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22 PROKOFIEV | COWELL Henry Dixon Cowell TheAmerican composer andmusic theorist HenryDixonCowell (1897-1965) inspired many later composers, including John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow. His works (including about forty pieces for piano) use clusters (just like Charles Ives), dissonant counterpoint, polytonal harmonies and complex rhythms. He conducted original experiments with sonority, which were also in part the result of his meetings with composers in Europe – Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg – as well as his discovery of Asian music. Some of his creations caused memorable scandals, among them The Tides of Manaunaun (1912), which uses a series of clusters. His later pieces gave priority to further experiments, especially rhythmic. For example, Cowell used a new keyed percussion instrument, the Rhythmicon. Other scores followed, such as Fabric (1914), Three Legends ( 1922) and Aeolian Harp (1923), the first piece in which the piano’s strings are played directly by the fingers. Irish Jig (1925), Domnu, the Mother of Waters (1926), Sinister Resonance (1930) and Deep Color (1938) are among the most significant pieces in his output. Despite this experimental side, within a fairly large œuvre, Cowell did not neglect American traditional music and the diversity of his country’s folklore. He also paid tribute to the classics of music history, sometimes with humour, as in Prelude after the Style of Bach and Quasi Mozart (1913)! Cowell was an ‘instinctive’ composer, seeking out the unusual if it could help open out onto a new sonic space and time.