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Henry Dixon Cowell
led a far from uneventful life. His
career is separated by a term of imprisonment
(1936-1940) on a homosexual charge.
He was an early revolutionary of the
keyboard. His The Tides of Manaunaun
written in 1912 used noted clusters.
Dissonant counterpoint and intricate
rhythmic patterning characterised his
music of the period 1915-1919. He extended
his armoury in 1925 for the piano solo
The Banshee in which the pianist
is called on to reach inside the piano
and strum and pluck the strings. He
toured world-wide and in 1930 was the
first US pianist to tour the USSR. His
New Music Edition published works by
Ives, Ruggles (come on Sony, when are
you going to reissue MTT’s complete
Ruggles collection?), Webern, Schoenberg
and Varese. After 1940 he toured very
widely. He wrote twenty symphonies,
a piano concerto, various works for
string quartet, piano music, songs and
choruses.
He wrote a sequence
of eighteen Hymn and Fuguing Tunes for
instrumental ensembles of varying specifications,
full orchestra and vocal group. Their
variety and span suggests comparison
with the Bachianas of Villa-Lobos however
as yet no-one has thought it worthwhile
to produce a complete recorded edition.
The burly Third Hymn and Fuguing
Tune sounds somewhat Finzian
without quite the intensity of lyricism
found in Finzi. This strikes me as very
masculine music. The composer tells
us that the piece is in the Dorian mode
and its mise-en-scène is the
Southern Revival rather than the seemly
New England anthem. This track is only
stereo one on the disc. The others are
in surprisingly powerful mono. Ongaku
is a diptych with the initial
Gagaku movement echoing with ceremonial
drums and with the singing lines taken
by the strings in Japanese style. Similarly
Japanese in impression is the flightily
fantastic and curvaceous Sankyoku in
which flute, cor anglais and harp play
important roles. Lovely music, always
sharply defined without fuzziness or
confusion of textures and eloquently
put across by Whitney and his orchestra.
This music is bound to prompt comparison
with that of Hovhaness and there is
certainly a kinship in oriental dignity,
use of percussion and the ceremonial
almost stylised dignity of the writing.
The Eleventh Symphony
dates from four years before Ongaku.
Like Ongaku it was a Louisville
Orchestra commission. The Seven Rituals
of Music echo the seven ages of
man. The movements are compact and the
whole sequence is over within 22 minutes.
The works proceeds through a cool almost
Sibelian cantilena, to a ruthless Schuman-like
Allegro with much for brass and
percussion. The haunted Lento is
intended to portray the Ritual of
Love with discreet Foulds-like use
of microtones high in the violin parts
which is followed by a dance movement
with a frankly Irish skirl and hoe-down
insouciance. There is another adagio
to reflect the Ritual of Magic,
again haunted and haunting with pitter-patter
activity and swirling microtonal swooning
from the pianissimo violins. The great
love theme from Stravinsky’s Firebird
passes spectrally throughout these
pages.
The Fifteenth Symphony
is in five very brief movements
- no time for monotony nor much for
development either. This time the work
is over within 21 minutes. Those eerie
microtonal swayings similar to the cyclical
swooning in Hovhaness’s Fra Angelico
also come into play in this work.
The whispered ululation of the violins
contracts with the cellos broad and
confidently stalking Bachian melody
in the Andante. The conspiratorial
Presto is busy and perhaps influenced
by Shostakovich. Cowell’s engaging penchant
for pattering ostinatos and slowly surging
song-like melodies is much in evidence
in this late work.
Cowell’s twenty symphonies
were written between 1918 when he was
21 to 1961 when he was 64 and within
four years of his death. This disc together
with the now deleted CRI American Masters
disc (CRI CD 740) containing Symphonies
7 and 16 together form the bulwarks
of an essential Cowell collection. You
can often find copies of the CRI disc
on ebay.
These performances
are entirely Whitney-conducted and represent
an essential part of any Cowell collection
or indeed for anyone wanting to explore
the variegated riches and strangenesses
of the American symphony during the
last century.
Rob Barnett
Louisville Orchestra/Robert S. Whitney 
