In 1923, American composer and pianist, Henry Cowell (1897-1965) gave his first highly successful concert tour of Europe, playing his own unique compositions. This thesis details this tour and discusses its impact. Considering the enormous impact of Cowell’s tour, it has only been discussed briefly. Cowell performed in many European cities, especially in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London, achieving positive reviews and some notoriety. I discuss how and why he created such an impact, not only during the tour but also immediately following it, in relation to musical life in Europe and the differences between his piano music and the piano music that was being heard at the time. On his tour, Cowell showcased many new piano techniques he had invented, some of which he had discussed in his treatise New Musical Resources (1919). His clusters, string-piano technique and to some degree, his experiments with time and metre, were very new and influenced later generations of composers. His music created such passionate responses from the Europeans that when he returned to America, attitudes towards him and his music had changed for the better. In Europe, Cowell was also impressed by the various societies and publications devoted to new music and as a result he founded, in America, the New Music Society and the publication New Musical Quarterly. These promoted mostly American composers devoted to avant-garde developments in music, providing the foundation for the development of American music.

Henry Cowell (1897-1965), American composer in 20th century, is the first who proposed the concept of tone clusters and placed many new techniques in his piano music. Innovative music theories and unique thoughts were displayed in his compositions and critiques. For developing both new visual and audio effects of piano music, Cowell played tone clusters with arms, palms, and fists, and also played strings inside piano to give new gesture and timbre of piano. This thesis is divided into three parts besides introduction and conclusion. The first part describes the origin and development of new piano techniques in the 20th century. The second part investigates Cowell¡¦s compositional career, compositional methods and thoughts for piano music. The third part analyzes ways of performing tone clusters and strings in Cowell¡¦s solo piano pieces with new techniques. Through analyzing these particular techniques, the compositional methods and uniqueness of Cowell¡¦s piano music could be understood. In the meanwhile, the performers will pay more attention to avoid performing injuries and damaging pianos.

In the scholarship surrounding piano repertoire, Henry Cowell is seen as a kind of “one-hit-experimental-wonder,” being know mostly for his astonishingly progressive piece The Banshee. However, Cowell was an enigmatic composer, a diverse scholar, an influential proponent new music, as well as a music theorist and comparative musicologist. Therefore in order to gain a more complete understanding of Cowell and his deeply influential piano works, this project seeks to explore the philosophical, cultural, and non- Western musical influences that inspired Cowell’s novel experimentation at the piano.

abstract: This research will explore the compositional approaches of Henry Cowell and John Cage to reveal piano techniques for the practice and performance of selected works. The discussion will focus on Henry Cowell’s Three Irish Legends and Six Ings, as well as John Cage’s The Perilous Night. An important contribution of Cowell was to further the use of tone clusters, applied in his Three Irish Legends by playing directly with the forearm, fists, and palm. Cowell’s Six Ings employ rhythmic experimentation, particularly in the first, second, and sixth pieces. He also uses tone color to portray specific programmatic features. John Cage greatly advanced the prepared piano from its earliest beginnings, as evidenced significantly in The Perilous Night. The present study will include advice on piano preparation, along with performance challenges and solutions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020

Die Einbeziehung des Klangs in die analytische Musikbetrachtung erscheint spätestens im 20. Jahrhunderts eine unausweichliche Herausforderung an die musiktheoretische Forschung. Ausgangspunkt der hier vorgestellten Studie ist der musikalische Cluster. Cluster markieren die Schnittstelle zwischen tonhöhengeleitetem Harmoniebegriff und geräuschhaften Klangmaterial. Mit Henry Cowells Buch New musical resources (1930) existiert zudem eine kompositorische Theorie zur Clustertechnik. Für die wahrnehmungspsychologische Studie wurden zunächst zehn Prototypen von Clustern entwickelt, die teils Cowells Klavierwerken entstammen (z.B. diatonisch, pentatonisch, chromatisch) und teils nach theoretischen Überlegungen konstruiert waren. Mit experimentellen Methoden gingen wir der Frage des Konzept-Perzept-Verhältnisses nach, also ob diese Prototypen auditiv überhaupt unterscheidbar sind, welche Hörexpertise dafür notwendig ist und welche psychoakustischen Eigenschaften die Cluster als Voraussetzung für eine auditive Diskriminierung haben müssen. Das angewandte Paradigma war eine Modifikation des MUSHRA Hörtests (MUlti Stimulus test with Hidden Reference and Anchor, ein Hörtest zur Ermittlung der Audioqualität von datenreduzierenden Algorithmen wie MP3). Die Probanden beurteilten hierbei die Ähnlichkeit der Cluster-Klänge im Vergleich zu einem zuvor festgelegten Referenzklang. Das Ergebnis der Studie zeigte, dass sich die Ähnlichkeitsratings in zwei Gruppen aufteilen lassen: (a) Cluster, deren perzeptuelle Ähnlichkeitseinschätzung von ihrer Clusterdichte abhingen und (b) Cluster, deren Klangstruktur eine perzeptuelle Sättigung aufwiesen, was die Differenzierung erschwerte. Auch die psychoakustischen Untersuchungen der Stimuli korrelierten stark mit den Ergebnissen des Ähnlichkeitsratings. Die Beobachtungen ermöglichen es, die Wirkung von Clustern empirisch fundiert zu beschreiben. Das Ziel der weiteren Forschung wird es sein, den Zusammenhang der Clustertheorie mit anderen Klangformen zu untersuchen. / The musical tone cluster is a prototypical sound of avant-garde music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Tone clusters mark a boundary between pitch-related techniques of composing in earlier epochs to the use of sound-based materials in avant-garde music. The composer Henry Cowell offered the first theoretical reflection on the structure of tone clusters with a focus on tone density, which relies on the number of tones and the ambitus of a cluster (Cowell, 1930). Using experimental methods, we investigated whether participants were able to discriminate between various types of tone clusters (e.g., pentatonic, diatonic or chromatic) and how they evaluated their similarities. We also questioned whether a timbre-based approach using psychoacoustical methods of analysis could be used to explain the perception of avant-garde music sounds. Ten different prototypical tone cluster chords varying in density were presented in two studies. Additionally, the relation between similarity ratings and psychoacoustic features was examined. The design of the study was based on an adaption of the Multi Stimulus with Hidden Reference and Anchor (MUSHRA) paradigm (International Telecommunication Union, 2014). With this method, participants rated the similarity between a firstly chosen reference tone cluster and the other cluster sounds. The tone clusters could be grouped into two classes of sounds based on the similarity ratings of the participants: (a) those clusters with a high grade of perceptual discrimination depending on the cluster density and (b) those clusters of a more aurally saturated structure, making it difficult to separate and evaluate them. The results also showed congruency between theoretical features of the cluster structure, results of the timbre feature analysis, and perceptual evaluation of stimuli. The findings can provide valuable insights into aural training methods for avant-garde music. In future research, there will be a need to identify more variables influencing the aural perception of musical sounds to aid in listening to and understanding avant-garde music.

In recent decades the interpretation of music history of the interwar period was determined by factors which allowed only national or folkloristic approaches to modern music in Hungary. However, the composers of the group ‘Modern Hungarian Musicians’, connected to the forums of the New Music like the ISCM or Cowell‘s NMS, were committed to a transcultural view of musical innovation. Through intermedial connections between literary and fine art, they received non-musical impulses by modern and avantgarde movements. This paper makes an approach on their heterogeneous conception of music with the common sense, to set a renewal of the musical language as its goal.