The Amazing Mr. Cowell

When Henry Cowell founded the New Music Society in Los Angeles in 1925 (Figure 1), he discovered very quickly that there were few contemporary scores available for his performers. Other than manuscripts given to him by his friends Edgard Varese, Carl Ruggles, and Dane Rudhyar, scores of ultramodern music-the type Cowell planned to perform at his concerts-were not accessible because commercial publishers were not interested. But since he was Henry Cowell and had the great Irish god Manaunaun on his side, he solved the problem almost singlehandedly; in 1927 he established the New Music Quarterly. Only a man like Cowell with the audacity to battle the establishment and the resourcefulness to find new ways of tackling musical problems would take on such an overwhelming task. How long Cowell intended to continue publishing New Music-a journal of scores only and whether he planned at some time to turn it over to a commercial enterprise are not known, but the happy outcome of his original plan became a landmark in contemporary music, which lasted thirty-two years, published over 200 works, and became an inspiration for avant-garde composers in America and around the world

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Battle · Contemporary classical music · Irish · Literature · Musical · Performance art · Publishing · Visual arts · History · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy