Cage Cowell Harrison and Queer Influence

Vitae
William Solomon, percussion
Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance (2005)

Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Missouri
Master of Musical Arts in Percussion Performance (2007)

The Hartt School, University of Hartford, Connecticut
Doctor of Musical Arts in Percussion Performance, Minor in Music Theory (2016)

The Hartt School, University of Hartford, Connecticut
Address: 161 W 95th St. #3R, New York, NY 10025 

ABSTRACT
West Coast Group composers John Cage, Henry Cowell, and Lou Harrison wrote some of the
earliest works for percussion ensemble. They were also all queer men, suggesting that there
was a possibly a connection between their queer sexualities and their engagement with the
percussion ensemble in the 1930s and early 1940s. Part I of this essay explores the relationship
between queer sexuality and percussion by examining the various ways in which the
composers’ queer lives intersected with the creation of the percussion ensemble. This
discussion results in a deeper understanding of the queer sensibility that informed the
development of the percussion ensemble, including interactions with modern dance, Asian
influences, and collaborative working methods. An analysis of Cage and Harrison’s Double
Music brings together the various discussions presented in relation to queerness and the
percussion ensemble. In Part II, a detailed look at the influence modern dance exerted upon the
West Coast percussion ensemble will further demonstrate one critical queer influence on early
percussion works. An important musical device used in dance music was the ostinato; the use
of the ostinato in early percussion ensemble repertoire reveals the ensemble’s codependence
on early modern dance. Analysis of percussion works by Beyer, Cage, Cowell, Harrison,
Humphrey, and Strang, will show how percussion developed alongside modern dance in four
distinct stages; particular focus on usage of the ostinato will show how dance tangibly impacted
the repertoire.
“Cage, Cowell, Harrison, and Queer Influences on the Percussion Ensemble, 1932 - 1943” by
William Solomon, University of Hartford, Hartt School, Doctor of Musical Arts in Percussion
Performance, 2016. 
Cage, Cowell, Harrison, and Queer Influences on the Percussion Ensemble, 1932 - 1943
William Solomon
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Musical Arts
University of Hartford, Hartt School
March 21, 2016
© 2016 William Solomon 
DEDICATION
To Andrew, thank you for your constant love and support,

and for dealing with the piles of books
143
iii 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This essay could not have been written without the expertise and guidance from many
individuals: my thesis advisor Michael Schiano; my teachers, committee, and faculty members
at Hartt, including Ben Toth, David Macbride, Glen Adsit, Robert Black, Dee Hansen; librarians
including Tracey Rudnick at Hartt Allen Library, Mei-Chen Lu at the Dance Notation Bureau, and
the many librarians at the New York Public Library, who helped me locate materials; dancers
and choreographers, including Douglas Neilson, and my friends and colleagues, including Matt
Sargent, Misti Shaw, David Friend, Kari Theurer, Douglas Martin, Lauren Radnofsky, who
suggested readings and provided support.
iv 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement iv
Figures and table vii
Introduction 1
Part I: Cage, Cowell, Harrison, and Queer Influences on the Percussion Ensemble 17
Chapter 1: Establishing Context 17
San Francisco’s Queer and Asian Communities 17
West Coast Group: Relationships and Sexualities 22

Lou Harrison 26
John Cage 28
Henry Cowell 33
Early Percussion Ensemble: Ultramodernism and Modern Dance 43

Percussion and Ultramodernism 45
Cowell and Harrison’s Early Interactions with Modern Dance 49
Cage: Dance, Seattle, and the Cage Percussion Players 55
Cage and Harrison in San Francisco 61
Chapter 2: Queer Influences 71
The Queer Influence of Dance 73

The Queer Influence of Asia 81
The Queer Influence of Collaboration 88
Chapter 3: Analysis: Double Music 102
Part II - Repertoire and Analysis of the West Coast Percussion Ensemble:

Ultramodernism and Modern Dance 119
Chapter 4: Doris Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms, and Second-level Works 123
Chapter 5: Gerald Strang’s Percussion Music for Three Players, and Third-level Works 143
Chapter 6: Percussion in Dance Class, and First-level Works 157
Chapter 7: Works for Concert Percussion Ensemble, and Fourth-level Works 164
I. Works with ostinato throughout 165

Henry Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo 166
Johanna Beyer’s IV 170
v
II. Works with momentary usage of ostinato 174
Lou Harrison’s Fifth Simfony 175
III. Use of morphing or quasi-ostinati 185

Henry Cowell’s Pulse 186
John Cage’s First Construction 194
Conclusion 207
Bibliography 213
vi 
FIGURES
1. John Cage and Lou Harrison, Double Music, player 3, m. 57 - 71 106

