Introduction
Commenting on the latest news regarding the death of Michael Jackson, it can be said that it might take a lifetime to assess someone’s influence on the culture and the achievements that can qualify him to be named a legend. In the case of Michael Jackson, the example might be distant from an influence on a century, specifically as his main influence was on pop culture in general. Similarly, there are many other figures whose influence was outstanding at their time, and their legacy still influenced generations ahead.
An example of such a figure, which definitely deserves the 20th-Century Genius Award, is Howard Cowell. Howard Cowell was an American pianist, composer, musicologist, and a revolutionary innovator whose influence extends from the period of modernism until covering 20th-century music in general, influencing many artists, an example of which can be seen through “New Music: Piano Compositions” (1997), a document of a three-concert festival held in 1997, which highlighted Cowell’s influence on 20th-century music with performances of works by Terry Riley, John Cage, Charles Ives, Lou Harrison, Meredith Monk, and others. (“Henry Cowell,” 2008).
This paper analyzes the life and works of Henry Cowell, presenting arguments on why his figure stands as a genius of Western culture.
Background
Henry Cowell was born on March 11, 1897, in Menlo Park, California. (Stone) Spending his early childhood in San Francisco, Cowell was influenced by a variety of traditional and exotic music, and after his parents’ divorce, he heard “the Irish and Midwestern airs and dances and folk tunes of his mother’s family.” (Stone) Regarding the claims that Henry was self-taught, it can be noted that Cowell studied with Charles Seeger, “the most important musicologist in the US in the twentieth century.” (Garland, 2006)
Additionally, Cowell studied in the music department at the University of California at Berkley. (Stone) Although Cowell’s public appearance was at the age of six as a violinist, his notable performances started in 1912, presenting a group of his pieces(Stone), and subsequently his concert activities in New York and Europe in 1920, including his Carnegie Hall debut and the performance in Town Hall in 1924. (Stallings, 2005)
Describing those times in terms of the influence and direction, it is possible to refer to the works of Cowell himself, who also wrote many articles, and “from an early point in his career was dedicated to musically educating the American masses. “(Stallings, 2005) In that regard, one of his earliest articles Cowell defended modern music, was responding to many critics he wrote that there is a need for “a new type of critic who will specialize in a genuine understanding of the aims of the moderns. Not that he will always praise, but that his likes and dislikes will be based on a knowledge of the laws underlying modern musical construction.” (Stallings, 2005)
Additionally, the influence of that time can be seen through his bohemian parents, Harry Cowell, a writer who established himself “in the shadow of the better-known bohemian literati of San Francisco” (Hicks, 2002), and Clarissa Dixon, an early political activist and a published writer in progressive, aesthetically oriented journals, where both were part of the same circle of “avant-garde poets, philosophers, and artists.” (Hicks, 2002)
Contributions
The contributions of Henry Cowell vary in many aspects, including music, critique, and pedagogy. In terms of music, his contributions start with the fact that the attention was mainly paid to European music modernists, and Cowell, in the 1920s, “was one of the first champions of American musical modernism.” (Stallings, 2005)
Going into specifics, its innovative approach of Cowell can be seen in many aspects. One aspect is tone-clusters, a “radical” technique used by Cowell, which represents “whole swaths of ‘wrong’ notes produced with pounding fists and forearms.” (Nicholls, 1998) It was in 1916 when Cowell showed early examples of such technique in one of the first Irish-themed works, “The tides of Manaunaun,” where striking neighboring notes with his palm, fist, or forearm and rolling these clusters, he represented “the waves of the sea, over which he superposed a folk-like modal melody.” (Stone)
The clusters were just a single side of his many innovative techniques, where Cowell composed nearly one thousand compositions during his lifetime through which he proposed his theories of the relation between rhythms and harmonic overtones. Through his collaborations with Varian, there were attempts to construct new instruments such as “drum piano,” a” gong piano,” and other keyboard instruments, which were found to be impractical. (Nicholls, 1998)
For example, a harp built by Varian resulted in Cowell writing specific pieces that either honor the mythological significance of the harp or adapt the harp techniques to the piano, e.g., “The Harp of Life,” which represented “the cosmic instrument as played by the Dagna, the God of life in Irish mythology.” (Nicholls, 1998)
