Cowell, The Banshee

I don’t pay much attention to Halloween, but once I decided to feature this work, it seemed appropriate to save it until we could get all of our ghosts and goblins dealt with at the same time. A mythical creature “banshee” comes from Irish folklore, and its wail signifies approaching death.

Henry Cowell (1897-1965) was among the American West Coast composers of the early 20th century (including John Cage and Harry Partch) who experimented with the musical possibilities of noise—”noise” referring to unfixed pitches or what might generally be considered non-musical sounds. Cowell’s The Banshee (1925) is played from inside the piano with a focus on sounds created by sliding along the strings. Cowell wrote in his book New Musical Resources:

Natural sounds, such as the wind playing through trees or grasses, or whistling in the chimney, or the sound of the sea, or thunder, all make use of sliding tones. It is not impossible that such tones may be made the foundation of an art of composition by some composer who would reverse the programatic concept. . . . Such a composer would build perhaps abstract music out of sounds of the same category as natural sound—that is, sliding pitches—not with the idea of trying to imitate nature, but as a new tonal foundation.

However this music strikes you, it certainly seems to capture the essence of a banshee.

Cowell introduced several groundbreaking techniques. Playing from inside the piano and use of “prepared” piano was picked up by others, notably John Cage. His tone clusters attracted the attention of Béla Bartók and Alban Berg. Many avant-garde composers acknowledged Cowell’s influence. He was, of course, controversial in his time, and there is one account of a virtual riot at his 1923 performance in Leipzig. Some members of the audience stormed the stage and threatened him physically. Others stormed the stage in his defense, and the police arrived to make a series of arrests. Cowell reportedly continued to play. He left the stage shaken but not seriously injured.