Clusters

Tone clusters, then, are chords built from major and minor seconds which in turn may be derived from the upper reaches o the overtone seriers and have, therefore, a sound foundation.

-Henry Cowell on Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (Schwartz and Childs)

Cowell, as a composer, had unique aims in searching for his own musical style. He was fascinated with primitive music or primitivism and folkloric music, particularly with non-western instruments. I believe that this opened his mind to many new means of sound production – using your palms, fists, elbows, and forearms when playing the piano made him discover certain musical textures and timbres. This technique will be later known as Clustering.

One of the known works of Cowell that employed tone clusters was his 1912 piece entitled The Tides of Manaunnaun. All throughout the duration of the piece, Tone Clusters are very eminent in the accompaniment section. This creates a sort of vibrant and sonorific characteristic. The melody of the piece is very singable and lyrical, and although there’s the fact that the ‘singable’ melody superimposes the unlyrical superimposed secundal accompaniment, the character of the piece has a very strong, folkloric element. Cowell was smart to have separated the melody and accompaniment in 2 or even 3 octaves, so that the music does not sound ‘clashing and mishmashing’ – by this, he achieves musical balance.  And by playing with fists, palms, and elbows seems to have some sort of effect to the listener both visually and aurally. It really does create that seemingly 20^th century element.