Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music

Though Henry Cowell (1897-1965) was a composer and a music critic of startling originality (as well as a producer, a promoter, a publisher and an ethnomusicologist), he has remained largely a ""background figure"" in American music. But editor Dick Higgins's Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music promises to bring Cowell's criticism into the spotlight. Gathering together essays on Stravinsky, Bartok, John Cage and many other composers, as well as selections from Cowell's unpublished opus, The Nature of Melody (written while Cowell was serving a four year sentence in San Quentin on a morality charge), this volume will enlighten aficionados of world music and engage anyone interested in innovative composition. (Nov.)