An Introduction to America’s Music

284 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II

features tone clusters made by pressing down the forearm on the keyboard to

produce blocks of sound spanning more than an octave. Dynamic Motion (ca. 1916),

representing the New York subway, calls for the player to hammer out clusters

with fi sts, forearms, and elbows in the manner of a virtuoso. Aeolian Harp (ca.

1932) and The Banshee (1925), on the other hand, use the piano more like a harp

than a percussion instrument, calling for the performer to play directly on the

strings as well as the keyboard. Between 1916 and 1919, Cowell also worked on a

treatise exploring fresh acoustical possibilities in the overtone series, published

in 1930 as New Musical Resources.

The Banshee (LG 12.1) takes its inspiration from Irish legend, like many pieces

by Cowell, the son of an Irish immigrant. A banshee is, in Cowell’s words, “an

Irish family ghost, a woman of the inner world” who arrives to claim the soul of

someone who has just died. Cowell’s score calls for the performer to stand in the

crook of a grand piano and play directly on the strings, entirely in the lower half

of the instrument’s range. Meanwhile, an assistant sits at the keyboard and holds

down the damper pedal, thus disengaging the dampers, which ordinarily stop

a string from vibrating when a key on the keyboard is released. As a result, the

strings, once set into vibration, continue to ring until they naturally die down,

creating a resonant shimmer.

On fi rst impression, The Banshee sounds like an improvisation. Only on

repeated listenings does its traditional construction become apparent: it follows

the centuries-old plan of a theme and variations. Three musical ideas or seg-

ments constitute the “theme” (to borrow a traditional term that seems somewhat

out of place here). Then follow two “variations,” or elaborated repetitions of the

theme. The sonic climax occurs at the beginning of the second variation. Last-

ing less than three minutes, The Banshee begins softly, builds up to high intensity,

then fades away.

Though the music sounds free and unstructured, Cowell specifi es tempo,

dynamics, pitch, and methods of tone production in precise detail. The desig-

nation tempo rubato at the beginning indicates that the player should treat the

rhythm fl exibly, with slight accelerations and decelerations rather than a steady

pulse. Cowell’s instructions call for sweeping the strings with the fl esh of the

fi nger or with the nail. Sometimes the hand sweeps across many strings, either

in one direction or back and forth. Sometimes one string (or more) is stroked

lengthwise or plucked like a harp. Melodic fragments and even chords fl oat to

the surface in this sonic exploration.

By the late 1920s Cowell was drawing on folk and non-Western music,

including Chinese, Japanese, African, South Indian, and Javanese as well as

Irish music. The United Quartet (1936) makes use of ostinatos (repeating melodic

and rhythmic fi gures), drones, and stratifi ed textures in ways that help to

explain his claim, clothed in the ethnocentric language of the time, that the

work “should be understood equally well by Americans, Europeans, Orientals,

[and] higher primitives.” Cowell spent the years 1936–40 in San Quentin State

Prison after being convicted for having sex with a teenage boy, a charge for

which he was later pardoned. He remained active there as a musician and com-

poser. In 1939 he wrote several works for percussion ensemble at the request

of composer John Cage, who was then musical director for a dance company

in Seattle.

Once released from prison, Cowell married the ethnomusicologist Sidney

Robertson, who introduced him to the music of William Walker’s shape-note

LG 12.1

Cowell and world music

172028_12_280-304_r3_ko.indd 284 23/01/13 8:40 PM