) morphs to a major/major seventh
chord followed by chords (minor and major triads and various seventh chords) built on a falling
fifths sequence. Though the bass line in each repetition of the pattern always follows falling fifths,
the chords in each version of the pattern vary and are not consistent.
In the first cycle when the sequence has reached a perfect fourth below starting point (A flat
major) the root tone of the chord becomes the seventh of the next chord (B flat major seventh) that
resolves to the E flat major triad that gives the pizzicato melody that is plucked on the strings and
forms the second and only other sound material used in the piece and which is held in pedal. This
first occurrence of the pizzicato motive is played near the tuning pegs, giving it a softer sound;
further pizzicati are played near the center of the piano strings to give a fuller sound.
11 Henry Cowell [Audio CD] Op. cit

11

Henry Cowell: Aeolian Harp, bars 1-8

The chord progression starts again, this time from E flat. This time only seventh chords are
used after the initial triad, which brings different harmonies than the first time around, although still
following a sequence of falling fifths. This time the sequence breaks on G, which morphs to a G
sharp diminished seventh that resolves to A major, the harmony for the next pizzicato melody. This
time the melody includes the seventh so that the broken chord resolves to D major, the next triad
from which to begin the chord progression. Each time time the progression begins it starts in a
similar way, veering off later in slightly different harmonic directions. This third time the
progression again resolves to a seventh chord (G major seventh) in bars 18-19, which instead of
resolving to the fifth degree like the last time simply breaks off and the progression beings again
from the original D flat major, repeating the beginning exactly. The progression therefore starts
from D flat, goes up a major second to E flat, then down a minor second to D, before returning to D
flat.

Henry Cowell: Aeolian Harp, bars 13-21

The structure of the piece is provided by the sound material itself, the harp-like chords that
are played on the strings of the piano and the plucked pizzicato melody. Cowell again uses his oftrepeated technique of a gradual dynamic build-up from p to ff to provide a climax, with the loudest
sequence also calling for play with the thumb nail rather than the flesh of the finger. The two

12

different sound materials are run through different harmonies, dynamics, and slightly varied playing
techniques, but there is no overall form to the piece as such: it simply begins again from the start
and could so continue on indefinitely. The methods Cowell uses to handle and develop his material
are reasonably traditional: arpeggiated chords of triads and sevenths; a sequence of falling fifths; a
steadily building dynamic arc. But the material itself was of course something new and developed
from the sound that Cowell had in mind to portray his idea, that of a children's harp in the wind. As
such he did not treat it as a mere sound effect but as an integral idea from which to build a piece.
Thus he broke new ground both in the sound material and techniques and in his treatment of these
as an expansion of material available to a composer on the piano, building blocks with which to
compose, rather than just a new effect with which to spice up a piece.
The Banshee (1925)
Cowell's idea of playing directly on the strings of the piano and the various techniques he
came up with for this became known as string piano, something he developed further in The
Banshee, written in 1925. This time the sounds that Cowell evokes from the piano strings sound
nothing like traditional keyboard music, but closer instead to something resembling electronic
music. A banshee is a spirit in Irish mythology, a female, who would appear to signal someone's
approaching death. As the world of humans is not to her liking she would wail during her time here
until she could return to spirit world. This wailing and shrieking therefore are a death omen in Irish
folklore and it is these sounds that Cowell tries to evoke with his playing techniques. The result is
an eerie and fantastic sound world. The performance directions are substantially more complicated
than those for Aeolian Harp and are represented by capital letters throughout the score. The sounds
are produced by sweeping across various strings, similar to the harp-like effects in the previous
piece, and sweeping up and down a specific string. The flesh of the finger, back of the fingernail,
and flat of the hand are all used, sometimes both hands simultaneously or one after the other,
creating a dampening effect. The performer stands at the curve of the piano in order to reach the
necessary strings and Cowell specifies that another person must sit at the keys to depress the pedal
throughout piece, although presumably you could use a wooden wedge or similar to hold down the
pedal as there is no lifting required at any point in the piece.
Again we meet with the same dynamic structure as used in the preceding pieces: an overall
arch that starts in pp, reaches ff, and then fades away again to ppp and nothingness. Within the
sections of the piece come also plenty of crescendi and decrescendi as the banshee's wails rise and
wane. There are three basic materials used, the first of which is introduced in bars 1 6. This is a
sweeping gesture from the lowest string up to the written note (the whole piece is to be played an
octave lower than notated), the string of which note is then swept along lengthwise with the finger.
13

The written notes are those of a whole-tone scale from C to B flat. This is followed by sweeping up
and down the strings from the lowest A flat to B flat 3, leading to a pizzicato motive. This motive
begin with a long D, which acts as a leading note first to a D flat B flat interval of a minor third
and then to a diminished triad with a G being added.

