Henry Cowell

I WANT TO LIVE IN THE WHOLE WORLD OF MUSIC

A LIFE STRANGER THAN FICTION

Short Biography

Born: March 11, 1897, Menlo Park, California

Divorced parents 1903

Enormous Vocabulary and Short piano Pieces

He was discovered by a Stanford Professor

Study in the University of California, Berkeley

Mentor Charles Seeger

Died: December 10, 1965, Shady, New York

Career

1920, Cowell toured widely in North America and Europe

Experimentalist and atonality, polytonality, polyrhythms and nonWestern modes.

1923, Grete Sultan

Tone Clusters

Relationship between Bela Bartok and John Cage

Tone Cluster

Large groups of successive notes played on the piano with the

flat of the hand or the arm

Made up of Major and Minor seconds

3 Adjacent tones in a scale

Diatonically, pentatonically and microtonally

Works

Anger Dance 1914

The Tides Manaunaun 1917

Dynamic Motion 1916

The Banshee 1925