Henry Cowell - The Banshee

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Henry Cowell

Born: 1897 Died: 1965 
 
A tireless musical explorer and inventor, Henry Cowell was born 11 March 1897 in Menlo Park, California, where he grew up surrounded by a wide variety of Oriental musical traditions, his father's Irish folk heritage, and his mother's Midwestern folktunes. Already composing in his early teens, Cowell began formal training at age 16 with Charles Seeger at the University of California. Further studies focused primarily on world music cultures. His use of varied sound materials, experimental compositional procedures, and a rich palette colored by multiple non-European and folk influences revolutionized American music and popularized, most notably, the tone cluster as an element in compositional design.


In addition to tone clusters evident in such works as Advertisement and Tiger, Cowell experimented with the "string piano" in works like The Aeolian Harp and The Banshee where strings are strummed or plucked inside the piano. Studies of the musical cultures of Africa, Java, and North and South India enabled Cowell to stretch and redefine Western notions of melody and rhythm; mastery of the gamelan and the theory of gamelan composition led to further explorations with exotic instruments and percussion. Later, Cowell developed the concept of indeterminancy or "elastic form" in works like the Mosaic Quartet (where performers determine the order and alternation of movements).

 

Morton Feldman - For Samuel Beckett

From Samuel Beckett Apmonia:

For Samuel Beckett

1987. For chamber orchestra: Double wind quartet, muted brass septet, string quintet, piano-harp-vibraphone trio. (45-55 minutes.)

Morton Feldman's For Samuel Beckett
The last large work composed by Morton Feldman before his death in 1987, For Samuel Beckett comes from a ten-year relationship with the writer, and was partly inspired by his work in setting Beckett's Words and Music in 1986.

Like many Feldman pieces, For Samuel Beckett is a lengthy exploration in sonic textures. (As Paul Cook calls it, an "eerie, meditative study in slow, dissonant pulses and atonal moods.") Since the many liner notes below go into great detail explaining the structure and compositional theory behind the piece, I will confine my remarks to a simple description -- which is fairly easy, as Feldman's work often seems best described, rather than explained. Indeed, my description is quite similar to that of Wilson's liner notes, which I read only after writing my own impressions. (I am completely aware that I am about to use visual metaphors to describe an aural experience; if this troubles you, please redirect your browser to Gramophone.com and look up something nice by that Brahms fellow.)

Imagine if you will being suddenly immersed in a vast space that extends around you in all dimensions. Above and below you are great, drifting blocks of color and texture -- dark reds, burnt yellows, occasional swatches of vibrant blue. They drift, slowly, ominously, shimmering as they pass over each other, sometimes blurry, sometimes snapping clearly into focus. Once in a while wavering forms seem to percolate up from the depths and vanish through the obscured ceiling, and somewhere in the distance it sounds like a child is playing a piano. Occasionally the blocks seem to line up, and just for a second you can see through the patterns into a vast, silent space beyond --- but only for a second. Or, at other times, they seem too clustered, too muddled, and you can almost hear the rasp of their edges as they slide off each other. There is also something vaguely sinister about them; perhaps their edges are to jagged, and they seem to loom a bit too much. In fact, it seems to be a bit claustrophobic in here, and the fact that you were just dropped there all of a sudden doesn't help -- has this been going on forever? Will it continue to go on forever? And when will you emerge? But after awhile you begin to feel less confined; in fact, there is something almost peaceful about the drifting blocks, like God gave Mark Rothko permission to design tectonic plates. After a while the patterns seem to become more pleasing; once you stopped trying to look for them, they started to emerge more readily. Oh, sure, this isn't a place where you'd want to settle down, set up shop and raise some kids; but its really not that sinister, is it? The blocks haven't actually hurt you, have they...? And just around the time you are starting to grow used to them, if not actually fond of them, they dissolve, and you are left with a silence like a thundering roar.