2. John Cage and Lou Harrison, Double Music, formal analysis diagram 107
3. John Cage, Double Music, Player 1 (water buffalo bells), m. 1 - 15 108
4. Lou Harrison, Double Music, Player 2 (sistrums), m. 1 - 10 110
5. Lou Harrison, Double Music, Player 4 (muted gongs), m. 10-19 111
6. Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms (condensed score) 127
7. Gerald Strang, Percussion Music, I. m. 18 - 27, Player 3 148
8. Gerald Strang, Percussion Music, formal analysis diagram 152
9. Gerald Strang, Percussion Music, III, Coda, mm. 56 - 63 153
10. Rhythms for Charles Weidman dance class, University of Iowa, 1970, “Strawberries”
and “Jacks” Pantomime 160
11. Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms, m. 3 (phrase B) 162
12. Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms, m. 11 - 18 (phrase F) 162
13. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo, colotomic instruments, m. 1 -8 (woodblocks/
tambourine/guiro, drums, gongs) 167
14. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Piannissimo, ostinato lengths, melodic and rhythmic parts 167
15. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Piannissimo, formal analysis diagram 168
16. Johanna M. Beyer, IV, Group B, main phrase 171
17. Johanna M. Beyer, IV, formal analysis diagram 172
18. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, rhythmicles for movement I 176
19. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement I and II, formal analysis diagram 177
20. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement III 178
21. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement I, m. 18 - 24 179
22. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement II, m. 33 - 40 180
23. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement II, m. 31 - 33 181
24. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement III, order of rhythmicle entrances 182
25. Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement III, m. 9 - 32 183
26. Henry Cowell, Pulse, formal analysis diagram 187
27. Henry Cowell, Pulse, Ostinato A 188
28. Henry Cowell, Pulse, Ostinato B 188
29. Henry Cowell, Pulse, Comparing Ostinatos A and B 189
30. Henry Cowell, Pulse, m.123-126, Section C 190
31. Henry Cowell, Pulse, first measure of Ostinato A, B, and C 192
32. John Cage, First Construction, rhythmic motives and circular motivic movement
(as listed by David Bernstein) 195
33. John Cage, First Construction, m. 17, Player 4 196
34. John Cage, First Construction, m. 21 - 28 197
35. John Cage, First Construction, m. 17, Player 4 and 5 198
36. John Cage, First Construction, m. 26 ostinati 199
37. John Cage, First Construction, Player 6, m. 26 - 28 199
38. John Cage, First Construction, Player 1 (glockenspiel), m. 33-37 201
TABLE
1. Stages of Development in the Dance-Music Continuum 206
vii
Introduction
The locus of major early developments in percussion repertoire largely took place
in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1930’s and 40’s, an area that was relatively
isolated from the dominant music centers at the time, particularly New York City and
Paris. Including major contributions from composers John Cage, Henry Cowell, and Lou
Harrison, the so-called “West Coast School” was the first instance of a sustained
collective interest in the treatment of the percussion ensemble as a discrete musical
entity and performance medium. Because of a unique combination of factors, including
strong Asian-Pacific Rim influences, a bourgeoning modern dance community, and a
lack of longstanding major arts and performing institutions in the region, the percussion
ensemble found a fertile ground in which to incubate and mature.
While there had been previous individual compositions featuring percussion
instruments, notably George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique (1924), Amadeo Roldán’s
Rítmicas No. 5 & 6 (1930) and Edgard Varèse’s Ionisation (1931), none of these
composers wrote additional percussion-only works, instead turning their energy to other
endeavors. The period of 1932 to 1942 encapsulates a time when Cage, Cowell,
Harrison, and their various collaborators dedicated much of their time on the
composition of percussion-only works. They also spent much of their time organizing
performances, publishing scores, distributing recordings, and publicizing their activities
in support these works.
The percussion repertoire of the West Coast School was one instance of a
developing experimentalism that took place in the period between the two world wars,
1
and was largely inspired by the works and aesthetics of Charles Ives. His circle, which
included younger composers Carl Ruggles, Charles Seeger, Dane Rudhyar and Henry
Cowell, has often been referred to as the “Ultramodern”1 circle, a group of American
composers who wrote “dissonant, experimental, and masculinist”2 works in the first
decades of the twentieth century. The ultramoderns' development was separate from a
parallel group of composers, including the music by Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson,
and other protégés of French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, whose practices were
influenced by European models that dominated American concert life in the late
nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. As Copland’s influence began to grow in New
York, Henry Cowell became the center of a burgeoning sphere of musical and
compositional activity on the West Coast. Cowell oversaw several concerns, including
the New Music Society which presented concerts, and the publications New Music
Quarterly and New Music Editions. He accepted several teaching posts in California and
New York, and was an active member in several new music organizations. His seminal
theoretical work, New Musical Resources, was published in 1930 and was influential to
those composers who coalesced into the West Coast School, including Cage, Harrison,
Ruth Crawford, Ray Green, John J. Becker, Gerald Strang, William Russell, and
Johanna Beyer. Cowell, Cage, and Harrison have become the most well-known and
influential composers from this group, but during the 30’s and 40’s, these composers
1 The term “Ultramodern” has been applied to many groups of composers around the same time,
including Varese, Antheil, Leo Ornstien, and Scriabin. In this essay, “ultramodern” generally refers to the
Americanist composition circle influenced by Charles Ives, including Ruggles and Cowell. Another term
“American Five” has been used to represent Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, and John J.
Becker.
2Nadine Hubbs. The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and
National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 84.
2
found much support from each other by performing and promoting each other’s works.
Also, all the composers listed (except Ruth Crawford), contributed the thirty-five-plus
compositions that form the West Coast School percussion repertoire between 1932 and
1942.3
The West Coast repertoire should be set in relief against the classical percussion
tradition that preceded it. Beginning in the late Classical and continuing into the early
Modern period, composers generally employed percussion in orchestral and operatic
repertoire either as a referent to various folk and world musics, or to sounds found in
their environment (i.e., nature and urban life). The percussion section expanded as new
sounds and instruments were required, and this collection gradually calcified into what
we would generally consider as today’s batterie in the modern orchestra. Orchestral
percussion writing was generally sparse, used to articulate crucial moments in a piece,
as well as to provide color and rhythmic accentuation. The treatment of percussion
began to change quickly in the twentieth century as musical modernism developed a
desire for new sounds. Notable examples can be found in the works of Igor Stravinsky,
including Le Sacre du Printemps, Les Noces and L’Histoire du Soldat, with the
percussion section taking on a more crucial role in the orchestra than it had previously.
The influence of Stravinsky’s treatment of percussion led directly from Les Noces (1923)
to Anthiel’s Ballet Mechanique (1924), which then itself influenced Varèse’s Ionisation
(1931).4 The performance demands on percussionists increased, requiring more
3Don Russell Baker, “The Percussion Ensemble Music of Lou Harrison: 1939-1942” (DMA thesis,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985), 203.
4Ionisation had a direct influence on the West Coast composers, as Cowell played the premiere of the
work in New York under Nicolas Slonimsky at Steinway Hall in 1933. See H. Wiley Hitchcock, “Henry
Cowell’s ‘Ostinato Pianissimo,’” The Musical Quarterly, 70 no. 1 (Winter 1984), 25.
3
virtuosity, finesse, and overall levels of musicianship, approaching what was required
from other instrumentalists technically and musically. West Coast works required
performers to play constantly throughout an entire work (although the early pieces are
often relatively short, many under the ten minute mark), manage multiple instruments
and mallets, as well as confronting increasingly complicated rhythms and non-standard
phrase groupings. Timbre became a much more important concern which required not
only more discretion in sound production, but also in instrument selection and
presentation. These are all issues that had been developing in works for orchestra and
opera for some time, beginning in the late Romantic and early Modern periods, but
became quickly foregrounded in the 1920s and 1930s as modernism became a
dominant force in concert music.
In contrast to the West Coast School, the use of percussion in Copland’s circle of
composers in New York City followed more standard lines of percussion writing, typified
by its sparsity, emphasis on color, and support; it tended to resemble more traditional
orchestral writing seen coming from Europe. Coplandian Modernism never made the
significant contributions to percussion repertoire that the West Coast school did, as it
was steeped in European traditional models, and associated with well-established major
arts organizations (that would have reluctant to present experimentalist works). The
West Coast Composers were not completely cut off from the east coast, and thus
moved freely between California and New York City. Individuals from the two groups
often associated in similar circles, but rarely did artistic influences cross between the
two, and as a result, separate musical production apparatuses developed
simultaneously in the two locales (performers, venues, recordings, publishing, etc.).
4
Percussion writing was only one area of difference between the two groups, but one
that is telling of each groups’ artistic goals.5
But beyond comparing the percussion composition tendencies between the two
coastal groups, one fact emerges that links the groups together: the preponderance of
queer men who were also some of the major figures in American classical music during
the first half of the twentieth century. In New York City, this included many notable
composers, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Virgil
Thomson, Ned Rorem, Gian Carlo Menotti, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Bowles, and David
Diamond. On the West Coast, this included the subjects of this study, Cage, Cowell,
and Harrison, as well as Harry Partch6 and Colin McPhee. The number of prominent
artistic activities that involved queer men in American music is not a mere coincidence,
which has prompted scholars to inquire why there were so many queer modernist
composers, and to what extent their sexualities influenced their artistic output. Further,
5 Mina Yang articulates the differences between these two compositional groups: “I see the contrasts of
the California to the New York school as arising from different regional affinities. Both the New York and
California groups of gay composers expressed, sublimated, or hid their sexuality with their particular
musical choices: in the case of Copland and his circle, with neoclassicism, and in the case of Cowell and
his circle, with orientalism. Whereas the New Yorkers traced their musical lineage back to the French and
pro-Stravinsky Nadia Boulanger, the Californians began their careers absorbing the transgressive sexual
and racial sights and sounds surrounding them in San Francisco. Just as Copland turned his gaze
transatlantically in his effort to forge a national style that could compete on the international stage, these
Californian composers turned their gaze transpacifically to carve out a space for themselves among their
musical peers, hetero- and homosexual, American and European.” Mina Yang, California Polyphony:
Ethnic Voices, Musical Crossroads (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 37.
6 Partch is formative figure in the development of percussion, and his queer identity would be of clear
interest in a project about percussion and queer identity. However, in order to keep the focus of this paper,
Partch’s contributions will be considered tangental to the work of Cage, Cowell and Harrison. Partch
developed very idiosyncratic working methods that he developed beyond the confines of classical music
production. Further, while he had contact with Cage, Cowell, and Harrison at various points in his career,
he was a solitary figure for much of his life and didn’t figure into the social aspects of the other
composers. As social links among queer composers are crucial to my understanding of the percussion
ensemble’s queer influences, Partch as a queer figure will not be discussed. Yet, there is likely much
material to explore with Partch as a queer composer of early percussion music, and his contributions
would definitely deepen an understanding of percussion as a queer enterprise. See Bob Gilmore, Harry
Partch: a Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
5
Nadine Hubbs asks this crucial question: “What is at stake in acknowledging such facts
of gay lives, achievements, and presence so long and fiercely silenced?”7
I have found comparisons between the West Coast School and the Copland-
Thomson school to be illuminating because the circles share structural similarities and
overlapping influence. The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists,
American Music, and National Identity by musicologist Nadine Hubbs, is a critical work
of queer musicology that this essay hopes to build on. Her book seeks to explore “the
central role of queer collaboration in twentieth-century American concert music.”
Focusing on the Copland circle of composers and musicians, her book “examines the
conditions that underlay networking activity among queer artists”, as well as “enrich[ing]
and complicat[ing] our understanding of the role of queer artists in conceiving and
producing American cultural identity, and doing so in a time of intense homophobia.”8
While my essay cannot undertake the wide scope of inquiry that her book does
(including the sociopolitical implications that she outlines), the mere undertaking of this
study was a transformative influence for me as a gay musician. My deeper
understanding of influences of sexuality on American modernism has led me to turn my
focus towards the less-examined confluence of sexuality, West Coast group, and early
writing for percussion. The Copland circle exerted minimal influence in the development
of the percussion ensemble, but Hubbs’s study provides a model that I can implement in
order to explore sexuality in the West Coast group, and how it relates to percussion
composition.
7 Hubbs, Queer Composition of America’s Sound, 131.

8 Ibid., 15-17.
6
At this point, it will be helpful to define terms related to sexuality in order to aid
further discussion. Historically, many terms have been used to describe men who have
sex with, or have sexual desires towards other men. These terms have included
“inverts”, “third sex” in the late 19th century, “homosexual”, “gay”, and “queer” into the
20th century, along with any number of slangs and slurs. The specific connotations of
each word can vary depending on who is using it and in what context. These terms
each bring with them specific historical connotations, frequently motivated by prejudice
and homophobia, but also terms of endearment, community, and identity. Further
complicating matters includes terms that intersect with gender, race, and other issues of
identity. As a majority of the figures in this essay are cisgendered men who were
generally sexually involved with other cisgendered men, most of my language is
centered around terminology relating to gay men.
I have chosen to use the term queer9 to define the sexual identities under
discussion in this essay for two reasons. First, queer allows any non-heteronormative
(heteronormative meaning straight, or traditionally heterosexual) sexuality to be
included in the same category, including homosexuality, bisexuality, and other sexual
identities and activities that don’t conform to heteronormative constraints. Second, it
allows discussion of sexuality despite how the subjects may or may not have defined
themselves in terms of sexual identity at various points of their lives. Personal
9 Queer is a difficult word to define, partially because the word is meant to be deliberately open and
flexible. Annamarie Jagose proposes several definitions, and taken together, they provide a fuller
understanding of the variety of manners in which it is used; one is from Alexander Doty: “queer as a term
which ‘mark[s] a flexible space for the expression of all aspects of non- (anti-, contra-) straight cultural
production and reception”; queer as “necessarily indeterminate”; “queer does not assume for itself any
specific materiality or positivity, its resistance to what it differs from is necessarily relational rather than
oppositional”; that “queer maintains a relation of resistance to whatever constitutes the normal.”
Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 96-100.
7
identifications as queer, gay, homosexual, etc. were not necessarily universal identifiers
prior to the Stonewall era, when sexual identification became a political and social act.
In contemporary society, identification as a lesbian/gay/bisexual/queer/trans person
affords certain social, political and legal positions, but this was not necessarily true
earlier in the twentieth century. Individuals did not necessarily equate sexual acts with
personal identity, especially considering the increasingly homophobic atmosphere in
mid-century US.
Sexuality was not always a straightforward issue for the West Coast composers.
For example, Cage never publicly admitted to or identified himself as a gay man,
despite his long-time artistic, sexual, and public partnership with choreographer Merce
Cunningham, in addition to other relationships with men earlier in his life. Both Cage
and Cowell were married to women (Xenia Cage and Sidney Cowell, respectively),
suggesting that both men entered periods of questioning, closeted, or bisexual
identities. Even Harrison who spent much of his life as an out gay man, questioned his
sexuality during the 40’s while living in New York City for a period of time. These various
sexual identifications demonstrate that sexuality is not necessarily a fixed entity, but
rather a dynamic category that can shift over time. Also, as George Chauncey remarks
many gay men “did not consider their homosexual identity to be their only important
identity,”10 suggesting that for many queer men, sexual identity was not their prime
identifier. Thus, using the term queer allows all non-heteronormative sexualities to be
considered, even if the subjects themselves were not keen on self-identification, either
due to fear of social stigma (living in the closet), or the inability to confront personal
10George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World,
1890 - 1940 (New York: BasicBooks, 1994), 273.
8
realities (living in denial). In this context, queer is a contemporary term that would not
have had a sex-positive connotation (at the time it would have had pejorative intent as a
homophobic slur), but it accurately describes the range of sexualities under question
here.
Queer identity is made more interesting and resonant when it intersects with
other identity categories (race, class, gender, age, profession, etc.). Queerness it is an
identificatory class that is found across all identity populations. This means that
queerness is not only considered on its own, but it always intersects with other
identities, and thus queerness must be considered in tandem with other identities. What
this essay is really exploring is queer identity in relation to artistic identity. This seems a
more reasonable position, as it is likely that the composers in question would have
placed their artistic status above their sexual status.
The goal of this paper is to explore how the queer sexualities of Cage, Cowell
and Harrison relate to the percussion repertoire of these composers. This involves
knowledge of the biographies of the composers, an understanding of queer sexualities
in San Francisco in the thirties and forties, and the musical practices and circumstances
that allowed early percussion ensemble repertoire to come into existence. To begin with,
I shall lay out a few general propositions from which to proceed:
1. Sexuality influences various aspects of one’s life, including artistic, professional,

