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Home > Composers Datebook > Ruggles and Cowell anniversaries


	Podcast:		Composers Datebook
	Episode:		Ruggles and Cowell anniversaries
	Category:		Health
	Duration:		00:02:00
	Publish Date:		2023-03-11 06:00:00
	Description:		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 entitled 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's 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. Cowell 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 Cowell 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
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