Henry Cowell

USA, 1912–1965

American avant-gardist who invented tone clusters and string piano technique. His New Musical Resources (1930) proposed rhythmic and tonal systems far ahead of their time.

MusicRoots documents 2 artists who influenced Henry Cowell and 4 artists Henry Cowell influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Henry Cowell?

• Charles Ives — Charles Ives was Cowell's primary mentor and the model for his American experimental thinking.
• Béla Bartók — Bartók's integration of folk music into modernism was a key model for Cowell's approach to American vernacular traditions.

Which artists did Henry Cowell influence?

• John Cage — Henry Cowell was John Cage's direct teacher — he introduced Cage to non-Western music, extended piano techniques and American experimentalism.
• Burt Bacharach — Henry Cowell was among Bacharach's composition teachers — part of the modernist training behind his unconventional song structures.
• Carl Ruggles — The American contemporary Ruggles is documented as drawing on, and the one who kept getting his music played.
• John J. Becker — Meeting Cowell in 1928 turned a conservatory-trained Midwestern organist into a modernist and an organiser of other people's new music.