social, and sexual realms.
2. Sexual desires that manifest themselves in art can be either conscious or

unconscious.
3. Queer sexual desires do not necessarily require that the individual identify as
queer a individual.
4. Queer individuals create music, but the music itself (i.e. formal musical qualities)
is not queer. Queer music is, then, the result of artistic production and social-
9
professional networks. Referral to “queer music” is referring to the social

apparatus that created it and its attached meanings, not the music itself.
5. Various flexible queer meanings or associations can be attached to sounds and

musical tropes; thus, flexible queer meanings can then be communicated if the
receiver is aware of the relationship between meaning and sound.
From these general propositions, I can begin to develop a pathway that allows
discussion of repertoire within the context of queer identity. Michael Bronski discusses
how a queer network of references can morph into what he considers a queer sensibility
can arise in works of art (note that here he uses “homosexual”, which should be
considered interchangeable with “queer”):
Because of social and legal injunctions against homosexuality, many artists and writers
could not be public about their sexuality and their work was infused with a plethora of
signs and codes that allowed the like-minded to identify one another.11
This process of silent identification was not necessarily a conscious act. There
are examples of queer culture that were consciously crafted out of various queer
references into cultural products (literature, theatre, etc.); I don’t believe that this is the
case for the West Coast composers. Their process was much more passive and
unconscious. So, I propose that due to the circumstances in Cage’s, Cowell’s, and
Harrison’s lives as queer men, they developed a specific instance of queer sensibility
that was informed by several motivating factors: place (San Francisco bay area and
New York City), time (1930’s and 40’s), and artistic identities (as ultramodernist-
experimental composers). By articulating their own brand of gay sensibility, I can then
seek out traces of this identity in their percussion works. What I will not be able to
produce, however, is a direct, surface-level relationship between printed score and its
queer traces; the relationship exists on a much deeper and opaque level that requires a
11 Michael Bronski, Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility (South End Press: Boston, 1984), 9.
10
fuller understanding of the composers’ lives, artistic environments, and other cultural
forces that inflected their music
Serving as a theoretical model, it is useful to return to Hubbs’ analysis of the
queer Thomson-Copland circle. A crucial aspect of her study is articulating how that
circle’s queer sensibility developed. Her analysis begins:
by identifying several themes shared among members of the gay modernist circle
[Thomson, Copland]... and contemplating their possible significance. These themes
emerge from certain shared musical-biographical motifs, in addition to the composers’
homosexual identification... Our argument here will be that these motifs provide key
elements of an influential definitional axis...along which gay modernists created identities
for themselves.12
She continues by identifying these “shared musical-biographical motifs” (she also refers
to it as the “musicosexual ‘closet code’”13), which in the case of the Copland circle
included “foreign apprenticeship...; studies with Nadia Boulanger’ self-conscious
affiliation with things French...; and cultivation of a tonal, perhaps neoclassical,
compositions idiom.”14 Continuing, she then discusses these traits in relation to both the
composers’ sexual identities, and their musical activities. By identifying these motifs,
she has developed a methodology that allows her to examine queer influences in the
Thomson-Copland circle by increasing her scope of inquiry beyond traditional score
analysis to include biographical and cultural information.
In an analogous fashion, I have identified three shared musical-biographical
motifs that will be examined in order to demonstrate queer influences in the percussion
12 Hubbs, The Queer Composition of America’s Sound, 132.

