Cowell - The Voice of Lir

"The Voice of Lir" (1919) from Three Irish Legends

Story according to John Varian which prefaces Cowell's score:

"Lir of the half tongue was the father of the gods, and of the universe. When he gave the orders for creation, the gods who executed his commands understood but half of what he said, owing to his having only half a tongue; with the result that for everything that has been created there is an unexpressed and concealed counterpart, which is the other half of Lir's plan of creation."

Henry Cowell (1897-1965) was one of the most innovative American composers of the 20th-century and influenced a generation of American and European avant-gardists from Varèse and Nancarrow to Cage and Stockhausen. As a child, Cowell displayed a precocious musical talent and started learning the violin at the age of five. Although he received no formal music training during his childhood, he showed an interest in composition. In his teenage years he experimented with tone-clusters (a term he invented) and unconventional methods of playing the piano, such as plucking and strumming the strings.

Cowell later studied music with Charles Seeger at UC Berkeley, where he also met Ruth Crawford. In the 1920s, he toured throughout America and Europe as a piano virtuoso, achieving enormous notoriety if not fame. His compositions, and by extension his method of using the forearm, fist, and palm to create tone-clusters, disturbed conservative audiences and music critics while garnering enthusiasm from the musical intelligentsia. Cowell's unorthodox methods and ideas are contained in his New Musical Resources (1930), which was a genuine bible to American composers of the avant-garde. Among other things in this work, Cowell defines the tone-cluster and details his theories concerning its harmonic flexibility.

Cowell's constant search for new means of expression is reflected in over 900 compositions for a variety of ensembles and instruments. While his music of the early 1910s and 1920s is aligned with the avant-garde, his later works beginning in the late 1930s demonstrate a return to a simpler music language. Though Cowell explored new sounds, even his most avant-garde music is tempered by a predilection for melody and accessible expressivity.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• henry
• cowell
• ornstein
• antheil
• john
• cage

[askthemailman]

thanks for post hex

[buenobus]

cowell has spoken

[Pianophile57]

truly an awesome, creatie piece. it sounds like a the voice of God rising above the cacaphony of choas and existence. Thanks for the post, Hexameron. ou have shown me untold amounts of music i wouldve never heard otherswise. and for that i thank you.

[matharoofmaths]

This makes me quiver

[Rickeeey1]

@UNORIGINALdot3x

Then you have not listened to more than a few (maybe something like 3) of his songs.

[nobodady1]

@newFranzFerencLiszt It is difficult for us to distinguish pitch differences at the extreme low and high end, but on a piano these clusters can be distingushed with some difficulty. Perhaps a less cautious version of this piece would do for our ears, but would they have worked for Cowell, who precisely notated everything as far as I understand.

[UNORIGINALdot3x]

all of his songs sound the same lol

[berndschumannsvideos]

Genious piece, but I think he takes too much pedal, the hard strokes in the middle should be drier...

[Temptezt]

I am so really amazed that I like this so much!

[Sihirbazlik]

@IvannikovaLidiya |: I've been trying to figures out how to play measures 15 - 18 and only yesterday by accident I managed. Now I'm glad to see you're suggesting the same thing that I'm doing. But what about measures 19 & 20 and 29 & 30?