Pursuing a two-CD presentation of famous and infamous Henry Cowell – an American enfant terrible of sorts – is a delicate venture. How does one begin? What does one include? What angle to use?
Well, Mode Records have concentrated on the chamber aspect, and provided the public with an indispensable release, casting a lot of light on the too often quite misunderstood genius of Mr. Cowell. Laura Kaminsky, the producer of this valuable set of recordings, has succeeded in her aim of carving out a new place for Henry Cowell in the mind of America, and the compositions presented, played by The Colorado String Quartet and different combinations of the skilled musicians of Musicians Accord, are heard in shadings and nuances of sheer brilliance.

As the text in the booklet certifies, Cowell is mostly known for his avant-garde leanings and his more boisterous gestures – but there were many other sides to his personality; quite readily apparent in his rich chamber output. The pieces on the CDs span his whole career, from his youth (the 1916 piece “Pedantic”; “String Quartet No. 1” and the 1915 – 1917 piece “Quartet Romantic” as well as his 1916 – 1919 work “Quartet Euphometric” to his old age piece “26 Simultaneous Mosaics” of 1963.

In Cowell’s chamber efforts we find tonal and atonal music alike, strictly notated or open - and many rays of light converge in his prism, scattering styles and intimacies all over the place.

The Colorado String Quartet opens with “Mosaic Quartet” (“String Quartet No. 3”) (1935) in a slow, intense inward gaze, cross-legged in the middle of existence, slightly elevated a couple of decimeters above the wooden floor – and Walden Pond is not far off, nor the soaring thoughts of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The gesture is an open hand motioning to the heart and the head, but expressively to the heart – and a Shostakovich fairy dances off in spirals out of Cowell’s gentle aim in the second movement of the quartet. This 1935 quartet is a gem, filled with listening pleasure, and some measure of thoughtfulness too, inward glances…
However, the performance practices laid down by the composer appear to belong to more modern times. The five patterns of the piece are to be played in “any desired order”, for example. Even so, there are sections herein resembling especially Shostakovich, but also Bartok.

Next work bores thirty years into the future, to 1963; “26 Simultaneous Mosaics”, here performed by Jo-Ann Sternberg [clarinet], Deborah Redding [violin], Dorothy Lawson [cello], William Trigg [percussion] and Amy Rubin [piano].
The introduction is a rolling piano figure, instantly handing the action over to a fast jigsaw of a violin moving like East Baltic minimalism across the score, as the piano returns in little ripples with the clarinet and an almost shocking, ears-shattering percussion, and this is brilliant modernism, delicate and furious simultaneously, gentle and rough – the way to be…
The score is in shambles, so to say. It isn’t fully written out as a whole, but consists of a number of parts, sub-divided into sections, adding up to 26 all in all. Cowell wrote: “All players start and stop as they please and choose the order of the movements as they please”. Cowell also called for a lot of rests, giving the music transparency and lightness.
The instructions almost sound like something out of a Stockhausen score.
There is a wonderful interplay going here, wherein the players reflect off of each others parts in distinguished bows and bends, swirling about in a delicacy of movement that amplifies the color and solidity of the overall tone, in turn paying homage to the great artistry of the musicians themselves. Prism music!
Three different versions of this open-form work are offered; one on CD 1 and two on CD 2. The musicians are the same on all three, but the versions naturally come across in different guises, owing to the open score.

The “Suite for Woodwind Quintet” was written in 1934. The players are Kathleen Nester [flute], Matt Sullivan [oboe], Jo-Ann Sternberg [clarinet], David Smith [French horn] and Atsuko Sato [bassoon]. This is a small piece of less than five minute’s duration, fully scored. It approaches kind of solemn, but with a flair of glittering overtones blowing of the music like magic powder of a fairy in bright flight. On a backdrop of a slowly waving (like a sea plant) bassoon, the oboe dances a frivolous dance of no blushes, and the others create a framework of Mediterranea… It’s classic, but with a side-wards glance of a laughing eye, an Oscar Wilde-eye… Even a Stravinsky soldier can be seem marching across the stage in jerky movements, while the tin soldiers of a boy’s shelf stand alert, battle-ready, as the boy falls asleep in the subdued lighting of a north German town on the North Sea summer coast of June.

