Chapter XV Conclusion

For a local organization, it was ironic that the Society's international point of view became the element which brought it its greatest success in San Francisco. The excitement associated with concerts conducted by the Russian Slonimsky, the Austrian Schoenberg, or the Spaniard Sanjuan, the glamor connected with the fiery Hungarian Weisshaus, the sophistication attached to a performance of Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat kept San Francisco patrons contributing to concerts long after they had stopped attending them and gave the critics something to rave about when the American music on the programs became too much to bear. Other than Frankenstein, who understood the uniqueness of Cowell's accomplishment, the other critics generally saw in the Society only a vehicle for furthering the prestige of San Francisco and the West Coast. They pointed to it with pride as an organization which enhanced the city's cultural image, but any further significance was lost to them.

The last Society concert in San Francisco in may 1936 epitomized the Society's position vis-a-vis the city after eleven years: a modest program of chamber music in a small second -floor auditorium, it was nevertheless sponsored by a long list of patrons and honorary members. The artists were local, the music both American and European. Though small in stature, the last concert received some of new Music's best reviews because of the presence on the program of quartets by Hindemith and Szymanowski. p.382

Cowell maintained that he did not publish his friends, but became friends with those whom he published. p.383

Asked if Cowell gave the impression of being a man with a mission, Harrison responded, 'No, never. One always had the sense that what he was doing was fun and that he wanted to share an enthusiasm with you, directing you to something that you would clearly enjoy."

It was the enjoyment which kept them together and kept New Music going. Their tangible rewards were slight; they existed on very little__performing each other's music at the workshops and concerts, trying to bring order to the Society's business affairs, forgoing royalties, even paying for their own subscriptions and recordings of their own works. Ives was their only resource, Cowell said once, but that was enough. "Henry," said Cage, "was in no sense a fund raiser; he was a person who, if the money was forthcoming from Ives, which it was, would have no reason to look for more. He didn't want more money; all he wanted was to get the work done.

Geographical distance as well as philosophical distance from the East Coast contributed to the participants need to band together in their isolation. Before one is tempted to romanticize that fact, however, it is important to realize that, as Cage put it, they did feel "somehow deprived, living in California. In hindsight you might be grateful for having come from the West Coast because of the connection with the Orient. But we didn't yet know that we were interested in the Orient; we thought we were interested in new York.

And yet it was the West Coast which nurtured them and encouraged their experimentation. Unfettered by tradition, they were free to move into their own styles. As Strang said, "Part of the atmosphere was this centripetal feeling which more or less forced us to go out as much as possible in individual directions." And so they banged on pots and pans in the kitchen and tried out new rhythms on the dancers at Ann Mondstock's studio; Hardcastle put a new sounding board on the piano; Cowell worked with Theremin on the rhythmicon. They smashed glass, juggled meters, mixed up forms, and played all the keys on the piano at the same time. The goal for Cowell, from his first tone-cluster pieces on, and later for his colleagues, was always to find new ways of making new sounds.

In 1925 the new experimental music was called ultra-modern__later is was called contemporary by Cowell, left-wing and radical by his critics. It was for New Music the centerpiece, that which gave it its character and, like its brilliantly colored covers, its flair. It was an inspiration to many a young composer: Harrison was one who, as an eighteen-year-old, saw Frankenstein's article on New Music's tenth anniversary. He wrote to "Mr. Cowell," requesting Ives's "Thirty Songs" [sic] and Ruggles's "sun-treader," sending an extra $.25 for postage. Almost forty years later, in 1974, another composer from a younger generation recalled his first experience with New Music . Gordon Mumma, one of today's prominent innovators, told the participants at the Ives Centennial conference:

One day, years ago, in a Boston music store I ran across thirty or forty volumes of Cowell's New Music . . . and came across all those other names in that uncanny__that was when I realized that I had friends. I wasn't doing what they were doing, but there I found a nation with which I felt some affinity.

Of the New Music activities in existence in 1936, the workshops and concerts probably had the greatest impact on the close-knit New Music group in California; for the subscribers throughout the country it would have been the recordings. It is impossible to recreate the concerts, and copies of the recordings are few and of poor quality. The editions have now become the major link to New Music, the one major tangible legacy of Cowell's enterprises. An even greater legacy perhaps is the spirit of New Music__a spirit of newness, of enthusiasm, of freedom_a spirit expressed by Cowell, when, in the middle of a letter to Ives, he suddenly exclaimed, "I have an idea!" p.384-385