In addition to Cowell’s new visions on music procedures, which he described in “New Musical Resources” (1930), a work written in 1916- 1919 and revised in 1930, he collaborated with Lev Termin to invent a transposing keyboard instrument. (Stone) Rhythmycon was the “world’s first electronic rhythm or drum machine with a photoreceptor-based sound production system.” (Stone). This device was capable of producing polyrhythmic sounds proportional to the pitches of overtones. (Stone)
Another aspect of Cowell’s contributions can be seen in his literary works on music. In his works, Cowell advocated and promoted American music, specifically emphasizing innovations. Nevertheless, Cowell never promoted technology and innovation only for themselves, where he stated that “the first requisite of the modern is that he sincerely feels in the idiom that he employs.” (Stallings, 2005)
After 1950, Cowell was a consultant and a writer for Folkways Records, Music of the World’s Peoples, Folkways’ Primitive Music of the World, and Musical Quarterly, as well as hosting a radio program. (Stone)Additionally, along with his wife Sidney, he was a cultural ambassador for the state department, “collecting music from around the world, for Henry had become Senior Music Editor of the Overseas Division of the Office of War Information.” (Stone)
Influence
Being an innovator, Cowell influenced many artists as well as music in general. In that regard, nothing is more indicative of Cowell’s influence than the fact that some of his techniques, such as the piano clusters, “sound as fresh and alive today as when they were first composed, almost a century ago.” (Garland, 2006)
In that regard, it can be stated that “[n]o technique of Henry Cowell’s was more celebrated or vilified than his tone clusters… Modern music theory or history textbooks, even when they ignore Cowell’s theories of rhythm, dissonant counterpoint, and so on, describe his tone clusters.” (Hicks, 2002)
Among the artists that were influenced by Cowell such names can be mentioned as John Cage, Stephen Scott, and Lou Harrison. Other people Cowell promoted were part of the avant-garde scene, of which he was at the very center, such as “Arnold Schoenberg; Wallingford Riegger, born in Albany, Georgia, but lifelong New Yorker; Chicago-born Ernst Bacon (influenced by American indigenous and vernacular music); Midwesterner Otto Luening; New Yorker, Francophile, and Moroccan expatriate Paul Bowles; Brooklyn-born, French-trained jazz, and folk enthusiast Aaron Copland; and New England transcendentalist Charles Ives, among many others.” (Stone)
Accordingly, the Rhythmicon, despite being Theremin’s invention, the idea was originally conceived by Cowell, who suggested the photoelectric cell as a prime element. (Nicholls, 1998) It can be said that Rhythmicon was the origin of electronic music, which was forgotten until the 1960w when similar devices were used for progressive pop music purposes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it should be stated that assessing the genius of Henry Cowell can be a difficult aspect, as many of the directions today in music can be at least partially influenced either by him or by one of his successors. In that regard, considering that music is based merely on seven notes, it can be astonishing to see how people continue to extract all the possibilities that can be imagined from those notes.
Accordingly, music as a cultural phenomenon once in every epoch witnesses a turning point after which it takes time until this point is absorbed, followed, improved, and evaluated to the degree that such point exhausts all its potential. One of such points can be seen in the contributions of Henry Cowell, in which it can be said that the full potential was exhausted yet, as people still use his clusters, and the electronic music, not to say his musical theories, is widely practiced by many contemporary musicians.
In that regard, the achievements of Cowell are not estimated based on his compositions alone, whereas claiming that he is a candidate for the 20th-century genius award is based more on the fact that he created a direction, a style, and a technique, which can be varied in many other musical works, rather than making similar compositions.
Accordingly, being distinguished at the times when the only modernist artist was considered to be only from Europe can be perceived as a vital point for Cowell in promoting other American artists and music, in general, connecting several artistic forms whether pre or post his era. Thus, due to the aforementioned facts, I think that Henry Cowell can be seen as a genius figure whose contributions extend beyond his lifeline, and it might be said that they will extend beyond ours as well.
References
Garland, P. (2006). Henry Cowell: Giving Us Permission. Other Minds. Web.
Henry Cowell. (2008). Epitonic. Web.
Hicks, M. (2002). Henry Cowell, bohemian. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Nicholls, D. (1998). The whole world of music: a Henry Cowell symposium: Routledge.
Stallings, S. N. (2005). “New Growth From New Soil”: Henry Cowell’s Application and Advocacy of Modern Musical Values. Florida State University.
Stone, P. Sidney and Henry Cowell. Cultural Equity. Web.