“Movement for String Quartet” (“String Quartet No. 2”) (1928) is next. The Colorado String Quartet performs. It’s a dissonant complexity that rolls our way, and the web of sounds is tight, thick, dense. It might have been very avant-garde at the time of composition, but these days most people interested in modern music will enjoy this music in a relaxed and laid-back mood, while the circular tensions of this star-sharp score slices the area closest to the loudspeakers in thin layers of compressed air. With just four minutes’ duration, the event is over almost before it starts…

“Return” (1939) isn’t much longer, about five minutes. The musicians are William Trigg [percussion], Kory Grossman [percussion] and Rex Benincasa [percussion]. A percussion trio got to be interesting, and from 1939! It enters in a sparse, eastern imagery, making its way cautiously through the underbrush, until it reaches a meadow with ample space for banging and stomping! The temple ruins are grown over with greenery, and the birds of paradise surround the site. A light-pawed creature feels its way inside the music, measuring its expanse with careful steps, sometimes stopping dead still with one paw in the air in front of it, listening, turning the ears back and forth like a cats. A human wail concludes this percussive event.

“Quartet for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harp” (1962) ends CD 1. The participants here are Kathleen Nester [flute], Matt Sullivan [oboe], Dorothy Lawson [cello] and Susan Jolles [harp]. I would never have guessed that Henry Cowell wrote this music, and I would have a hard time deciding the period… It sounds old, but I don’t know how old… Maybe it’s just timeless… Why did Cowell compose this? Was it a pastime for him, or an exercise of sorts? There is contemplative, tender thoughtfulness at play, and the music is pleasant… but probably – to me at least – the most unexpected of the works on this set.

The second CD begins with “Polyphonica” (1928) – a short piece played by The Colorado String Quartet and many of the members of Musicians Accord, all directed by Tania León. The instruments are flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, 2 violins, viola, cello and string bass. The key here is dissonant counterpoint, sounding very pleasing to contemporary ears, as the spear-head atmosphere has worn of totally through the decades, leaving the exciting construction wide open to our receptive minds. It’s at times mighty, this music, and at times reflective, poised as an impressionistic gesture, but then again moving into rhythmic sections worthy of a Prokofiev!

The second version of “26 Simultaneous Mosaics” (1963) follows, this time opening with cello and percussion, gearing up in a frenzy. Comparing the different outcomes of these versions of the “same” piece is rewarding. I am very impressed by how these musicians so well succeed in grouping the different sections in beautiful and nerve-rackingly intriguing combinations. As a hippie of the 1970s would have said: far out, man – out of sight! The musicians are the same this time around: Jo-Ann Sternberg [clarinet], Deborah Redding [violin], Dorothy Lawson [cello], William Trigg [percussion] and Amy Rubin [piano].

“Quartet Euphometric” (1916 – 1919), played by The Colorado String Quartet, is a very short etude indeed; just over two minutes – a true miniature! However, Cowell here demonstrates his own way of using the twelve-tone scale, applying both consonance and dissonance throughout (maybe on account of his lack of knowledge of the development of twelve-tone music in Europe at the time), but in rhythmics of a layered polyphony that points ahead to composers like Conlon Nancarrow.

“Quartet Romantic” (1915 – 1917) is a piece of more substantial duration with two movements of about fifteen and five minutes. What is said about “Quartet Euphometric” could apply to this quartet too, since Cowell utilizes his “rhythm-harmony” method in both compositions. “Quartet Romantic” is more romantic, though; wouldn’t you have guessed! The players are Kathleen Nester [flute], Gretchen Pusch [flute], Julie Rosenfeld [violin] and Lois Martin [viola]. The two flutes entangle and grow like the red rose and the brier in the beautiful ballad of Barbara Allen, which you may have heard with Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan. The glistening surfaces of layers moving at different speeds, transparently allowing each layer to be viewed through the sometimes bewildering fabric of motion, renders a complexity of intellectual pleasure to the music, while sometimes lonely instruments are allowed supremacy and uniqueness, until new tonal layers are stuck in beneath like letters or secret messages under doors… This piece calls for many re-listenings, since so much is going on simultaneously that you cannot possibly take it in all at once.

“String Quartet No. 1” (“Pedantic”) (1916) follows. It is a short duration piece, at about six minutes, played by The Colorado String Quartet. This is the work of a 19-year-old composer, who already worked his medium with skill. It is said that melodic rather than rhythmical dissonance preoccupied Cowell in this piece. The break-aways and convergences respectively induces high tension into the progression, extending, retracting, moving along in a buoyancy of musical apprehension…

The final piece of this magnificent and necessary set from Mode Records is the third version of “26 Simultaneous Mosaics” (1963) again played by Jo-Ann Sternberg [clarinet], Deborah Redding [violin], Dorothy Lawson [cello], William Trigg [percussion] and Amy Rubin [piano].

Rarely does one come across a CD of such an importance for the domestic American musical autobiography as well as for the international awareness of the spirit of Henry Cowell; now much better acknowledged.