Henry Cowell: The Banshee, bars 1-11

This motive comes twice in a p dynamic and is then only the minor third, with the triad
coming when the motive appears in a mf dynamic during the buildup to the piece's climatic section
in bars 25 31 . The third material is a set of chords whose strings are swept along simultaneously
with fingers or fingernails. These chords begin as diminished triads, then during their second
appearance in the cycle have evolved to clusters of five notes. The material used always follows the
pattern of whole-tone scale, sweeping motive and pizzicato, and finally chords. When the dynamic
reaches the highest point of ff (and the tempo changes to presto), then the chords and whole-tone

Henry Cowell: The Banshee, bars 23-40

14

scale are combined, as the chords have become full out clusters whose base notes follow a wholetone sequence from D flat (enharmonic C sharp) to F, following in a pattern of thirds. This
combination of the materials is presented again as the piece fades back to ppp, this time with the
chords again as diminished triads but with the melody again a whole-tone scale following a
sequence of falling thirds. The final cluster of E, F sharp, and G sharp, which the performer plays
by sweeping along the strings with the finger, gradually decreases to E and F sharp and then finally
only E.
The harmonies and the structure are again fairly conventional, with the use of whole-tone
scales and diminished triads and also the overall dynamic arc and the cycling through of the sound
material. The clusters are part of a technique that Cowell had developed earlier. The play on the
strings, or string piano is expanded in this piece to produce a much broader range of sound than
those used in Aeolian Harp and the sounds build up to a cohesive whole. Cowell took new sound
materials and used them as the basic building blocks of a piece, developing as he did so new
methods of play that he needed as he searched for expression of a musical thought.
Sinister Resonance (1930)
This piece displays again new treatment of the piano's possibilities, though some of the
techniques in this work are difficult to execute with accuracy. Cowell was aiming to play the piano
as if it were a stringed instrument, and for the player to produce pitch by pressing a finger against
the piano string while striking the key and then adjusting the finger position to play multiple pitches
on one string.12 Overtones, or flageolets, are produced by applying light pressure to and so partially
dampening a string. A final technique involves muting the strings with the hand, both at the bridge
and near the dampers, resulting in different levels of dryness in sound. The various playing
techniques are indicated in the score by numbers written over the bars to be so executed. The
different makes of pianos and so variations in string positions led Cowell to note in his performance
directives that certain passages may be played in different registers if necessary. Accuracy of pitch
is difficult to obtain when playing different notes on the same string.
This piece, like Aeolian Harp and The Banshee is again only one page long but again
explores new territory of piano sounds and playing techniques. A melody repeats itself throughout
the piece, in an entire and abbreviated form and steadily rises from the lowest register possible up
until the fifth octave where the melody is produced by harmonics. The piece can be divided into two
sections with a coda at the end, defined by changing modes and dynamic arcs.
The key signature is that of F minor or A flat major, but when the melody first enters the C is
played flat, giving a lowered fifth that makes the tonality less certain. Cowell himself on his
12 Henry Cowell [Audio CD] Op. cit

15

recording of his pieces often plays the C flat as a C natural, seeming to establish the key as that of F
natural minor/A flat major. The melody is played from F and then transposed to be played from A
flat, and the C flat occurs only when the melody is based on F; when played from A flat the C is
natural. The very first introduction of the melody is played on the lowest string of the piano and
involves the first method of sound production: striking the key while cutting off the string with the
finger to generate the correct pitch. The playing technique then switches with the next repetition of
the melody to the second performance directive: playing on the keys notated but with the strings
muted by hand. This method of play involves the melody being accompanied by perfect fifths
which are sustained with the sustenuto (i.e. the middle) pedal. These perfect fifths are invariably F
C or A flat E flat, giving a distinct feel of tonic dominant to the accompaniment, similar to the
bass line produced by the clusters in The Tides of Manaunaun. Throughout the first twenty-seven
bars of the piece, which make up the first section, the dynamic follows Cowell's customary arc,
going from p to mf and then back through mp to pp, and the playing method changes back to play
on a single string with the finger pressing at different lengths of the string to produce the correct
pitches. The mode stays in F natural minor/A flat major with the occasional C flat. The melody has
slowly climbed through the registers as it is repeated until reaching the fourth octave.