13 Ibid., 148.
14 Ibid., 148.
11
works of the West Coast School: (1) influence of modern dance; (2) influence of Asian/
Pacific Rim culture; and (3) the influence of collaborative artistic production models.
Each area of influence will be fleshed out further in Chapter 3, but in general, these
areas of influence provide a pathway through which to understand how Cage, Cowell,
and Harrison expressed their queer sexualities via music. I shall not argue that this
group of composers created a consciously queer music; but rather, that because of their
personal identities and activities as queer men, along with the social and political
environment in which their music production occurred, their percussion works bear the
imprint of queer sexuality and sensibility.
Percussion music itself creates interesting challenges for analysis and
discussion, in many ways because it is still a relatively young music genre, being less
than a century old. Because much of percussion music dispenses with pitch altogether,
previous harmonic-based models of analysis are often not applicable in these
scenarios. Percussion music, until recently, had been the realm of experimental
composers seeking new avenues of artistic expression, and was largely ignored in more
traditionally-oriented circles, such as the Thomson-Copland circle that was engaged in a
franco-neoclassical-tonalist practice. Percussion has the added complication (or
strength, depending on one’s view) of lacking a standardized instrumentarium,15
whereby every work uses a different selection of instruments, and the contents will vary
widely from collection to collection. Also, the wide range of timbral variation found in
more standard instruments (such as drums, gongs, and found objects) can create
15Term “instrumentarium” is taken from Pierre Albert Castanet. Roland Auzet, percussion, Roland Auzet:
Percussion(s) (Mode Records 189/192, 2007), three compact discs and digital video disc, “The Domain of
Percussion in the 20th Century,” essay in accompanying booklet by Pierre Albert Castanet, 19.
12
further problems related to nomenclature. Notation, especially in the early works, was
rarely able to capture the complexities of timbre in percussion music, mostly limited to
attack points (i.e. rhythm) and dynamics. This allows for more traditional formal analysis,
but hinders a deeper examination of the timbral profile of a work, which in many cases,
is the more intriguing facet of the work. Applying older methods of analysis to
percussion music is not necessarily unfruitful, but seeking out other methods that can
absorb newer theoretical positions, as well as consider other aspects of a musical work
beyond formal concerns, is necessary in developing a more comprehensive
understanding of how percussion music functions, along with its resonance within a
broader cultural landscape.
Modern percussion’s birth on the fringes of mainstream musical society
appropriately occurred in California, far enough away from New York, but still within the
realm of communication and access. While New York classical music continued to look
eastward to Europe and its centuries-old traditions developing out of Austro-Germanic
classics and its offshoots, the West Coast was situated to allow the development of new
traditions with far less interference from Europe. Acknowledgement of this
independence impels one to seek out the various circumstances that helped birth the
percussion ensemble, independent (or possibly in addition to) of the criteria used to
judge European-based work. A queer-affirming sexuality is just one possible entry into
the understanding of early West Coast percussion concert works as it intersects with
other identities and concerns of the composers and their community. Embracing the
subject of sexuality is not to be taken as mere titillation; while sexuality does concern
sex itself, it also affects how an individual experiences social, political, and artistic
13
aspects of life. By seeking out connections between sexuality and music, questions
arise: How can a subject’s sexuality affect their artistic choices and personal
circumstances? Are there ways in which queer relationships can be mirrored in musical
structures? What attracted queer composers to percussion, and how did percussion
facilitate queer composition?
In order to answer these questions, and to bring the murky web of queer
influences surrounding the percussion ensemble into clearer focus, I shall
systematically begin by exploring the edges of the topic, and gradually center in on
more musically concrete analysis. The essay is divided into two parts, beginning with
“Part I: Queer Percussion.” Beginning in Chapter 1, “Establishing Context”, I shall take a
closer look at San Francisco as a center of both queer and asian culture; the network of
relationships among Cage, Cowell, and Harrison, along with discussion of their
sexualities; and the ways in which the three men were involved with the percussion
ensemble. This chapter provides historical, social, cultural, sexual, and artistic context
which are crucial in locating queer sexuality in the percussion ensemble. Chapter 2,
“Influences”, examines each of the three queer influences that have already been
outlined: modern dance as a queer space; Asian exoticism in queer desire; and
collaboration as queer practice. Each section will explore how the topic is charged with
queerness, and how it interacted with the composers and their percussion works.
Finally, Chapter 3, “Analysis”, will present a queer-informed analysis of Cage and
Harrison’s Double Music, a work that ties together the many threads of queer influence
that run throughout the essay, showing tangible traces of queerness in both the score
and its surrounding history.
14
Then, in Part II, I shall focus on the relationship between modern dance and the
percussion ensemble, demonstrating the ways in which modern dance left crucial
impact upon the music of the percussion ensemble. Part II is divided into four chapters
each corresponding to a step in the developmental process that occurred between
dance and percussion. Early percussion works were composed to support dance in the
studio, then on stage. As percussion composition became more sophisticated, it
separated away from the performance practice of modern dance, but retained certain
formal characteristics of dance music, namely, the use of the ostinato as a structuring
device and musical topic. Part II examines music by several composers, including
Cage, Cowell, and Harrison, Johanna Beyer, Doris Humphrey, Gerald Strang, and
Charles Wiedman, seeking out traces of the ostinato, and the various ways in which it
was implemented, along with other considerations related to dance and percussion
music. This part does not consider sexuality, instead delving into more musical content
than is presented in Part I; however, by exploring how strong the connection between
dance and percussion was, and by showing how dance was a queer space in Part I, I
hope to further demonstrate how queer connections circled around, and directly
influenced, the percussion ensemble.
The pathway between sexuality and music is rarely direct, particularly queer
sexuality, and thus, one is required to look for evidence that is often intangible.
Speaking about early twentieth century gay culture, David Margolick notes that “this
culture was sub-rosa and poorly documented, leaving behind only anecdotal traces.”16
Because queer culture was not text, one must seek it out in the subtext: things left
16David Margolick, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns (New York: Other Press,
2013), 231.
15
unsaid, omitted, or erased. Music analysis is generally oriented towards understanding
and explaining what is present in a score or in the historical record; to ask it to explain
what is not there is a different task entirely, one that requires imagination and
reorientation on behalf of both the reader and myself in reconstructing a very real past
that exists only in “traces”. Giving voice to the largely silenced queer individuals helps to
reclaim a history that need no longer be considered a threat, but instead, one that can
be integrated into our contemporary understanding of the beginnings of the percussion
ensemble. 
16
PART I: Cage, Cowell, Harrison and Queer Influences on the Percussion
Ensemble
CHAPTER 1: Establishing Context
Before launching into discussion of repertoire and its queer influences, it is
necessary to situate Cowell, Harrison, and Cage’s percussion pieces in appropriate
historical, cultural, and musical contexts. This chapter is divided into three sections: first,
a discussion about queer life and identity in San Francisco and its relation to East Asian
cultural influences; second, the personal and professional relationships among Cage,
Cowell, and Harrison, along with discussions about their queer sexualities and
identities; and third, the origins of the West Coast percussion ensemble, particularly in
relation to the development of modern dance.
San Francisco’s Queer and Asian Communities
San Francisco has long been associated with queer culture, extending back to
the Gold Rush of 1849 when large numbers of single men worldwide (including, notably,
recent Chinese and Japanese immigrants) moved en masse to the city in search of
wealth. The resulting wide gender imbalance prompted demands for bachelor
entertainment and vice, including gambling, prostitution, and drug and alcohol
consumption, aided by a Wild West “live-and-let-live sensibility” with the city gaining a
“reputation as a wide-open town.”17 Queer sexualities were able to thrive in this
17 Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2003), 4.
17
atmosphere, especially in the period following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, when
gay and lesbian bars and nightclubs opened in large numbers, supported both by locals,
as well as a robust sex and race tourism industry driven by curiosity and desire for illicit
entertainments.
According to Nan Alamilla Boyd, San Francisco’s queer communities thrived in
the newfound bar culture, alongside other public spaces (including parks, baths, and
beaches for social and sexual activity) that helped modern queer sensibility and identity
develop in the pre-Stonewall era. Drag performers and cross-gender impersonators
were a major attraction in bars, highlighting the fluidity of gender and sexual identity that
was being expressed and explored by San Francisco’s queer members (some identities
including lesbian “fem”/“butch”, gay “top”/“bottom” and “trade”). This occurred during a
period of growing awareness about queer identity that had not been present earlier, at a
time when queer sexual acts did not necessarily equate to queer identity.18 Most patrons
of gay bars were not able to live their public lives out of the closet, instead assuming
cloaked identities in their professional and personal lives (including those who were
married with children). It was rare for bar patrons to socialize outside of the relative
safety of the bar, and the social code encouraged queers to maintain secrecy about
others’ homosexuality.
18 The concept of homosexuality is a relatively modern one; while homosexual acts have always existed,
homosexual identity was not necessarily always present historically. Homosexuality arose as a category
in the late nineteenth century with sexologists such as Havelock Ellis, who researched and categorized
various sexual acts and disorders in medical terms. Modern sexual identity formation began in the early
decades of the twentieth century, first in social settings, including homophile organizations, such as
Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, that advocated for social acceptance of gays and lesbians.
Finally, homosexuality became a political movement, sparked by the Stonewall riots in 1969, as gays and
lesbians began fighting for political protections and recognition. For a succinct yet thorough account of
queer theory that outlines historical identity formation, see Jagose, Queer Theory.
18
The presence of known queer bars and clubs should not suggest that the culture
widely accepted homosexuality, as they were frequently the targets of homophobic
police raids, harassment, and violence. Various factions of the population were
opponents of flagrant displays of homosexuality (which due to sodomy laws, was
considered illegal), or anything that deviated from heteronormative gender/sexual roles
(i.e. “traditional” heterosexuality where men assume traditionally masculine roles,
women assume feminine roles). Even minor offenses, including “random touching,
mannish attire (in the case of lesbians), limp wrists, high-pitched voice, and/or tight
clothing (in the case of gay men),” as well as “same-sex dancing, kissing, caressing,
and hand-holding could be interpreted as a violation of state or municipal laws
regulating public decency.”19 Bars were frequently shut down for various reasons,
requiring bar owners to frequently pay off law enforcement in the form of bribes to
remain open, or at least turn a blind eye to undesired activity. This further complicated
the paradoxical relationship between queer communities and the city, that itself heavily
relied on money from tourists attracted to the the very queer spaces that were being
pressured to close.
Queer urban pleasure venues were located mostly in the North Beach
neighborhood, which was in close proximity to Chinatown, another popular tourist
destination that was popular for its exotic and illicit vice attractions. Groups of Chinese
immigrants began settling in the Chinatown neighborhood in the mid-nineteenth century
where it became the largest Chinese immigrant community in the United States, and
“was at once forbidden and irresistible, repulsive and alluring, its reputed danger more
19 Ibid., 137.
19
than counterbalanced by its attraction as an exotic Other.”20 Located within the
boundaries of the neighborhood, a tourist could find not only restaurants, traditional
Chinese opera, and temples, but also cocktail lounges, opium dens, gambling, and
prostitution. Alongside the sex tourism that Queer San Francisco attracted, tourists were
eagerly exploring a version of Westernized “Oriental”21 culture that had morphed from
its authentic origins into something that appealed to Americans’ combined desires for
familiarity and exoticism. In fact, after the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 when
much of Chinatown was destroyed, the neighborhood was rebuilt appearing “cleaner,
safer and more inviting,” now a more desirable simulacrum of its former self, yet still
retaining the associations of Other-ness and danger that tourists and locals continued to
seek out.22
Chinatown further appealed to queer San Franciscans because “with its severe
gender imbalance, [it] provided models of ‘queer domesticity,’ living arrangements that
departed significantly from normative heterosexual family structures, which was seen as
a welcome alternative to some but as anathema to the majority.”23 Thus, this connection
between queer and “Oriental” entertainments (which were often inauthentic, but not
perceived to be so by the Americans who patronized them) continued throughout the
20Leta E. Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco: from the 1906 Quake to the Second World War
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 63.
21 While the word “Oriental” is now considered to be an offensive term that indiscriminately lumps together
all Asian cultures into a single undifferentiated morass, such cultural sensitivity was not necessarily on
display in this time period, and the term was frequently used in many contexts, including usage by the
composers in question. Its use in quotations here is a reference to an outmoded concept that was
frequently invoked in cultural discourses in a non-pejorative fashion, while acknowledging it as culturally
tone deaf term. I shall use it throughout the essay when invoking the past, but use more specific
terminology when appropriate and possible.
22 Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco, 71-73.
23 Yang, California Polyphony, 146.
20
twenties and helped an evolving association develop between homosexual desire and
East Asian culture in San Francisco, or as Mina Yang states, “specific associations of
non-normative lifestyles and alternative sexualities” that would have been “of special
significance for…gay composers”.24 As will be explored later, there are many instances
of queer-originated culture that idealized, fantasized, and appropriated aspects of
“Oriental” culture, including Chinese traditional music and opera.
One oft-cited example of queer fascination with “Oriental” culture was the 1939
Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE), which took place in San Francisco and
attracted thousands of visitors over a period of nine months. Among the various musical
entertainments offered throughout the festival included several Asian ensembles
performing traditional music, including those from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Java.25 A
popular attraction was called the Gayway, which featured “the Chinese Village, Ripley’s
Auditorium, Virgins in Cellophane, and Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch,”26 an area that
“projected a panoply of sexualized and racialized energy,” which further “stimulated a
market for sex and race tourism with the city.”27 This leads Boyd to suggest that “sex
tourism was therefore a primary factor in the emergence of San Francisco’s publicly
visible queer communities, and race tourism was its constant companion.”28 The
connections, then, between sex (queerness), race (Oriental culture), and music, as
seen through the GGIE, demonstrate the ways in which these categories began to
24 Ibid., 36.
25GGIE is where Harrison first heard live gamelan music, beyond having already heard recordings from
Cowell, and his roommate, William Russell. Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco, 253.
27 Boyd,Wide Open Town, 80.
28 Ibid., 80.
21
become intertwined. As Cage, Cowell, and Harrison were living and working in and
around these communities, one can begin to understand how San Francisco was
charged with queerness, which was also closely associated with Asian culture.
West Coast Group: Relationships and Sexualities
Cage, Cowell, and Harrison’s lives intersected in many different places and times
beginning in the early 1930s. They moved in various social and artistic circles, keeping
touch as they moved about the country, or in the case of Cowell, immobilized due to his
incarceration. There are actually very few instances of all three men being together in
the same place at the same time, yet they remained in close contact during the period
of experimentation with the percussion ensemble. Cowell served as the main connector,
and provided Cage and Harrison with many of their earliest professional opportunities.
Cage and Harrison were both students of Cowell. Cage initially met Cowell in
1933 at a New Music Society concert in San Francisco where Cowell had programmed
Cage’s Sonata for Clarinet; Cage then studied with him at the New School, during a
brief period in New York in 1934. Soon after, Harrison met Cowell in 1935, in Cowell’s
World Music course at the University of California-San Francisco. However, it wasn’t
until 1938 that Cage and Harrison first met each other at the behest of the incarcerated
Cowell, at which point all three men had already written their earliest works for
percussion: Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo (1934), Cage’s Quartet (1936 or 1937)29 and
29 Leta Miller’s note about the composition date of Quartet: ”Quartet is dated 1935 in the Henmar Press
catalog of Cage’s works…and on the published score, but this date appears to be too early. (The date on
the manuscript seems to have been entered long after the composition was completed.) Evidence points
to the piece having been composed in 1936 or even early 1937.” Leta E. Miller, “Henry Cowell and John
Cage: Intersections and Influences, 1933-1941.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 59 no. 1
(Spring 2006): 59.
22
Trio (1936), and Harrison’s Waterfront—1934 (1935 or 1936).30 This meeting between
Cage and Harrison was a pivotal moment in percussion history because it brought
together two individuals that had been operating independently up until that point, but
along parallel tracks. Although Cowell was confined to San Quentin, he remained
surprisingly active artistically during his incarceration;31 his presence was strongly felt in
the wider musical community as he was still able to direct musical activities from afar,
with Cage and Harrison implementing Cowell’s directives.
A decentralized structure was in many ways a strength that allowed percussion
music to flourish due to networking and wide exposure in many cities. The period
between 1932 and 1942 brought a lot of travel for Cage, Cowell, and Harrison, including
visits to San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle, for percussion
concerts, dance workshops, and general employment for all three composers. San
Francisco and the greater Bay Area served as their home base until 1942, but it would
be wrong to suggest that this was the sole location of activities. In lieu of physical
meetings, the composers communicated with each via letters and phone, and
disseminated their work through scholarly articles, updating the musical community
about aesthetic and musical developments.
30Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco, 198, and Leta E. Miller, and Fredric Lieberman, Composing
a World: Lou Harrison, Musical Wayfarer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Reprint, Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2004), 280. Waterfront—1934 was a percussion solo that Harrison performed
himself accompanying choreography by Carol Beals commemorating the San Francisco port strike of
1934. Written in either 1935 or 1936, the piece is unpublished with two pages of a manuscript in archives.
31Henry wrote at least fifteen works during his incarceration, including two percussion ensemble works,
Pulse and Return. “Henry prepared a list of his creative work behind bars…In Redwood Jail he wrote the
United Quartet. In San Quentin he wrote ten pieces, of which the first four, for wind band, had to be left in
the prison and were lost. Vocalise, for soprano Ethel Luening, flutist Otto Luening, and a pianist, is
probably the best known of them. The others for chamber groups, beginning pianists, and voice are rarely
heard. Four other compositions of these months are not on Henry’s list. He [also] completed four literary
works.” Joel Sachs, Henry Cowell: a Man Made of Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 317.
23
Cowell was the father figure of the group, not just in age, but also because he
was extremely well connected in the new music community, and was able to provide
opportunities. By 1930, he was managing several concerns: he wrote his influential
book New Musical Resources; he organized the New Music Society of California;
published a quarterly score journal called New Music, along with accompanying
concerts and recordings; and was involved with the Pan-American Association of
Composers. Harrison referred to Cowell as a “central information booth,”32
acknowledging his connections to a wide range of composers, including Charles Ives
(who was also a main funder of Cowell’s activities), Edgar Varèse, Charles Seeger, Carl
Ruggles, Percy Grainger, Arnold Schoenberg, Ruth Crawford, Aaron Copland, Bela
Bartok, and many others whose works he helped present and promote. Building a
relationship with Cowell opened many doors for composers in various stages of their
careers, hence why many composition students sent scores and tried to get in with his
good graces. Cowell’s influence was strongly felt by Cage and Harrison, as his ideas
were absorbed and processed by the two younger composers in their earlier years.
By the time Cage and Harrison met, they were both actively pursuing
professional opportunities as they made a living as working musicians. This meant not
only promoting their own compositional work, but the continual pursuit of income
through employment, which was a constant preoccupation for both men. They
supported each other, passing work between themselves, and seeking out opportunities
for performance whenever possible. After only a brief time together as co-faculty
members at Mills College in Oakland during a summer dance workshop in 1938,
32 Miller and Lieberman, Composing a World, 9.
24
Harrison provided Cage the connection for a position that took him to Seattle at the
Cornish School of the Arts. Cage first solicited a percussion work from Harrison after the
Cage Percussion Player’s successful premiere concert on December 8, 1938.33 Cage
then presented Harrison’s works on the second Cage Percussion Player’s concert
which took place on May 19, 1939. This concert also included Harrison’s Fifth Simfony
and Counterdance, as well as Cowell’s Pulse, which he had written while in prison.34
Even though Cage did not program any of his own works on this concert, this is the first
event where all three men were artistically involved on the same project.
Beyond their professional lives, the three men appear to have been supportive of
each other, although to what extent they discussed their personal affairs is difficult to
say. Cage, Cowell, and Harrison were each involved with men romantically and/or
sexually during this period. Presumably, each man’s sexuality progressed in unique
ways in terms of self-identification throughout their lives. They each experienced
periods of doubt and questioning, which is understandable considering the political and
social climate they were living in. Taking a look at each man’s sexual history will provide
a deeper understanding of how they each confronted (or avoided) their sexuality, and
the ways in which it influenced their lives. All of the information presented is in the
historical record, and is not presented to be sensational, but rather, to provide a matter-
of-fact account of how sexuality functioned in each man’s life. This information will
33 Leta E. Miller, “The Art of Noise: John Cage, Lou Harrison, and the West Coast Percussion Ensemble,”
in Perspective in American Music, 1900—1950, edited by Michael Saffle (New York: Garland Publishing,
2000). 224-225. The works on this concert were Cage’s Trio and Quartet, two of William Russell’s Three
Dance Movements, Gerald Strang’s Percussion Music for Three Players and Ray Green’s Three
Inventories of Casey Jones. The latter three works were published by Cowell in his 1936 percussion
collection.
34 Ibid., pg. 227. This concert also included Johanna Beyer’s Three Movements.
25
provide context for specific musical development, and cumulatively, provides a fuller
picture of what queer life was like in the 1930s and 40s.
Lou Harrison
Harrison never lived in the closet and was an out homosexual man for most of
his adult life, except for a period of questioning that coincided with a mental breakdown
in the early 50s in New York City.35 While living in San Francisco before his move to
New York City in 1942, he was able to live as a gay man quite openly: “At that time, San
Francisco was really fairly relaxed already about being gay. I never had any trouble with
it at all. None of my friends did either.”36 He had two significant relationships in San
Francisco. First was with Sherman Slayback, a salesman whom he lived with on
Telegraph Hill,37 along with a period of time when they moved in with John and Xenia
Cage.38 Second was with William Weaver (formerly William Brown). Weaver and
Harrison first lived together in 1941,39 then moved to Los Angeles together later in 1941
when Weaver began work with Lester Horton’s dance company.40 In 1943, when
35 “As Harrison’s psychological health suffered under the pressures in New York, he developed
ambivalent attitudes toward his sexuality. In the hospital he explored heterosexual relationships, and in
1951 he went to the extreme of becoming engaged to one of his female students—an error he realized
after a few weeks. A number of works from Harrison’s post-breakdown period are overtly “virile,” exhibiting
traits historically associated with masculinity in Western music…Harrison told [the authors] frankly on
several occasions that these attempts to project a ’masculine’ persona in the face of negative stereotypes
about effeminate gay men were deliberate.” Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2006), 98-99.
36
Winston Leyland, “Winston Leyland interviews Lou Harrison,” in A Lou Harrison Reader, ed. Peter
Garland (Santa Fe: Soundings Press, 1987), 71.
38 Leyland, “Winston Leyland,” 71.
40 Ibid., 21.
26
Horton’s company moved to New York City, Harrison and Weaver decided to relocate as
well, and moved to New York as a couple, although their relationship would not survive
the move.41
Harrison was clearly open about his sexuality during this period. Cage clearly
knew that Harrison was gay, and it would be surprising if Cowell did not know as well;
Harrison had surrounded himself with people who accepted his sexuality. He was very
active in the modern dance community, which was a very open group in terms of
sexuality (“a field that has attracted a heavily self-selecting gay male population”42), and
this would have provided him the support that would have been necessary to live openly
in the way he did. After his breakdown in the early 50s, he had two more relationships
with men, Edward McGowan and Remy Charlip,43 before meeting William Colvig, his life
and artistic partner who built and tuned many of Harrison’s instruments, including the
American Gamelan. He met Colvig in 1967 and they soon started living together. They
both became involved in San Francisco’s Society for Individual Rights, a gay rights
organization “dedicated to non-violent political action urging repeal of anti-homosexual
ordinances,”44 further deepening his political activism that was aligned with his sexuality.
Harrison became increasingly outspoken on gay rights, and wrote several queer-
influenced works, including a commission by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus (Three
Songs from 1985, featuring texts by Walt Whitman),45 as well as the puppet opera
41 Ibid., 23.
42 Ibid.,194.
43 Ibid., 190.
44 Miller and Lieberman, Lou Harrison, 29.
45 Ibid., 33.
27
Young Caesar, a stage work written in 1971 that depicts an overtly homosexual subject,
likely for the first time in opera.46
John Cage
Cage’s sexuality is a bit trickier to pinpoint, mostly because his public statements
didn’t necessarily line up with his actions; at no point in his life did he come out publicly
as gay. This has been frustrating for many scholars because of his refusal (or inability,
or insecurity) to publicly identify as gay despite his highly visible long-term personal and
artistic partnership with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Upon Cage’s
death in 1992, John Gill noted that,
What none of the papers said…was that John Cage was a queer, and that for the better
part of the twentieth century he and Cunningham had been lovers. This is not, however,
just another example of subtle homophobic censorship: Cage himself colluded in the
silence, and in a manner that is quite startling given the radicalism he pursued in so many
other areas of his life.47
It is striking that Cage, who spoke out on almost any topic, not just on music, but also
“aesthetics, the creative process, world politics, eastern mysticism, ecology,
macrobiotics…,[and] mycology,”48 would have very little to say about sexuality (let alone
acknowledgment of his personal relationship with Cunningham), especially since

