Night (TTBBB chorus, falsetto or boys' chorus ad libitum, a cappella)

Henry Cowell

Publication Information

From Day, Evening, Night, Morning (1950)

Original Listing

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Night

Biographical Information

(1897-1965) Henry Cowell studied at the University of California. He later wrote a book entitled New Musical Resources (1919; published 1930), an influential technical study of music. He taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City from 1932 to 1952 and, from 1949, at Columbia University. With the Russian engineer Leon Theremin, Cowell built the Rhythmicon, an electronic instrument that could produce 16 different simultaneous rhythms, and he composed Rhythmicana (1931; first performed 1971) specifically for the instrument. One of Cowell's most famous early compositional innovations was the tone cluster — thick chords made up of major and minor seconds — which he played all over the piano with his forearms and fists. In order to publish the scores of modern composers, he founded the New Music Quarterly in 1927 and was its editor until 1936. He also edited American Composers on American Music (1933). He and his wife, Sidney Cowell, co-wrote Charles Ives and His Music (1955).


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