Henry Cowell: Sinister Resonance, bars 1-27

From bar twenty-eight the perfect fifths in the bass line remain the same but the accidentals
of the melody change slightly: when the melody begins yet again from F, the G has become a G flat,
giving a feel of the Phrygian mode. This G flat reverts to G when the melody is transposed to begin
from A flat and the C becomes again C flat so that we appear to be in A flat minor. This shifting of
pitches between half and whole tones keeps the melody from turning monotonous and adds
changing color to the different sections of the piece. Through bar forty-four the melody remains in

16

the same register (fourth octave) and follows again a swelling and decreasing dynamic arc, going
from p to ff and then back to a mp with decrescendo. Playing techniques are methods two and four,
which involve muting the strings with the hand at different points.

Henry Cowell: Sinister Resonance, bars 28-56

The end of the piece has the feel of a short coda from bar 45 as the melody appears one final
time back in the lowest register played on the lowest string of the piano in f with a crescendo
decrescendo, and then in the fifth octave played as harmonics by pressing lightly on the strings an
octave below the notated pitches. The final notes are the F C perfect fifth coming in p in the
second octave and then finally in pp in the first octave.
This piece is once again neatly structured with traditional harmonic ideas but with a
completely new approach to the piano. From The Tides of Manaunaun up through Aeolian Harp and
The Banshee, Cowell moved steadily towards using the entirety of the piano's sound-making
possibilities to express his ideas. With Sinister Resonance, Cowell was aiming for the new tone
colors that would be produced by playing a piano as a stringed instrument. He was one of the first
composers to take an instrument as a whole and look at its expressive capabilities beyond those
produced by traditional performance methods.

17

Cowell's Influence on American Music

The Playing Techniques
Cowell's new techniques and performance methods were formed very early in his musical
development and career. In a concert at the San Francisco Music Club in 1912 Cowell was already
performing clusters and using piano string techniques as part of his early pieces.13 He had only just
turned fourteen years old. The introducing of his playing techniques took place not only early in his
own musical development but very early in the development of contemporary music in general. In
1912 Mahler had just died, Schoenberg's twelve-tone system was not to come until the next decade,
and the young Henry Cowell was searching for new compositional resources. The ones he found
made a lasting impression on American music.
The best-known and also best documented example of Cowell's influence on a particular
composer would be John Cage, who studied with Cowell and maintained a correspondence with
him.14 Cowell's approach to the piano was revolutionary and led directly into Cage's own treatment
and preparation of the piano. Cage specifically referenced The Banshee as the inspiration for his
first preparation of the piano.15 Cage was famously asked to write a percussion piece for a dance
group but the performance would take place where space was too limited to allow for a percussion
ensemble. Cage recalled the sound effects that Cowell produced by his string piano techniques
and decided to alter the sound of the piano for his own purposes. From here began his experiments
with placing objects within the strings of the piano to create different sounds, experiments that
resulted in the piece Bacchanale (1940) for the dance troupe and later culminating in Sonatas and
Interludes (1946 1948), twenty pieces for prepared piano where the instrument takes on aspects of
street drummers as the various objects inserted into the strings (screws, bolts, pieces of rubber)
produce a colorful and often percussive range of sound. These colors can be recognized in Cowell's
Sinister Resonance in the muted tones of the strings and percussive effects achieved through the
various performance methods.
Lou Harrison was another of Cage's students to incorporate string piano techniques into his
work. His Prelude and Sarabande for Piano from 1937 calls for the performer to silently depress
keys and then strum the notes on the strings as in Cowell's Aeolian Harp. In several of his pieces he
also used a tack piano, which is a piano that has small nails stuck in the hammers. In his song
May Rain (1941) the tack piano gives a percussive sound to underlie the smooth line of the melody.
13 Alan Rich, Op. cit p 110
14 Leta E. Miller, Henry Cowell and John Cage: Intersections and Influences in Journal of the American
Musicological Society, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Spring 2006), pp 47 - 54
15 John Cage, How the Piano Came to be Prepared (1973) in Empty Words, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1979, pp
7-10