47John Gill, Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 26-27.
48 Ibid., 31.
28
acceptance of queer sexualities would have been in line with his radical social and
political views.49
Despite Cage’s general silence about these issues, there are several sources
from interviews that he (and others) gave in which his sexuality is discussed. It is clear
that despite never coming out as gay later in life, he was able to discuss homosexual
acts, a distinction that holds meaning.50 According to John Hines,
Cage’s acknowledge[d] in his late teens that he was predominantly homosexual. it was in
Paris, in fact, that he had his earliest mature sexual experiences, first, briefly with John
Goheen, the son of a Queen’s College music professor, and then a more lasting
relationship with another American, Don Sample, an aspiring artist, who traveled with him
through Europe. Cage would later give credit to Sample for influencing his burgeoning
cultural and intellectual development.51
Cage met Don Sample (also referred to as Don St. in some letters) in Paris in 1930.
They later returned to the US together and lived together in Los Angeles52 until Cage left
for New York in fall the of 1934 to study with Cowell at the New School. Sample was
present during a road trip that Cowell and Cage took from New York back to California
at the end of the semester, suggesting that Cowell would have been aware and
49Several writers have examined various facets of Cage’s sexuality, particularly focusing on his inability to
publicly come out and other aspects surrounding his sexuality: Caroline A. Jones, “Finishing School: John
Cage and the Abstract Ego,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), 628 - 665; Jonathan D. Katz,
“John Cage’s Queer Silence; or, How to Avoid Making Matters Worse”, Writings through John Cage’s
Music, Poetry, and Art, ed. David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2001), 41 - 61; John Gill “A Minute’s Noise for John Cage” from Gill, Queer Noises, 26-35; Ryan
Dohoney, “John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego,” Tomorrow is the Question: New
Directions in Experimental Music Studies, ed. Benjamin Piekut (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2014), 39 - 62.
50There are men who do not identify as gay, but who have sex with other men. While this may seem to be
contradictory, there is historical precedent for this disconnect between sexual identity and sexual act. I do
not wish to delve deeply into this complicating topic here, but for further information, read: Jane Ward, Not
Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
51
John Hines, “Then Not Yet ‘Cage’: The Los Angeles Years, 1912-1938,” in John Cage: Composed in
America, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 81.
52 Cage claims their relationship became “promiscuous” by the time they were in LA, suggesting that their
relationship up until that point had remained platonic, or at least non-sexual. Hines also discusses a
further unnamed sexual partner who helped secure Cage a residence at the Schindler House in
Hollywood, further demonstrating the reach of homosexual networks. Ibid, 81.
29
accepting of Cage’s sexuality.53 Cage also had a short lived relationship with MOMA
curator of architecture Philip Johnson, whom he met through Virgil Thomson while living
in New York.54 It is notable that in the three relationships mentioned, Cage was not only
romantically and sexually involved with these men, but also engaged with them in
artistic and intellectual capacities. His crediting of Sample with stimulating his cultural
and intellectual development is an example of a queer relationship that has further
effects, which thereby impacted Cage’s worldview. Further, the tangential involvement of
Cowell and Thomson demonstrates an important of queer circles, namely, how artistic
relationships could bleed into social settings, which were themselves also places to
meet sexual partners. Beyond long-term relationships, Cage is also quoted as saying
that “contact with the rest of [gay] society was through [cruising in] the parks. For me it
was Santa Monica along the Palisades.”55 As was mentioned previously, queer
interactions, both social and sexual, could be found in a variety of public places,
including parks, beaches, and bars, and more formal social settings; Cage was
connected with the larger queer community in this casual manner.
John’s intertwined relationships with Xenia Cage (née Kashevaroff) and Merce
Cunningham demonstrate the struggles with sexuality that Cage was experiencing in
the early years of his career. Despite his acknowledgement of his queer sexuality while
53
Catherine Parsons Smith, “Athena at the Manuscript Club: John Cage and Mary Carr Moore,” Musical
Quarterly 79, 357; and Miller, “Henry Cowell and John Cage,” 60.
54 Schulze, Franz, Philip Johnson: A Life, 92, 97, 112. Cage met Johnson in a social circle of New York
modernists including queer composers Copland, Thomson, Thomson’s partner, painter Maurice Grosser,
as well as many other non-queer artists. The relationship ended abruptly when Johnson neglected to
invite Cage to a society party, angering Cage. Johnson continued calling Cage after he left the city in an
attempt to keep their relationship going, but to no avail. (Revill, The Roaring Silence, pg 35, and Hines,
“Then Not ‘Cage,’” 92)
55 Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence,” 43.
30
in Europe, upon his return to California “he did not talk about his associates from this
period out of loyalty to his homophobic mother,”56 (associates referring to boyfriends or
other casual romantic/sexual interests). This questioning about his sexuality helps
explain his interest in Xenia, whom he met while working at his mother’s craft shop.
Cage claimed that it was “love at first sight,” and after asking her out on a date, he
proposed to her on the spot. She claimed to be taken aback and did not give him an
answer right away. This scene took place in 1933, and they were not married until 1935,
which means that in between proposal and answer, Cage went out to New York City,
and that he would have also been with Don Sample through this time.
John’s reckless proposal and marriage to Xenia is not unprecedented,
considering that many queer men and women in this time entered heterosexual
marriages, oftentimes to hide their queer sexualities, especially in a time when being
queer was dangerous. As will be seen with Cowell, entering a heterosexual marriage
after known homosexual activities was often enough to convince acquaintances — and
sometimes the subject themselves — of a transition into heterosexuality. It seems
unlikely that John’s affections for Xenia would have been completely insincere,
especially as they spent many years together both as a married couple and as artistic
colleagues. It is more likely that Cage was in denial about his sexuality, or felt that if he
met the right woman, he could assume a heteronormative lifestyle. Whatever the
reasons (which he himself may not have even been aware), Xenia and John were
married in 1935 until their eventual separation in 1945, and subsequent divorce in 1946.
56Catherine Parsons Smith, Making Music in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007), 356.
31
In 1938, the Cages moved to Seattle so John could begin his new job at the
Cornish School as a dance accompanist. There, they met dancer Merce Cunningham,
who was a student at the school, studying under choreographer Bonnie Bird. Both John
and Xenia were attracted to Cunningham, which eventually resulted in a ménage à trois
due to the circumstances of their open marriage.57 Beyond being sexually involved with
both of the Cages, Cunningham also performed in some of the early percussion
concerts, including as a dancer in 1939 collaboratively-composed work Marriage at the
Eiffel Tower, and as a percussionist in the 1943 performance in New York at Museum of
Modern Art. The Cages eventually had to leave Seattle, spending time in San Francisco
and Chicago before finally arriving in New York in 1941. In New York, Cage resumed
artistic activities with Cunningham with a concert in 1944 that involved mostly prepared
piano works, as Cage entered a new phase of composition that moved away from the
percussion ensemble.
His reconnection with Cunningham was also the beginning of his separation from
Xenia until their divorce. This period was extremely difficult on John as his marriage
dissolved, but was inevitably a positive change, as he began a new relationship which
would prove to be one of the most fruitful artistic partnerships in twentieth century music
and dance. Cage and Cunningham remained together until Cage’s death in 1992,
finding in each other a collaborative and romantic partner, much in the way that Harrison
and Colvig had.
Cage’s silence regarding his sexuality is unfortunate for those who place political
importance in the act of coming out, but as David Revill reminds us:
57 Katz, “John Cage’s Queer Silence,” 42.
32
It is important not to apply contemporary ideas of openness, and calumniation of those

