Cowell - Aeolian harp

I think people who do not know this piece will desire to see the score, so I've posted it also.

To be evaluated.

Cowell - Aeolian Harp

 

Hi Felipe,

You had good courage to play (or I should say strum) this oddity by Cowell. You did a fine job managing the score with excellent accuracy, being inside the piano as it were. It is a novelty.

I only wish that during the 20th Century, the U.S. had produced composers writing great music for piano. (Yes, there is the Barber Sonata, Gershwin's classical-jazz fusion, Griffes' impressionism, etc. and some others who's music endures. So I don't want to say there were none.) But mostly, we were blessed(?) here with people writing tone clusters, strummings for "prepared piano", tone rows, percussive random dissonance, etc. I believe that most of that experimentation will be soon forgotten, hopefully, as it never exploited the soul of the piano. I look at most 20th Century American piano music mostly as The Lost Century. I would guess that South America was not afflicted with this "style" of music to the extent North America was.

David

 

I really don't know...
but I think so. It was written in 1923, and I remember how astonished I got when I first listened to it... I found it "extremely" audacious, modern...

Cowell wrote many other pieces with diferent ways of playing the piano... and the good thing is that these pieces are extremely well written and EVEN beautiful. hehe (it means, it doesn't shock, you know? it's unusual, but not a silly vanguard for that time...)

other interesting pieces by him: Dynamic Motion, The Tides of Manaunaun, The Banshee, and Tiger


I think The Tides of Manaunaun has huge clusters, but I assure it was not the first time a piano cluster was written.
I know that Alkan wrote clusters of nine or eight notes in his Introduction et Impromptu Op. 55, never recorded yet.

 

sure it was...

maybe not so much as in the USA, since there was a preocupation with "nationalism" in South America... which is also a kind of exaggeration, because music is always music, and there are only two types of music according to Rossini: the good and the bad ones.
someone writes a piece which is not nationalistic... so what? :roll:
For example, in Brazil, people are in fact European (they are Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, German, who moved to Brazil... I myself have Polish and Russian grand-grandparents). The "true Brazilian people" have been dizimated...


But I like these "new" techniques for playing the piano, if used effectively when needed, of course. It generates new timbres for this instrument. And I think Cowell knows how to use them.

There is a Brazilian composer who wrote some pieces this way... it's Willy Correa. he's alive, and friend of my piano teacher (and of my ex-composition teacher).

 

I would record Cage's 4'33 next, but still need to study it. :lol:

 

This is very interesting Felipe! I remember in choir class at school when I was perhaps 8, our music teacher played a recording of the Banshee, and we all thought it was sooooo interesting, but were really disappointed that we couldn't duplicate it because the music room piano was an upright. That's the only work by him that I know, so thank you for recording this piece

 

oh, the Banshee is the most astonishing of all of them. it must be extremely difficult also... other kind of virtuosism...

well...
the Banshee can't be played in an upright? I don't know. I never tried.
Mine is an upright! 8)
It's easier to play Aeolian Harp in an upright than in a grand piano. Lots more comfortable. hehehe

 

I have to open strings. I remove the frontal part of the piano... and then get access to all of the strings.
I often do this for recording any piece, so that the sound is bigger.

I may record a video, but my parents are travelling (in Punta del Este) and they took the digital camera with them (I really don't know why... :shock: hehe)

 

That seems nicely and accurately done, though I have nothing to compare it with. Never realized that Cowell write such melodious things (but it's really the first thing I ever heard by him )

But what are all these thumping noises ? I would suppose you're instructed to keep the pedal down all the way for this piece ?

 

You make a good point about playing on the strings with an upright - it sounds much less straining on the back. But I bet you can also understand our teacher's reluctance to disassemble the piano in front of a big group of rowdy 8-year-olds. Thus it "wasn't possible to do" on that piano

 

one has to change pedal for each chord, and it must not be hold while strumming the strings. (only after being strummed)
besides that, for the chords to be defined while strumming, I must play the notes without sounding. all of the time I am with the left hand on keyboard and the right one on the strings. and there is a time when I must strum with the nail of the thumb, from left to right direction, so at this time my hands change role, and I have to change position. all of these make noises... :roll:

I'll try to make a video when I get the digital camera back. :wink:


If I'm not mistaken, The Tides of Manaunaun is very melodic also. It's Cowell's most beautiful piece, in my opinion. it has huge clusters to be played with the forearm in the bass, and the effect is nice. Kind of Alkan's Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer. :wink:

 

hm... I see.
but David was probably talking about strict classical music. Jazz is another style with other purposes... (though there is Gershwing, Joplin, etc etc)

We could say that the USA invented the Rock, the Disco, the Dance... but these are not classical (though I love dance and mainly disco!! hehe)

 

hm...
I think it is illegal...
It's not been past over 80 years after Cowell's death...

anyway... do what you find better with the PDF.