Cowell - Four Encores to Dynamic Motion

Four Encores to Dynamic Motion (1917)

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.

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Music

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• henry
• cowell
• antheil
• ornstein
• ives

[DarkRaimundo]

Can you explain to me how, at the end, he manages to paly all those notes?

[Hexameron]

You may want to give a timestamp for reference. Do you mean around 6:36 ?

[DarkRaimundo]

Yes.

Does he use his whole forearm?

Or does he use his legs?

These may be stupid suggestions, but I'm really curious

[Hexameron]

Probably both forearms or one forearm and the flat of the hand. I've never tried playing this, but I imagine in order to outline the melodic descent of the outer tones, one needs to use the knuckles.

It's a good question, and maybe someone else has a better answer about how a performer plays the outer tones with precision.

[PAGANlNl]

I'm clusterphobic.

[fremsley001]

Before playing this, it is advisable not only to crack the fingers but also the forearms.

[spacegoat4ever]

I play the piano and this makes me wet myself in fear that I might play this someday.

[mcbainst]

Good performance over all. But i think he may have hit a couple of wrong notes.

[gorpart9109]

Could you please tell me who the pianist is? It is interesting to hear the differences between theses versions and Cowell's own performances.

[AkLvKk]

I laughed my head off at the subtitles hahaahhaha XDDD

1. What's This

2. An Amiable Conversation

3. Advertisement

4. Antinomy

[philiphoward123]

It depends how long your arms are. For me I can do it with both arms, hands touching in the middle. You know where the bottom A is (because there aren't any notes lower than that on a normal piano), so keep your eye on the right elbow so that it doesn't go higher than the treble E.

Free Cluster Advice!!~

[chiledofthekorn]

this is amazing

if you like this you might like

gabriel williams - dancing with the schizophrenic

[HomelyCooking]

"Amiable Conversation" is just so hilarious. It really does depict conversation in some foreign language - over the din of rumbling washers and dryers at the corner laundromat!

[jessegguitar]

putting a bach melody in this.. would sound terrible!

[DravenX53]

Somehow sheet music for a song like this just feels wrong... I mean, maybe it's just me, but it seems like playing this piece note for note would utterly ruin the sense of incredible spontaneity and experimentation that it has deep inside.