today who live their sexuality discreetly or even hide it, to older generations and the
internal and external pressures which led them to hide (so many married for the sake of a
social place and for appearances) or deny who they were.58
It is unproductive to fault Cage for technically remaining in the closet; he clearly could
not confront what it would mean to adopt a public queer identity. Even at times, he
approached the precipice, acknowledging the open secret in the room:
Asked by an interviewer about his relation to the homosexual community he said, “Well, I
suppose that it’s clear that that’s my way of living.” On the other hand he noted that Lou
Harrison had given a “beautiful,” frank interview to Gay Sunshine magazine. With respect
to his own gay experience, he said, “I thought that I would never be able to do that.” But
he added that the question transcends hetero- or homosexuality, that people are
complicated.59
Cage’s admittance that he “would never be able to do that” — “that” referring to
speaking openly about his own queer life — is simultaneously a coming out, and a
refusal (or incapacity) to come out. In contradicting himself, he is demonstrating how
“complicated” matters surrounding sexuality are. Despite what identities we can
retroactively apply to a subject, this serves as a reminder that such matters are rarely as
straightforward as on they might appear to be.
Henry Cowell
Cowell’s infamous arrest, conviction, and imprisonment due to a morals charge
greatly damaged his career, and much like Cage’s silence regarding his own sexual
identity, has created much speculation and confusion about Cowell’s sexuality. An
added complication is the presence of his wife, Sidney Cowell, who married Henry in
1941 after he was released from San Quentin prison; they subsequently settled in White
58 David Revill, The Roaring Silence: John Cage: a life. 2nd ed (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2014), 73.
59 Keneth Silverman. Begin Again: a Biography of John Cage (New York: Knopf, 2010), 365.
33
Plains, NY, far away from the Bay Area and his past life. Sidney spent much of her
married life in professional support of Henry, collecting his papers, serving as a
secretary, working with scholars, and offering general aid in promotion of his career.
Unfortunately, in some areas she has likely complicated issues surrounding aspects of
Henry’s life, either in the editing or omission of details, despite her best efforts to
present an accurate account of what happened. Particularly in areas regarding Henry’s
sexuality, Sidney has created confusion that must be sorted out before proceeding
further.
Joel Sachs, in his recent biography on Henry, discusses issues surrounding
Sidney’s involvement of Henry’s estate, suggesting areas where her record is solid, and
places where it may not be.60 One major theme that reemerges is Sidney’s desire to
prevent Henry’s arrest from overshadowing the rest of his career (much like late-
Renaissance composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, who is famously remembered for his act
of spousal murder) and as a result, have him remembered as “a martyr for homosexual
rights, something he never wished.”61 Further, “she was especially bothered because
she did not feel he was homosexual and never established whether he was even
bisexual, as he thought, or not particularly sexual at all.”62 Sachs remains ambivalent on
the actual damage that she caused to Cowell’s reputation; however, many researchers
have accused her of obstruction, further stoking conspiracy theories about her motives,
suggesting that there was more information hidden about Henry then there actual was.
60Sachs, Henry Cowell, 3-7, 275-276, 507-508. Pages include areas of discussion surrounding the
possible motives of Sidney Cowell in her presentation of Henry’s life and career.
61 Ibid., 4.
62 Ibid., 4.
34
The conflicting accounts of Henry’s arrest and imprisonment have themselves created a
disproportioned emphasis on the event in Cowell’s life. Sachs has dedicated much
discussion about the details surrounding this incident, relying heavily on the major
article by Michael Hicks, “The Imprisonment of Henry Cowell,”63 with some updates from
the recently-released Cowell papers.
Misconceptions about sexuality can create confusion when attempting to reveal a
subject’s true orientation. While it is generally accepted that Henry was queer (in the
quote above, Sidney even states that Henry thought he was bisexual), Sidney’s
statements over the years have caused a certain amount of doubt to arise; and while I
am not personally swayed by her position, it is worth understanding what she attempted
to do in “straightening” Henry’s life. While Sidney was adamant that Henry was
heterosexual, it is important to note that sexuality can exist as a fluid, non-fixed state
that can change and morph over time;64 thus, even if Henry was completely
heterosexual after his marriage to her, it does not change that fact that he had sexual
encounters with men in the early part of his life. Is it possible that Sidney’s
understanding of sexuality was just extremely rudimentary and unsophisticated?
A few of Sidney’s comments about Henry’s sexuality demonstrate her confusion
with regards to sexuality. Sachs quotes her, saying that “she felt that the sex drive was
not of much interest to [Henry] ‘except that he was convinced that its release was
63Michael Hicks, “The Imprisonment of Henry Cowell,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44
no. 1 (Spring 1991).
64 The concept of sexual fluidity is defined by Lisa Diamond as “situation-dependent flexibility
in women’s sexual responsiveness,” where “women’s” can be replaced with “men’s.” While her book
Sexual Fluidity focuses on female sexuality, it is also applicable to men, according to her 2013 lecture at
Cornell University (viewable here: http://www.cornell.edu/video/lisa-diamond-on-sexual-fluidity-of-men-
and-women, accessed March 16, 2016). Lisa Diamond, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love
and Desire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 3.
35
necessary to his health;’” and that “when he needs sex, he looked for a sexual object,
‘but he always seemed to me incompletely involved with whichever sex—though of
course I never was on sufficiently intimate terms with him to know about this before we
married.’”65 Her first statement is contradictory, claiming that Henry was both interested
and not interested in sex; and in the second quote, she says that he didn’t prefer one
sex to another, which is how one defines bisexuality. She also acknowledges that she
wasn’t on “intimate terms with him” regarding his pre-marriage sexuality. It is very
possible that Henry was not a highly sexual person, and it is well documented that
Henry was an “impersonal and detached person,”66 which may explain his “incomplete
involvement” during sex. Sidney seems to be stumbling over herself to try to prove
something that only she herself seemed overly concerned with: scrubbing the historical
record of any reference to his sexual life, and denying any possibility that his sexuality
was something he was concerned about. Sadly, considering the impact of Henry’s
incarceration, along with the political and social climate of the time, Sidney’s position
was not unexpected; homosexuality was a stigmatizing status that many people chose
to ignore, or worse, cover up. Coming out could ruin one’s personal and professional
life, and as Henry had already lost so much, it makes sense that Sidney would try to
present him as cured or recovered. Still, Sidney engaged in a practice of sexual
erasure, especially queer erasure, that has occurred throughout history; hence the need
to call it out as just that.
65 Sachs, Henry Cowell, 507.

