Cowell Henry New Musical Resources

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NEW

MUSICAL RESOURCES

- - - - - - - - - ~ . ~ - - - - - - - - -

HENRY COWELL

WI TH A PREFACE AND NOTES BY JOSCELYN GODWIN

-------. . . . . -<....------SOMETHING ELSE PRESS, INC.

MCMLXIX



3 . Dynamt"cs . 81

4 . Form· 84

5 . Metre and Tt"me Combt"natt"ons . 8S

6 . Tempo· 90

7 . Scales of Rhythm· 98

PART [II: CHORD - FORMAT ION

I I I

I . Buildt"ng Chords from Different Intervals· H I

2 . Tone-clusters. I I7

NOTES • 147

PREFACE

BY JOSCE L YN CODWI N

In 1917, Henry Cowell was twenty years ,old: com

poser, according to his own records, of one hundred

and ninety-nine works for nearly all conventional com

binations and many unconventional ones. He was a fine

pianist, at least when he played his own pieces, and he

had absorbed a fair grounding in musical theory. Al

though his formal education had ended in Kansas with

a third-grade certificate, he had enjoyed the benefits,

as well as the hazards, of having cultured but eccentric

parents. He had been a gardener, a collector of wild

plants, and a swineherd. He was now working as a

school ja11litor, and traveling from his horne in Menlo

Park to Berkeley every morning and to Stanford every

afternoon for lessons in music ;from Charles Seeger and

in English from Samuel Seward. And he had begun

writing t:l1is !)ook.

Among the hundred and ninety-nine works were

many tI1at made 1!lse of tone-clusters (the first such,

Adventures in H armonYJ dates from his fourteenthyear); other works composed with a preponderance

of dissonance over consonance, and two compositions

evert more remarkable than the others, the Romantic

and Euphometric quartets, composed according to a

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NEW MUSICAlL RESOURCES

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ~ * * * * * * * * ~ * * * * * * * * * system of Cowell's own invention that sought to inte

grate rhythm and pitch.

Cowell was encouraged by his teachers to pour this

superabundance of original ideas into a formal mold.

One can imagine Seeger hoping that this would

straighten Cowell out musically, and Seward hoping

that to v e r b a ~ i z e the matters nearest his heart would

teach him to write proper English. (Neither hope, of

course, was fulfilled, but this was their concern, not

ours.) For three years, then, Cowell worked sporadically

on what was to become New Musical Resources, much

assistedl in expression, though not in substance, by his

mentors.· By 1919 the book was completed in what

was virtually its present form.

It seems to have rested in manuscript for nearly ten

years, until in about 1928 Cowell decided to attempt to

find a publisher. The book was typed out, reproduced

in mauve ink on a spirit duplicator, and sent the rounds

of likely publishers. A letteF from the publishing house

of Alfred A. Knopf, dated January 29th, 1929, survives,

with its cautious invitation:

If you can get a subsidy for 500 copies and will exempt thefirst thousand .. . from royalty, we could do the book on thatbasis.

Cowell immediately contacted all his friends and ac-quaintances, asking them to buy as many copies as they

lIAmy Seward recalled (1962) that 1919 was the year of her

engagemenl to Samuel Seward, and that she was in constantcompetition with "that Book."

PRE FACE

**********************************could dispose of. A scribbled list, in Cowell's hand, of

actual and potential subscribers, dating from this frantic

period, records 229 copies so far "sent out andl sold," of

which a hundred were taken by his lifelong friend! and

patron Blanche Wahon. A letter to her from the Conservatorium of New South Wales, acknowledging the g ift

of a copy in 1930, suggests she was a first-rate publicity

agent.

The names of those "asked to pledge" on this Est in

clude Ruggles, Harris, Dent, Boulanger, Haba, Schoen

berg, Webern and Stuckenschmidt; but there is no

record of their responses. Since Cowell kept most of his

letters, it must be assumed that tlhese gJieat men of music

ignored him and stuck to their own resources. But the

book was indeed published, and it was not rong beforethe initial thousand c o p ~ e s were sold and a second print

ing brought out.

The subsequent history of New Musical Resources is

brief: on September 1st, 1935, it was remaindered at a

dollar, and on October 2nd, 1942, we findl Knopf writ

ing to Cowell: "We have . . . instructed the plates to be

melted." The plates, no doubt, obeyed, and the phoenix

returned for a time to her ashes.

Cowell once said that Seeger had taught him two

things: the necessity to systematize his use of musical

resources, and the necessity for the innovator to create

a repertoire using his innovations (since either nobody

Xl

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NEW MUSICAL RESOURCES

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ & ~ & ~ & ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ & & & & & else will, or it will iDe done badly). The writing of this

book fulfilled the first of these necessities; the second

was never completely sat,isfied, for Cowell's actual use

of the resources described was a[ways limited by his

urge toward further discovery. It can be said that he

had lost interest in all but the tone-duster and"dissonant

counterpoint" by the time the book was published-ten

years, indeed, after the birth of the ideas, a long period

in Cowell's mercurial development. Only the two early

quartets remain as examples of the integration of param

eters so minutely described in the book, and only the

Piano Concerto uses to any great extent the polyhar

mony he so carefully justifies.

Some parts of the book are naive and shallow, but

those of us who know Henry Cowell will forgive this

as the natural consequence of an imagination that

ranged far beyond its actual knowledge. Other parts are

prophetic, displaying an intuitiveness that has been justi

fied by ample fulfillment in more recent years. But

throughout the work one is amazed at the doggedly

independent way in which Cowell works his ideas

through to their 'logical (or illogical) conclusions, irre

spective of the distance he is traveling from conservative

opinion, or even from the realms of probability. It isthis trait that marks his compositions, too, and that,

perhaps more than any other, symbolizes his "Ameri

canism," a quality so easily perceived, yet so hard to

define.

Xl I

PREFACE

* * * * * ~ * * * * * * * * * ~ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Apart from offering valuable insights into Cowell's

own life and work, New Musical Resources is an in

dispensable documen t in the history of American music.

It is probably the earliest comprehensive statement of

intent by a "modernistic" American composer, and in

its intransigence and adolescent self-confidence it speaks

for aU those who, better or worse equipped man Cowell

to plot the course of musical history, nevertheless at

tempt to do so.

lt may not be safe to pl'edict-but then Cowell cared

little for safety-that if the course of music should be

changed in this century it will be the work of that body

of American pioneers (eccentrics, if you will) to whom

Cowell had the privilege of being the musical father

figure. We all owe him gratitude, both as a musician

and as an individual. This extraordinary book may help

explain why.

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Cowell Henry New Musical Resources

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