18

String piano effects entered the lexicon of American composers and today seem almost
taken for granted as a natural extension of the piano's possibilities. George Crumb (*1929) has used
many of these techniques in his piano works, including Makrokosmos, his four volume series with
title inspired by the Bartk's Mikrokosmos. Crumb's pieces call for the player to strum on the piano,
mute strings and pluck strings, all techniques developed by Cowell in his piano music. C. CurtisSmith (*1968) came up with the bowed piano, which involved using different lengths of different
materials such as nylon to bow on the piano strings. Stephen Scott (*1944) developed this by
founding The Bowed Piano Ensemble to perform the pieces that he wrote for this playing method.
Extended techniques have now proliferated throughout contemporary composition and Cowell was
one of the first to use these techniques as an integral part of his work.

Henry Cowell: Tiger, bars 4-7

Cowell's use of clusters was highly influential and is also now a permanent part of
contemporary composition. His students Cage and Harrison incorporated clusters into their musical
vocabulary as can be heard in such pieces as Harrison's Piano Concerto (1983/1985) or Cage's In
the Name of the Holocaust (1942). Cowell himself continued to compose with different types of
clusters, and they form an integral part of such compositions as Tiger (1928), which contains fist
clusters and clusters to be played with both forearms simultaneously. Composers ranging from
Aaron Copland (*1900) to Elliott Carter (*1908) to Frederic Rzewski (*1938) used techniques
favored by Cowell including clusters and silently depressed keys to produce harmonics (also used
by Cowell in Tiger).16 Through these playing methods and through the string piano, Cowell opened
16 Reiko Ishi, The Development of Extended Piano Techniques in Twentieth-Century American Music, Doctor of

19

up new areas of the piano for composers to incorporate into the creative process. His ideas were not
to produce effects per se but, as we saw in the pieces analyzed, rather to enlarge the piano's
expressive capabilities and so better express his own musicality. This treatment of extended
techniques is one of his most important legacies.
Spirit of Innovation
Cowell's influence extended beyond his exploration of the piano and into other areas of
composition and music in general. In New Musical Resources he devotes a long section to his ideas
of rhythm.17 Cowell was intrigued by the idea of linking the rhythmic values of notes to the
overtone scale. On page 101 of his book he calculates the ratios from C of the different intervals
and so assigns each note a resulting rhythmic value. Aside from relatively normal values such as
eighths and quarters or even sevenths and fifths, he ends up with such results as seventh thirtieths
or five twenty-fourths and thus expresses his belief that even with some of the ratios simplified it
might not be possible for the performers of his time to realize this rhythmic values. He eventually
hit on the solution of developing a machine to play the rhythmic patterns that he had in mind and
together with Leon Theremin he invented the Rhythmicon in 1936.18 This instrument had a
keyboard with which to turn on and off the different rhythmic patterns the machine produced. The
Rhythmicon did not catch on, but Cowell integrated simpler polyrhythms into his piano works. In
his piece Fabric from 1917 he runs three lines against each other, each with a different rhythm: the
bottom line is sixteenth notes, eight or nine to a bar; the middle line eighth note quintuplets; the top
line eighth note triplets. Cowell saw no reason why the default division of rhythm should be binary,
and believed it made just as much sense to divide a note by three or five as it did by two or four. He
furthermore developed notation for different divisions of rhythmic values, so that the triplets in
Fabric for instance are written with triangles rather than normal eighth notes, and the nonuplets are
notated as rectangles rather than sixteenth notes. With this system he intended to better bring out the
relationships between rhythmic values and to better establish such less accustomed rhythms as
quintuplets and other non-binary divisions of the whole note19. Cowell with this was also moving
towards graphic notation, elements of which can also be found in The Banshee in the way the
various sweeping gestures are notated20. Graphic notation was of course developed later in the
century by such composers as Morton Feldman (1926 1987) in his Intersections and Projections

17
18
19
20

Music Treatise, The Florida State University College of Music, 2005, available online:
http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11142005-064729/unrestricted/Ishii_treatise.pdf, last viewed 3 April 2012,
pp 13, 17, 55
Henry Cowell, New Musical Resources, Op. cit pp 45-108
Alan Rich, Op. cit pp 127-128
Henry Cowell, Foreword to Fabric, in Piano Music, New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1950, p 11
See score examples of The Banshee

20

(1950 1953), where he used diagrams and graphics to direct the performers rather than traditional
notation.