66 Ibid., 507.
36
However, Sidney’s statements aside, research has revealed that Henry engaged
in homosexual encounters throughout his life, proving that he, like Cage and Harrison,
experienced queer desire and sexuality. The following sexual history of Henry Cowell is
based on Sachs’ account of a statement Henry provided to psychiatrist Dr. Wolff for his
trial.67 Clarissa Cowell, Henry’s mother, was a strong presence in his life, oftentimes his
only companion. After discovering that Henry had fallen in love with a girl at age
seventeen, she was vocal with him about her anti-sex views, believing that since
artificial insemination was now a way to get pregnant, and the only reason to ever have
sex was for procreation, therefore there was no reason to have any intercourse ever.
These views clearly affected Henry, and he had no sexual or romantic contact with
anyone of either gender until after Clarissa’s death when he was nineteen.68
After his mother’s death, he engaged in casual sex with young men his age until
he entered the army, at which point he ceased sexual activity. After the army, he had
romantic relationships with women (including Edna Smith and Elsa Schmolke), and
casual sexual relationships with men. However, his troubles began when he constructed
a swimming pool at his home in Menlo Park. He allowed neighborhood children to swim
in his pool, where “the boys swam in the nude on Monday through Saturday; girls swam
in suits on Sundays.”69 According to Henry, one day (likely in 1934 or 1935) he entered
the dressing room to find several of the boys engaged in various sexual activities, which
instigated a series of encounters between him and the boys (Cowell later confessed to
“improper relations with twenty-four boys between the ages of ten and seventeen over a
67 Ibid., 284-288.
68 Ibid., 285-288.
69 Ibid., 276.
37
period of four years”70). In an attempt to regain control, he eventually entered into a
sexual relationship with an unnamed twenty-nine year old woman, which he claimed
suppressed his interest in the boys, as well as his desire to sell the house and begin a
new married life. Beyond the experiences detailed in Cowell’s statement, there is further
evidence of at least three other male partners, including Leo Linder, Billy Justema, and
one further unnamed man.
Henry’s legal troubles began in May 1936 when a “relative of a seventeen-year-
old member of the swimming group had lodged a compliant against him. After
questioning by the police, Henry pleaded guilty to engaging in oral sex with the young
man.”71 Sachs reminds us that in those days that “consensual sex was not private,”72
and what got Henry in trouble had nothing to do with homosexuality or pedophilia (the
seventeen-year-old was legally considered an adult73), but rather oral sex:
Section 288a stated that “any person participating in the act of copulating the mouth of
one person with the sexual organ of another” was punishable by imprisonment in the
state prison for a term not exceeding fifteen years. The law did not specify homosexual
acts and was a 1921 amendment to a 1915 law that included heterosexual behavior:
“The acts technically known as fellatio and cunnilingus are hereby declared to be felonies
and any person convicted of the commission of either thereof shall be punished by
imprisonment in the state prison for not more than fifteen years.” That version had been
judged unconstitutional because it had not been published in English…Neither the 1915
version nor its successor contains stipulations about gender, force, seduction,
consensuality, or age of the participants. In both versions, any and all participants were in
violation.74 (emphasis mine)
70 Ibid., 277.
71 Ibid., 276.
72 Ibid., 276.
73 Ibid., 277.
74 Ibid., 276-277.
38
It is crucial to understand the exact nature of the complaint filed, as there seems to have
arisen much confusion around Cowell’s arrest.75 As was outlined above, Cowell clearly
engaged in homosexual acts throughout his life, but his arrest was not technically
related to his sexuality. Also, he was not arrested for engaging in acts of pedophilia,
despite having also engaged in them.
The orchestration of Henry’s arrest was an example of the growing homophobia
and sophisticated use of law to intimidate queers, as was sadly common throughout the
country during this time. However, it is important to truly understand the nature of his
arrest, especially the use of the phrase “morals charge,” which is coded with
homophobia. This was especially true of the reaction that much of the modern music
community had, considering that many of Henry’s colleagues ceased communication
with him after his arrest, including Ives,76 Varèse, Ruggles, and others (although many
continued to support him, including Cage and Harrison). They ceased communication
because they didn’t want to be associated with a known and prosecuted homosexual,
and didn’t take the time to understand the true nature of what had happened. There was
also, at the time, a lack of nuanced understanding about sexuality, particularly the belief
that homosexuals were also pedophiles (and visa versa). What is most unfortunate
about the situation is the public way in which Henry was condemned for his
homosexuality. There are, of course, no moral grounds on which to excuse his sexual
75One such example can be found in the book of essays published in conjunction with San Francisco
Symphony’s American Maverick’s Festival in 2000. Referring to his arrest, the publication states that “he
was convicted of a charge of homosexual conduct,” which is not wholly accurate. Susan Key and Larry
Rothe, eds, American Mavericks (University of California Press: Berkeley, 2001), 32.
76For more on Ives’ relationship with Cowell during his incarceration, read: Leta E. Miller and Rob Collins,
“The Cowell-Ives Relationship: A New Look at Cowell’s Prison Years,” American Music 23 no. 4 (Winter
2005), 473-492.
39
encounters with minors, even if they were consensual and technically legal in certain
cases.
The details surrounding the rest of Henry’s imprisonment, release and eventual
pardon, while extremely interesting, would take too long to recount, and the reader is
encouraged to read Sachs’ account of this period.77 Two things are worth mentioning:
first, that Henry was highly productive while at San Quentin, writing many works,
including dance and percussion works, as well as running prison ensembles, teaching
music classes, writing articles, and continuing as much administrative work for outside
organizations as he could. He had regular visitors and kept up much correspondence,
and his time in San Quentin was overall a positive one, considering the circumstances.
As will be discussed later, his time in prison resulted in the creation of elastic form, an
important development in dance music that influenced Cage and Harrison. It is highly
unlikely that he would have developed elastic form had he not been in prison.
Second, it is important to point out that Henry was eventually pardoned by the
State of California on December 28, 1942,78 mostly due to Sidney’s diligence in
collecting letters of support for Henry, as well as pursuing the necessary lawyers and
psychologists to come to Henry’s defense. Henry’s marriage to Sidney in 1941 was a
key aspect of his pardon,79 which helped convince many of Henry’s heterosexuality,
including Ives, who was joyed at the news and resumed communications. The fact that
proving heterosexuality for charges that supposedly had nothing to do with
homosexuality further demonstrates the tangled nature of his case. Nonetheless,
77 Sachs, Henry Cowell, 290-388.

