Cowell: Music for Strings_音乐专辑
Cowell: Music for Strings
表演者: Henry Cowell
专辑类型: Import
介质: Audio CD
发行时间: 1994-06-28
唱片数: 1
出版者: Cpo Records
条形码: 0761203922222
专辑简介
"Of all the early twentieth century American musical revolutionaries, perhaps composer Henry Cowell wielded the most vivid and far-reaching influence.......Until he began musical studies with Charles Seeger at the University of California at Berkeley in 1914, Cowell remained a basically self-taught musician, as well as a young man who had never spent so much as a day in school in his life. Seeger was impressed by the young Cowell's output -- over 100 compositions of varying quality by 1914 -- but was much more interested in the young composer's hyper-creative, open-minded musical personality. Free of the often confining attitudes which govern formal musical education, Cowell had come to view any sound as musical substance with which he could work, and his early music owes more to the influence of birdsong, machine noises and folk music than it does to any knowledge of earlier masterworks. In The Tides of Manaunaun, Cowell asks the pianist to use his or her fist, palm, and forearm on the keys of the instrument's bass register to evoke massive tidal waves; thus was born the tone cluster. Cowell used this and similar techniques in many later works, which proved to be highly influential for many of the "sound mass" composers of later decades, including Penderecki, Ligeti, and numerous electronic composers.
However, Seeger felt that without structure and guidelines Cowell would remain an unskilled, if impressively inventive, musician, and he encouraged the young composer to make a rigorous study of traditional harmony and counterpoint. In 1919, at Seeger's suggestion, Cowell finished a systematic treatise on his own music entitled New Musical Resources, in which he discusses new musical techniques, aesthetic directions, and possible alterations to the accepted system of musical notation. Concert appearances throughout North America and Europe during the 1920s earned Cowell countless friends and enemies throughout the musical establishment. Although he had earned the respect of such luminaries as Bartók and Schoenberg, his concerts frequently caused audience riots and invoked the wrath of critics who wondered if Cowell's headstrong independence disguised a lack of true musical craftsmanship. In the Aeolian Harp (1923), for piano, Cowell instructs the pianist to play "inside" the piano by sweeping, scraping, strumming, and muting the strings. The Banshee (1925) applies indeterminacy and graphic notation with instructions for the pianist to play exclusively inside the piano while an assistant holds down the damper pedal. Playing techniques include scraping the strings with a fingernail, and pizzicato effects, all performed in the lowest registers of the instrument, yielding resonant and primarily non-pitched waves of sound.
In 1931, with the help of Leon Theremin, he invented the rhythmicon, a device that produces various rhythms and cross-rhythms mechanically, for which he wrote a concerto (1932). ... Theremin built two more models. Soon, however, the Rhythmicon would be virtually forgotten, remaining so until the 1960s, when progressive pop music producer Joe Meek experimented with its rhythmic concept....... In the late 1950s he and his ethnomusicologist wife traveled throughout the Middle East, India, and Japan collecting musical materials, which he later incorporated into compositions.
He made such an impression with his tone cluster technique that Béla Bartók requested his permission to adopt it."
曲目
Work 1
Work Title: Ensemble
Excerpt(s): 1. Ensemble
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1925 rev 1956
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 2
Work Title: Fiddler's Jig
Excerpt(s): 1. Fiddler's Jig
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1952
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Main Performer: Marjorie Kransberg Talvi (Violin)
Opera Part(s): Marjorie Kransberg Talvi
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 3
Work Title: Air
Excerpt(s): 1. Air
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1952
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Main Performer: Marjorie Kransberg Talvi (Violin)
Opera Part(s): Marjorie Kransberg Talvi
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 4
Work Title: Variations on thirds
Excerpt(s): 1. Variations on thirds
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1960
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Main Performer: Eileen Swanson (Viola), Ruth Sereque (Viola)
Opera Part(s): Eileen Swanson, Ruth Sereque
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 5
Work Title: Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 2
Excerpt(s): 1. Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 2
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1944
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 6
Work Title: Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 5
Excerpt(s): 1. Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 5
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1945
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 7
Work Title: Hymn, Chorale and Fuguing tune No. 8
Excerpt(s): 1. Hymn, Chorale and Fuguing tune No. 8
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1947
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
Work 8
Work Title: Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 10
Excerpt(s): 1. Hymn and Fuguing tune No. 10
Composer: Henry (Dixon) Cowell (1897 - 1965)
Genre: Orchestral
Date Written: 1955
Date Recorded: 1993
Conductor: Alun Francis
Orchestra / Ensemble: Seattle Northwest Chamber Orchestra
Main Performer: Franck Avril (Oboe)
Opera Part(s): Franck Avril
Location of Work Recording: St John Vianney Church, Kirkland, Washington