Henry Cowell: Fabric, bars 5-9

Lou Harrison, for whom rhythm and percussive elements were an important focus in his
compositions, was especially inspired by Fabric as he learned to play five against nine against six
and so on.21 Diversity of rhythm was a main feature that attracted Cowell in the other cultures
whose music he investigated and for which he advocated as an important area for new resources and
inspirations for contemporary composers.22 Harrison took Cowell's course Musics of the Peoples
of the World and was there exposed to recordings of music from other cultures. Harrison went on
to use aspects of non-Western music in many of his works, such as the extensive use of the Javanese
gamelan, often pairing this with instruments from the Western classical tradition such as French
horn in Main Bersama Sama (1978) or Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan (1986/7).
Conlon Nancarrow (1912 1997), when searching for a solution to the impossibility of
finding performers who could manage the extreme rhythmic complexity of his work, found the
answer directly in Cowell's book.23 American born, Nancarrow took Mexican citizenship when he
was denied the renewal of his American passport upon his refusal to recant the socialism he
espoused in his youth. In New Musical Resources24, Cowell mentions that though the rhythms
produced by his theories would be beyond the probable abilities of contemporary performers, the
21 Lou Harrison, Learning From Henry in The Whole World of Music A Henry Cowell Symposium, ed. David
Nicholls, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997, p 162
22 Henry Cowell, Towards Neo-Primitivism in Modern Music 10/3, 1933, pp 149-53
23 Kyle Gann, Op. cit p 183
24 Henry Cowell, New Musical Resources, Op. cit pp 64-65

21

rhythms could be produced by player pianos. Nancarrow, having discovered the means to his
musical end, went on to produce over fifty works for player piano.
Cowell worked along the lines of many of the channels that twentieth-century composition
would later more fully explore. His piece Mozaic Quartet for string quartet was written in 1935;
Cowell specified that the five movements could be played in any order that the performers wished.
The quartet is an early example of indeterminacy, which Cowell said resulted in the piece being
very famous among the Chance people.25 Cage, in his lecture on indeterminacy26, defined this as
music where the performer decides on the order of events such as in his piece Concert for Piano
and Orchestra (1957/8) where the piano material may be played in any order, either in part or
whole. The orchestration itself is left up to the performers, with the parts for the different
instruments written out but open to being combined in any selection desired. Indeterminacy entered
the consciousness of American composers, including those working with another new branch of
composition: minimalism. Terry Riley (*1935) in his piece In C (1964) specified that the short
phrases the work is built on may be repeated any number of times by any number of players.
Cowell was indetermining the order of his string quartet movements the year that Riley was born.
Cowell's explorations and openness to a wide variety of sources and inspiration were an
influence to American composers to think outside the box, to look for new territory of their own. As
Lou Harrison wrote, Cowell was a delightful man who filled out for many young people a fuller
world of music...he stretched out the minds of everyone towards music shunned by Eurocentric
schools...confronting them with other instruments, other tonalities, and other ways of making
music.27 Harrison was inspired by the fire of Cowell's mind and it was this fire and this spirit of
innovation that resulted in Cowell's leaving a lasting mark on the history of American music.
Cowell's Writings and Advocacy
Cowell was extremely active in the cause of new music, not just as composer himself but
also as author and editor. His first contribution to the world of musical letters was of course his
book New Musical Resources. This text influenced many composers of his and the next generation,
starting of course with his students Harrison28 and Cage29. Cowell started writing the book when he
was still a teenager, in response to his teacher Charles Seeger's suggestion that he formulate some of
the ideas and techniques he had been experimenting with composition.30 Cowell's approach to
25 Steven Johnson, 'Worlds of Ideas': The Music of Henry Cowell in The Whole World of Music A Henry Cowell
Symposium, ed. David Nicholls, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997, p 53
26 John Cage. II. Indeterminacy (1959) in Silence, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961, pp 36-37
27 Lou Harrison, Op. cit p 161
28 Lou Harrison Op. cit p 161
29 Kyle Gann, Op. cit p 172
30 Alan Rich, Op. cit p 116

