Synopsis

Today’s date marks the birth anniversaries of two major 20th century American composers: Carl Ruggles was born in East Marion, Massachusetts on today’s date in 1876, and Henry Cowell, in Menlo Park, California in 1897.

Ruggles was a tough old bird, who wrote a small handful of tough, uncompromising musical works. He was the conductor of a symphony orchestra in Winona, Minnesota from 1908-1912, a teacher at the University of Miami from 1937-1943, and a talented painter to boot. His first music to be performed in public was A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, an apt description of Ruggles himself, a crusty loner who once claimed the only man he ever met who could out-swear him was his friend and colleague Charles Ives. He eventually retired to an old schoolhouse in Arlington, Vermont.

Ruggles’ striking orchestral works, with titles like Sun-Treader and Men and Mountains, are occasionally revived, but he remains just a name for most 21st-century concert-goers.

Henry Cowell was a much more genial, out-going sort: a composer, performer and teacher who wrote a great deal of music, ranging from the dissonant and experimental to the beguilingly lyrical. He was an early apostle of what we now call world music, and in 1956 undertook a world tour, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US State Department, which included lengthy stays in Iran, India and Japan, and resulted in him writing a number of musical works incorporating ideas and musical instruments from those countries.

Music Played in Today's Program

Carl Ruggles (1897-1971): Sun-Treader; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; Cleveland Orchestra 75th Anniversary CD Edition 093-75

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Homage to Iran; Leopold Avakian, violin; Mitchell Andrews, piano; Basil Bahar, Persian drum CRI 836