Editing Henry Cowell (section)

==Early life==
===Childhood===
Cowell was born on March 11, 1897, in rural [[Menlo Park, California]], a suburb of [[San Francisco]].<ref name=lat/> His father, Henry Blackwood "Harry" Cowell, was a romantic [[poet]] and recent immigrant from [[County Clare]], [[Ireland]].<ref name=risch>Rischitelli, p. 17</ref> His mother, [[Clarissa Dixon|Clara "Clarissa" Cowell]] (née Dixon), was a [[activism|political activist]], [[author]], and native of the [[American Plains]], who was 46 when she gave birth to Henry in addition to being over ten years older than her husband.<ref name=risch/><ref>Sachs, pp. 14-15</ref><ref name=ancestry>[https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/877904:5187%20%20Clarissa%20Dixon%20in%20the%20California,%20U.S.,%20Death%20Index,%201905-1939 Clarissa Dixon in the California, U.S., Death Index, 1905-1939], ancestry.com. Retrieved April 13, 2022.</ref><ref name=abc>Peters, Cathy; Livingston, Guy (2014). [https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/intothemusic/5318730 ''"The extraordinary life of Henry Cowell"''] ''Australian Broadcasting Corporation'', Retrieved 20 June 2022</ref> Clarissa's ancestry was similarly [[Scotland|Scotch]] and Irish, although her paternal lineage had been in America for centuries, with figures including astronomer [[Jeremiah Dixon]], one of the surveyors behind the American [[Mason–Dixon line]].<ref>Sachs, p. 11</ref> After meeting for the first time, the two quickly wed and undertook [[bohemianism|bohemian]] lifestyles, residing in a small, crude [[cottage]] (later demolished in 1936) Harry had built on the outskirts of the city — where Henry would eventually be born. It was in his first few years that Henry had his first exposures to music.<ref name=s2>Sachs, p. 19</ref>[[File:Henry Cowell playing the violin — aged 5.jpg|thumb|left|upright 0.8|Henry Cowell playing the violin — aged 5 ({{circa|1902}})]]

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.<ref name=time>(30 November 1953). [https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,823160,00.html "Music: Pioneer at 56"]. ''Time''. Retrieved 11 June 2022.</ref><ref>Blumhofer, Jonathan (2018). [https://artsfuse.org/171144/rethinking-the-repertoire-23-henry-cowells-piano-concerto/ "Rethinking the Repertoire #23 – Henry Cowell's Piano Concerto"]. ''The Arts Fuse''. Retrieved 13 June 2022.</ref> During occasional visits to downtown San Francisco, he also recalled hearing the traditional music of [[music of Indonesia|Indonesia]], [[music of China|China]], [[music of Japan|Japan]], and others.<ref name=abc/> The family was gifted small instruments by friends and neighbors, including a [[zither|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.<ref name=risch/><ref name=s3>Sachs, pp. 23-24</ref> 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.<ref name=s3/><ref>Carwithen, Edward Ralph, "Henry Cowell: Composer and Educator," (1991) PhD Diss., University of Florida, p. 200</ref>

Due to an ongoing affair between Harry and a French mistress, the Cowells amicably divorced in 1903, by which time Henry was 5.<ref>Tommasini, Anthony (1997), [https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/arts/modern-times-catch-up-to-a-past-maverick.html "Modern Times Catch Up to a Past Maverick"], ''The New York Times'', Retrieved 11 June 2022.</ref> He was thereafter raised in [[Chinatown, San Francisco|Chinatown]] by his mother, who imbued him with her strong [[anarchism|anarchist]] and [[feminism|feminist]] beliefs. It was during this time he exhibited a strong defiance of [[Gender role|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".<ref name=s2/> He also had further music exposures when engaging with his new [[Asian Americans|Asian-American]] friends and their families in the neighborhood.<ref name=s4>Hicks, p. 22</ref><ref>Daniel, p. 73</ref> 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 the state of [[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]]".<ref>Lewis M. Terman, ''The Intelligence of School Children'' (1919), p. 246</ref> [[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"<ref>Lewis M. Terman, "Notes on Henry. March 1, 1917." Copy of holograph.</ref> and, "Although the IQ is satisfactory, it is matched by scores of others. [...] But there is only one Henry."<ref>Skinner, pp. 107-108</ref> 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]].<ref name=ancestry/> They found their home destroyed from the prior earthquake, and looted by [[vandalism|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.<ref>Daniel, p. 74</ref>

