Cowell and Ornstein
were contemporaries. During the 1910s
and 1920s they were the American wildmen
of the times. Their music assaulted
the ear and pushed out the boundaries.
Ornstein slipped out of history into
dusty neglect while Cowell became a
cause célèbre not so much
because of his music but because of
his imprisonment on a 'morals' charge.
The specifics of the charge hardly matter
now. In any event he was imprisoned
in San Quentin for four years and pardoned
in 1941.
His music has made
a gradual emergence from the chrysalis
and these two CDs are an important,
surprising and often pleasurable new
chapter in the butterfly process. Let’s
hope that the music will enjoy a sustained
life in an increasingly music-crowded
environment.
Like his friend Alan
Hovhaness, Cowell travelled far and
wide. During the late 1950s he toured
the Middle East and Asia under a Rockefeller
grant. His Homage to Iran is
part of his legacy of that time. It
is for Persian drum, violin and piano.
The four movements comprise two that
are rhythmically tense and alive with
exotic Middle-Eastern accents - hypnotic
and busily patterned. The second movement,
a pressurised ppp presto dashes
away like the Flight of the Bumble
Bee. The finale echoes with the
fate motif of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
The Piece for
piano and strings sings of Cowell the
'bad boy' of the 1920s. It is explosive,
sullen, dissonant - a fractured mirror
with shards in free fall. Vestiges
and Euphoria are
gentler but still in the expressionist
realm. What's This? is
alive with brutal mechanical energy
- questioning and uncaring. Elegie
shadows the sound of bells with
much plucking and arpeggio gestures
across the strings inside the piano
case. Very strange but not as strange
as The Banshee - the Irish
spirit that wails at the time of death.
The piano strings are here struck and
brushed inside the body of the piano
making a positively electronic effect
that is at times suggestive of Hovhaness's
Great Whales, at others of the
bubbling and burbling score for 'The
Forbidden Planet'.
In the two Riegger
songs to words by the composer,
Wallingford Riegger's daughter, the
baritone line is ballad-like. Conventionality
is fended off by the experimentally
dissonant piano part.
Six Casual Developments
for clarinet and piano is said
to be jazz-influenced; there is surely
some jazz there but other voices include
the Klezmer wheeze wonderfully carried
off by that virtuoso of Klezmer artists,
David Krakauer - listen to his contribution
to the Naxos Milken
series. Another presence is the
troubled and cloud-shaded world of Stravinsky's
Rite. They would make for a provocative
contrast with Finzi's equally brief
Five Bagatelles.
The Set of Five
is for violin, percussion and
piano and takes us back in the direction
of the Asian experience. This is mingled
with baroque voices ranging from Bach
to Vivaldi. The percussion part suggests
gamelan. There is even a flighty allegro
paralleling the Presto from
the Iran Homage. The finale,
a Vigoroso, superbly combines
the exaltation of the violin line with
the excitement of the percussion punctuation
- a mercurially changeable ostinato.
This is a majestic piece in a series
of portraits.
The Four Piano
Pieces comprise Deep Color
a folksong-inflected piece in
which the left-hand takes the lyrical
elation while the right-hand explores
volleyed dissonances and despairing
negation. It is a little like the disruptive
voice of Nielsen's side drum in the
Fifth Symphony. Did I also hear the
shreds of Negro spirituals? It is a
fine piece and would match up well with
Peter Maxwell Davies Farewell to
Stromness. The Fairy answer again
has Cowell instructing his pianist to
strum inside the piano to create a disembodied
effect of distant surreal harping. Fabric
is of a cold and veiled consistency
suggestive of the most impressionistic
studies by Sorabji and with the melodic
line indebted to Chopin. Tiger
uses immensely spread tone-clusters.
This is the tiger in murderous fight
with its prey. The furious music suggests
Shostakovich at one moment and Conlon
Nancarrow at the next.
The eleven minute Quartet
is an active piece with Beethoven's
insistent energetic life and Bach's
profound legato grace - busy
or in repose. The molto vivace is
a joyous song, liberating - a wonderfully
light-filled piece dancing with sunlight.
The Three Anti-Modernist
Songs are zany and surreal.
The songs of Lord Berners are a reasonable
parallel. The last song is Who wrote
this fiendish thing the Rite of Spring
set to a melodic line like the best
of Warlock or Hadley.
The eleven minute Suite
for violin and piano is miles away in
mood from the songs. The impassioned
Rubbra-like violin cantilena rides
in nobility and grace over the triumphant
storm of the piano chords - silver to
the piano's steel grey. Once again in
the andante calmato it is as
if the violin sings like the seraph
while death stalks in the piano line.
Polyphonica is
for a small orchestra - an object lesson
in dissonant counterpoint - always a
model of clarity. The Irish suite
is also for small orchestra
- this time with piano. The Banshee
heard for solo piano in the other disc,
here appears with the orchestra adding
eerie layerings and moans to the already
eldritch aural repertoire of the piano
played directly into its groaning and
moaning entrails. Leprechaun is
its second movement. The strange sounds
of his supernatural hammering are evoked
with real humour yet avoiding tweeness.
Fairy Bells is all romantic
benevolence but never sentimental. The
sound has the translucent quality of
Ravel and the bells ring out like starry
pinpoints. Again this is superb material.
How can this music not have made its
way in the world.
Both discs are well
documented including the texts of the
songs as sung.
Collectors who know
the CRI, First Edition, Citadel, Albany
and Mode catalogues will be aware of
a smattering of Cowell's output: a handful
of symphonies, chamber pieces, chamber
music, piano solos and songs. These
two discs are central to any Cowell
collection. They are available separately
so if you do not feel like going for
both then buy volume 2.
Rob Barnett
Continuum/Cheryl Seltzer; Joel Sachs 
