Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher, and music teacher. Earning a reputation as an extremely controversial performer and eccentric composer, Cowell became a leading figure of American avant-garde music for the first half of the 20th century. His writings and music served as a great influence on composers such as Lou Harrison, George Antheil, and John Cage. He is considered one of the most important and influential composers from the United States. Cowell was mostly self-taught and developed a unique musical language, often blending folk melodies, dissonant counterpoint, unconventional orchestration, and influences from ancient Celtic religion. He was an early proponent and innovator of many modernist compositional techniques and sensibilities, including string piano, prepared piano, tone clusters, and graphic notation. The Tides of Manaunaun, originally a theatrical prelude, is the best-known and most widely-performed of Cowell's tone cluster pieces for piano. He was married to ethnomusicologist Sidney Robertson Cowell.
Early life
Childhood Cowell was born on March 11, 1897, in rural Menlo Park, California. His father, Henry Blackwood "Harry" Cowell, was a romantic poet and then-recent immigrant from County Clare, Ireland. His mother, Clara "Clarissa" Cowell (née Dixon), was a political activist, author, and native of the Great Plains. She was 46 when she gave birth to Henry and over ten years older than her husband. Clarissa's ancestry was similarly Scottish and Irish, although her paternal lineage had been in America for centuries, with figures including Jeremiah Dixon. After meeting for the first time, the two quickly wed and undertook bohemian lifestyles, residing in a small, crude cottage Harry had built on the outskirts of the city and where Henry would eventually be born. It was in his first few years that Henry had his first exposure to music. His parents often sang to him the folk songs of their native homelands, and he was soon able to recite them before he learned to speak. During occasional visits to downtown San Francisco, he also recalled hearing the traditional music of Indonesia, China, Japan, and others. The family was gifted small instruments by friends and neighbors, including a mandolin harp and a quarter-size violin, the latter of which the young Henry took an interest in, making it his instrument of choice for a few years. His mother eventually decided to stop both the private lessons and his public school career after Cowell had severe bouts of Sydenham's chorea and scarlet fever — from which he eventually recovered. Due to an ongoing affair between Harry and a French mistress, the Cowells amicably divorced in 1903, by which time Henry was 5. He was thereafter raised in Chinatown by his mother, who imbued him with her strong anarchist and feminist beliefs. It was during this time he exhibited a strong defiance of gender stereotypes — he refused to have his hair cut, often wore women's clothing and adored the color pink while preferring to be called "Mrs. Jones". He also had further music exposures when engaging with his new Asian-American friends and their families in the neighborhood. After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, much of the Cowells' possessions and memorabilia were destroyed in the ensuing fire, after which Henry and his mother fled California. With no permanent place to live, Henry resided with his mother's family and friends around the American Plains and Midwest, later in New York City. School teachers of this time often took note of his "musical genius" and eccentric personality that was hindered by "extreme poverty". Lewis Terman, an eventual pioneer of the IQ test, met with the young Henry during the family's brief stay in rural Iowa. He would posit that Cowell had, "language almost literary. No college professor of English could have improved upon it. And it was so natural. His conversation breathes intelligence. I had the feeling that no unschooled boy who was not a genius of the first order could speak thus" and, "Although the IQ is satisfactory, it is matched by scores of others. [...] But there is only one Henry." Clarissa's career as a progressive feminist writer did not earn her much money, and by the time they eventually returned to San Francisco, she had become terminally ill with breast cancer. They found their home destroyed from the prior earthquake, and looted by vandals after standing unoccupied for so long. Neighbors housed the two as the then thirteen-year-old Henry restored it. In order to keep them financially afloat, he took up small jobs such as picking and selling flower bulbs at the Menlo Park Train Station, janitorial work, farming, and cleaning a neighbor's chicken houses.
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