===Education and early career===

[[File:Dynamic Motion Manuscript 1916.jpg|thumb|The original manuscript to ''[[Dynamic Motion]]'' (1916), showing the young Cowell's early methods for notating large piano clusters]] While receiving no formal musical education (and little schooling of any kind beyond his mother's [[homeschooling|home tutelage]]), he began to compose short classical pieces in his mid-teens. Cowell saved what money he could from odd jobs, and at the age of fifteen, purchased a used [[upright piano]] for $60 ($1,772 in 2022).<ref name=h68>Hicks, p. 68</ref> The piano significantly aided his compositional output — by 1914, he had written over 100 pieces, including his first surviving piece for solo piano, the repetitive ''Anger Dance'' (originally ''Mad Dance'').{{refn|Cowell describes the inspiration for the piece in the commentary track he recorded for Folkways in 1963: "The ''Anger Dance'' was composed at a time when I had been very much annoyed by the fact that a doctor to whom I showed a bent-up leg suggested that it should be cut off immediately. And since I didn't in the least approve of this, and thinking of it over and over again made me more and more angry, I stomped home on my crutches, and the phrases of the ''Anger Dance'' went through my mind louder and louder as I walked home" (track 20/5:06–5:41). Cowell biographer Michael Hicks (2002) describes the work as one of Cowell's "most prescient" and "proto-minimalist" (p. 60). The piece does, in terms of structure, anticipate [[Minimalist music|minimalist]] procedures, and an interpretation by Steffen Schleiermacher from 1993 is simultaneously metronomic and jazzy in a way that reveals its kinship with the work of [[Steve Reich]], in particular. But in his own 1963 recording, Cowell expresses a torment, through jagged [[Tempo|tempi]] and ambivalent [[dynamics (music)|dynamics]] (all clearly purposeful), that renders ''Anger Dance'' very different in character from the work of the American minimalists.|group=n}} He would begin experimenting in earnest, often by slamming the keyboard with all his strength, and rolling his mother's [[darning#Tools|darning egg]] across the strings.<ref>Hays, Sorrel (2017). [https://folkways.si.edu/magazine-winter-2017-henry-cowell-mellifluous-cacophony-and-its-legacy/article/smithsonian "Henry Cowell: Mellifluous Cacophony and Its Legacy"] ''Smithsonian Folkways Magazine''. Retrieved 13 June 2022.</ref> In the same year, at the age of 17, Cowell enrolled at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], studying composition with renowned American [[musicology|musicologist]] and composer [[Charles Seeger]]. Seeger later made note of their, "concurrent but entirely separate pursuit[s] of free composition and academic disciplines." After showing Seeger the drafts of his music, he encouraged Cowell to write about the methods and theory behind his tone clusters, which later became the draft for his book ''New Musical Resources''.<ref name=h68/>

Still a teenager, Cowell wrote the piano piece ''[[Dynamic Motion]]'' (1916), his first important work to explore the possibilities of the [[tone cluster]] ({{Audio|Cowell-Dynamic Motion.ogg|listen}}). It requires the performer to use both forearms to play massive [[secundal]] [[Chord (music)|chords]] and calls for keys to be held down without sounding to extend its [[Consonance and dissonance|dissonant]] cluster [[overtone]]s via [[sympathetic resonance]]. After two years at Berkeley, Seeger recommended that Cowell study at the Institute of Musical Art (later the [[Juilliard School of Music]]) in New York City. Cowell only studied there for three months (October 1916 to January 1917) before dropping out, believing the musical atmosphere was too stifling and uninspiring.<ref name=bartok>Bartok et al., p. 14</ref> It was in New York, however, where he met fellow modernist piano composer [[Leo Ornstein]]. The two would collaborate in later decades.<ref name=bartok/>

In February 1917, Cowell enlisted in the army to avoid being drafted in [[World War I]] and seeing direct military combat. He served in the ambulance training facility at [[Camp Crane]], [[Allentown, Pennsylvania]], where he had a short stint as the assistant band director for a few months. In October 1918, Cowell was transferred to [[Fort Ontario]] in [[Oswego, New York|Oswego]], [[New York (state)|New York]]. He was transferred just before an outbreak of the Spanish flu killed thirteen men at Camp Crane.<ref>Hicks, pp. 91-96</ref>

===Time at Halcyon===

Cowell soon returned to California, where he had become involved with [[Halcyon, California|Halcyon]], a [[Theosophy (Blavatskian)|theosophical]] community in Southern California. Cowell joined the commune after befriending [[Irish Americans|Irish-American]] [[poet]] and former Menlo Park resident [[John Varian|John Osborne Varian]].<ref name=h13>Hammond, p. 13</ref> Cowell's connection to Irish folk music from his father meant he was instantly drawn to Varian, [[Irish nationalism]], [[Irish mythology|Celtic legends]], and theosophy more broadly. Although the residents at Halcyon embraced a tolerant and [[communism|communist]]-leaning lifestyle, their music preferences were considered quite conservative for the time. Varian described it as "sangtified [[ragtime|raggtime]] [sic]" and, "rehymnified hymn music [sic]." Cowell managed to convince members to embrace his music, and wrote incidental and programmatic music to be performed at Halcyon.<ref name=h13/> In 1917, Cowell wrote the music for Varian's stage production ''The Building of Banba''; the prelude he composed, ''[[The Tides of Manaunaun]]'', with its rich, evocative clusters, would become Cowell's most famous and widely performed work.<ref>Hicks, p. 58</ref> Irish symbology later became a broader theme in his music, as an unwitting extension of the [[Celtic Revival]] movement of the 20th century.<ref>Lichtenwanger, pp. xxvii-xxviii</ref>