A01=Michael Hicks
aleatory music
American avant-garde composers
American composers
art music
atonality
Author_Michael Hicks
avant-garde music
avant-garde music theory
bohemian artists
bohemian community
bohemian movement
bohemian movement in California
bohemian musicians
California bohemian
Carmel art community
Category=AV
Charles Ives
Charles Seeger
Cowell and non-Western music
Cowell concerts
Cowell music theory
Cowell performances
Cowell piano techniques
Cowell technique
Cowell tone clusters
E. G. Stricklen
early twentieth century experimental music
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eq_non-fiction
experimental composers
experimental music
experimental music theorists
harmonic rhythm
Henry Cowell prison
keyboardists
Leo Ornstein
Leon Theremin
Lou Harrison
music theory
New Music Society
pianists
polyrhythms
polytonality
radical music
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Samuel Seward
San Francisco Bay community
San Francisco bohemian
San Quentin
tone clusters
Product details
- ISBN 9780252027512
- Weight: 513g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 21 Jun 2002
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Author of New Musical Resources and a teacher of John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Burt Bacharach, Henry Cowell is regarded as an innovator, rebel, and genius. Celebrated for the novelty of his playing, Cowell popularized a series of experimental piano-playing techniques that included pounding his fists and forearms on the keys and plucking the piano strings directly to achieve the exotic, dissonant sounds he desired.
Michael Hicks shows how the maverick composer, writer, teacher, and performer built his career on the intellectual and aesthetic foundations of his parents, community, and teachers--and exemplified the essence of bohemian California. Hicks traces Cowell's radical ideas to teachers like Charles Seeger, Samuel Seward, and E. G. Stricklen, his childhood in the tightknit artistic communities in the San Francisco Bay area, and the immeasurable influence of his parents. Focusing on Cowell's formative and most prolific years, Hicks examines the philosophical fervor that fueled the artist's whirlwind compositions and the ways his irrepressible spirit helped foster an appreciation in the United States and Europe for a new brand of American music.
Michael Hicks is a professor of music at Brigham Young University and a musician and composer. His books include The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A History and Mormonism and Music: A History.