22

acoustics and his ideas about rhythm were revolutionary for his time as he connected rhythms to
sound-vibration and overtone ratios and his ideas of rhythmic counterpoint and harmony to mirror
that of pitch.
Cowell contributed numerous articles to various publications over the course of his career,
some expounding on different aspects of contemporary music and some of them in support of
specific composers. Modern Music published his article Towards Neo-Primitivism in 1933,
representing an early foray into calling composers' attention to the resources of expression to be
found in other cultures. The journal published twenty of his articles in the space of nineteen years.
The Musical Quarterly published forty-three of his articles, including ones that brought attention to
emerging composers, such as that printed in 195231 where Cowell discusses works by Cage,
Feldman, Pierre Boulez (*1925) and Christian Wolff (1934) and their experiments with sound and
time.
In 1933 Cowell edited the symposium American Composers on American Music (Stanford,
CA), the list of authors for which includes Copland, Ruth Crawford (1901 1953), Seeger and of
course Cowell himself. Cowell's interest in furthering the public's knowledge of specific composers
also brought him to write his biography of Charles Ives32, whose music Cowell deeply admired.33
Cowell further contributed to the support of contemporary music by helping to found the New
Music Society, which arranged concerts of pieces by modern composers. As a part of this Cowell
started the New Music publication, which printed scores of contemporary works mainly by
American composers, including some by Ives, Copland, and Carl Ruggles (1876 1971). As writer
and editor Cowell did much to further the cause of new music and to bring exposure to
contemporary composers and their work.

31 Henry Cowell, Current Chronicle: New York in Musical Quarterly, Vol. 38, Nr. 1, 1953, pp 123-136
32 Henry Cowell and Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, second
print, 1966
33 David Nicholls, Op. cit p 622

23

Conclusion: Open Sesame

Cowell's position as an important composer has been contested by those who find the quality
of his output to be uneven at best. Copland rather sneeringly anoints him an inventor, not a
composer.34 Cowell's pieces mix revolutionary ideas about sound and playing techniques with
traditional and even obvious structure and harmony. Virgil Thomson referred to Cowell as both
radical and normal35 and perhaps that is the problem: Cowell failed to use his own radical ideas in
an extreme way, to burst the bounds of normality as had been established by past centuries of
classical composition. His theories on rhythm as expounded in New Musical Resources make a
fascinating read but the rhythms he actually wrote in such pieces as Tides of Manaunaun or even
Fabric remain non-challenging. Cowell mixed his groundbreaking effects with tonal melodies and
conventional harmonic methods, as shown in the analysis of the piano pieces, thus making the
dissonance and unaccustomed sounds easier for a listener to absorb but also diluting the strength of
his originality, in contrast to what he might have achieved by going for broke and using his new
material in unapologetically new ways.
Perhaps the importance of Cowell's role in twentieth-century American composition is most
clearly expressed in Cage's description of his teacher as the open sesame of American music.36
Open sesame are the words spoken by Ali Baba in the Arabian Nights tale to open the magic cave
where the thieves have hidden their treasure. Perhaps Cowell did not enter the cave or plunder the
treasure himself but he opened the way for many succeeding composers so to do.
Cowell in his works for piano and other instruments or ensembles anticipated many of the
streams that twentieth-century music would then follow. Many composers were delighted by the
new resources he discovered, both theoretical as in his book New Musical Resources and his
articles, and aural as in the new sounds he discovered on the piano as he enlarged that instrument's
expressive capabilities through new playing techniques. Cowell himself did his best to bring as
much exposure as possible to other composers in his work as writer and editor, tireless as he was in
the cause of furthering new music. His piano pieces do remain interesting and enjoyable to listen to
or to play, but they served the further purpose of being the open sesame, the magic words that led
twentieth-century composition into the treasure beyond.

34 Aaron Copland, America's young men of promise in Modern Music, 3(3), 1926, p 16
35 Virgil Thomson, (1953), liner notes to Henry Cowell Piano Music [Audio CD]. Washington DC:
Smithsonian/Folkway Recordings, 1993
36 See page 2

24

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