78 Ibid., 386.
79 Ibid., 373.
40
Henry’s pardon had a huge affect on his later life, as he was allowed to work for the US
government in a period of international travel and study that greatly impacted his
musical composition. Also, knowing that their marriage was an important aspect to
Henry’s pardon provides further understanding of why Sidney was so adamant that he
was, in fact, heterosexual, and no longer engaged in homosexual acts.
What was the nature of Cowell’s sexuality? On the most basic level, it appears
that he would be bisexual (according to Sidney’s account of how Henry viewed himself);
yet, it seems more complex than that, considering that the bohemian environment he
was raised in promoted individualism, and was overall less restrained than the general
culture. In Michael Hicks’s Henry Cowell, Bohemian,80 he explores this crucial aspect of
Henry’s life, and the ways that his bohemianism manifested itself in various aspects of
his life. This includes his unconventional education (mostly home schooling with his
mother), lack of strict upbringing and etiquette, along with a wide ranging imagination
and lack of self consciousness. Regarding a bohemian sense of sexuality, Hicks states:
While Cowell lived publicly many principles of his bohemian upbringing, he had a
privately bohemian side as well, the intimate side of his life, which was as complex as it
was hidden. Even in his youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cowell must have
observed the sexual libertinism that went hand in hand with artistic life. His mother’s
preachments notwithstanding, free love and homosexual relationships had been more
open matters in the Bay Area than elsewhere.81
Perhaps the conflict between public/private, bohemian/cultured, and discipline/
indulgence is manifested in Cowell’s sexual life. It is with Cowell where I find the term
queer most appropriate, because his sexuality defies a tidy definition that sums up his
desires and identity. When Cowell interacted with women, including Sidney, they tended
80 Michael Hicks, Henry Cowell, Bohemian (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
81 Ibid., 127.
41
to be older than him, having both financial resources, and serving as mother-like figures
that could organize his life (including Elsa Smolke and Edna Smith), especially once his
mother passed away. This doesn’t necessarily imply that he lacked sexual desire for
women, but that his relationships with them helped fulfill additional needs in his life. Its
clear that sexually he preferred men, but there’s no reason to discount his interactions
with women. It is doubtful that Cowell identified strongly in any sexual category, as he
was used to his position on the outskirts of society where such labels were of little use.
That being said, it is hard to imagine that after his release from San Quentin,
Cowell would have ever entertained the possibility of sexual relations with other men.
Even though prison had not been a horrible experience for him, it took an extreme toll
on his career, which never quite recovered on the likely trajectory it would have taken.
Claims that Henry became heterosexual after prison seem to miss how traumatic four
years in prison would be; it is understandable that he would want to avoid any actions
that would put him back there. Sidney’s claims that Cowell had very little sex drive make
more sense in this context.
Cage, Cowell, and Harrison’s varied experiences demonstrate the range of
sexualities, desires, and identities that can be considered within a queer context. All
three men shared periods of doubt about their sexuality, which is not just indicative of
the time, but part of any individual’s personal journey. Close examination of sexual
histories shows that all three men were aware of each other’s queer status, were
accepting, and likely even supportive of each other. There doesn’t appear to be any
overt evidence that suggests they connected solely because of their sexualities, but at
42
the same time (and as will be shown later), they, like many queer individuals, were
seeking out communities and collaborators who were sympathetic and accepting of their
sexual identities and practices. The overlap between outsider artistic and sexual status
was extremely common, oftentimes undistinguishable in certain circles. This included
the queer-friendly space of early modern dance, a place that was crucial for the
development of the percussion ensemble, as well as being a place where Cage, Cowell,
and Harrison spent the early parts of their compositional careers.
Early Percussion Ensemble: Ultramodernism and Modern Dance
The percussion ensemble in the thirties and early forties was situated at the
intersection of two modernist artistic practices: ultramodern classical music, and modern
dance. Cowell was the main connection between these two networks, serving as liaison
between composers and choreographers seeking to develop new work, while also
redefining the relationship between music and dance. The percussion ensemble
merged the musical language of ultramodernism with the performance practice and
production apparatus of modern dance; the percussion ensemble was largely separate
from mainstream classical music during this time. Useful in understanding the
relationship between the percussion ensemble and the musical culture is David Nicholls’
distinction between avant-garde and experimental music:
Avant-garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition,
while experimental music lies outside it. The distinction may appear slight, but when
applied to such areas as institutional support, “official” recognition, and financial reward,
the avant garde’s links with tradition — however tenuous — can carry enormous weight.82
82David Nicholls, “Avant-garde and experimental music,” in The Cambridge History of American Music,
ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 518.
43
In this context, the percussion ensemble of the West Coast Group was truly an
experimental enterprise, existing outside of the concert music apparatus of the day (i.e.
major orchestras, opera companies, and other major presenting organizations and
venus). After initial support from composer-run societies such as the Pan American
Association of Composer and New Music Society (of California), it was under the
auspices of the modern dance community that the percussion ensemble was able to
develop and flourish.
Ultramodernism83 refers to a movement in American composition where
“composers increasingly turned away from Europe”84 and embraced experimentalism,
or as Alan Rich noted, developed “a contempt for the compositional rulebook as refined,
redefined, and handed down by the European generations over…a millennium’s
span.”85 Composers that engaged with ultramodernism to varying degrees included
Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Edgard Varèse, Charles Seeger, Dane Rudhyar, Henry
Cowell, George Antheil, Ruth Crawford, Harry Partch, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow,
Henry Brant, and Lou Harrison.86 These were composers who sough a music practice
that didn’t rely on European models, and could instead develop an American sensibility,
as most of these composers were themselves American.87 This required seeking out
83
Other frequently used terms include American experimentalism, hyper modernism, and American
mavericks, although each term has slightly different connotations.
84 David Nicholls, American Experimental Music, 1980-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 1.
85Alan Rich, “The American Maverick Tradition,” in American Mavericks, eds. Susan Key and Larry Rothe
(University of California Press, Berkeley: 2001).
86 Ibid.
87 All of these composers were American except for Varèse and Rudhyar who were both French-born and
later emigrated to the United States, and Henry Brant, who was born in Canada.
44
new models and concepts that could serve as the theoretical basis for American
composition.
Percussion and Ultramodernism
Percussion composition grew out of this new American tradition of ultramodern
composition that began in the final years of the nineteenth century. Nicholls’ provides a
list of unifying characteristics of the ultramodern music that was written roughly between
1890 and 1940, showing some of the overriding concerns ultramodern composers
engaged with:
1. extreme chromaticism of both melody and harmony;

2. tone-clusters and noise;
3. the use of new or unconventional instruments… and/or of conventional instruments in
an unusual way;
4. rhythmic complexity, both simultaneous and successive;
…
7. independent organization of the various parameters of a musical line or idea
8. large-scale and/or small-scale structuring of form, using extra-musical devices and
process, including numeration
…
10. works which are indeterminate of their performance88
This list articulates many aspects of the ultramodernist aesthetic, several of which were
written about in Cowell’s 1930 book New Musical Resources,89 a treatise that proposed
new concepts relating to rhythm, harmony, form, and counterpoint. NMR was the major
theoretical text written in the ultramodern movement (with several ideas traced to
88 David Nicholls, American Experimental Music, 1980-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1990), 218.
89Henry Cowell, New Musical Resources, edited by David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
45
Cowell’s teacher, Charles Seeger, another ultramodern composer).90 NMR was read by
both Cage and Harrison, who both absorbed many of its ideas. In 1961, Cage claimed
that NMR was one of the most influential books to him,91 and his square-root form grew
out of ideas Cowell had initially presented.92 Harrison traced specific pieces that were
influenced by NMR, notably his percussion quartet Fugue for Percussion (1941);93 also,
his later usage of clusters are also attributed to Cowell’s influence.94 NMR provided an
alternative to traditional European compositional practices, which was crucial in the
composition of percussion-only pieces, as they couldn’t be organized using traditional
harmonic and formal schema based on pitched tonal music. And even while many
percussion works may not have been composed in direct response to NMR, the text
provided the imaginative framework for new forms and concepts that helped structure
new percussion composition.
During its early days, the percussion ensemble relied on various musical
organizations that presented ultramodern works, many of which Cowell was personally
involved with. This included his New Music Society concerts; New Music Edition, which
produced two periodicals, the New Music Quarterly, a journal for new scores, and the
New Music Orchestra Series (hereafter referred to as NMOS), a periodical of orchestral
scores (as well as percussion scores). NMOS published two early percussion works:
90This includes the concept of dissonant counterpoint, which was devised by Seeger in the late 1910s.
David Nicholls, “Henry Cowell’s ‘New Musical Resources,’” essay in New Musical Resources, by Henry
Cowell, edited by David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 172.
91 David Nicholls, “Cage and the Ultramoderns,” American Music, 28 no. 4 (Winter 2010), 496.
92 Nicholls, “Henry Cowell,” 173.
93 Heidi von Gundern, The Music of Lou Harrison (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press Inc.,1995), 42. Also,
Harrison, later in life, produced his own Music Primer, which although much looser in structure than NMR,
is clearly influenced by Cowell’s writings. Lou Harrison, Music Primer (New York: C. F. Peters, 1971).
94 Nicholls, “Henry Cowell,” 173.
46
William Russell’s Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments in 1933 (issue no. 6),95 and
Edgard Varèse’s Ionisation in 1934 (issue no. 11).96 These two works were eventually
featured on the same concert, conducted by Nicholas Slomnisky on a Pan American
Association of Composers (PAAC) concert in New York City on April 15, 1934 at Town
Hall.97 The PAAC was an important organization in the history of early percussion
ensemble works, and was another group that Cowell had been highly involved with after
its founding by Varèse in 1928. The PAAC gave the first performance of Roldán’s
Rítmicas on March 10, 1931, and later presented the Los Angeles premiere of Ionisation
at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on a program in July 1933.98 A year later, both
Ionisation and Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments were presented once again in
San Francisco by Cowell’s New Music Society on May 28, 1934, taking place at
Community Playhouse, with choreography by Betty Horst, an early example of dance
and percussion in performance.99 Taken together, these early percussion performances
were highly influential, not only leading Cowell to eventually write his first percussion
work, Ostinato Pianissimo in 1934 (which then further inspired Cage’s early Quartet (c.
1936), but also convinced many other composers to write for the new medium.
After the first wave of early works by Varèse, Roldán, and Russell, a second
wave of percussion work began to appear, with Cowell serving as the person who
95Rita Mead, “Henry Cowell’s ‘New Music,’ 1925-1936: the Society, the Music Editions, and the
Recordings (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1978), 546.
96 Ibid., 756.
97Deane L. Root, “The Pan American Association of Composers (1928-1934),” Anuario Interamericano
de Investigacion Musical, 8 (1972), 49-70. Henry Cowell was one of performers in Ionisation, alongside
composers Paul Creston, Wallingford Riegger, William Schuman, Carlos Salzedo, and Varèse, among
others.
98 Ibid., 59.
99 Mead, “Henry Cowell’s ‘New Music,’” 547.
47
began sorting through the new work. In 1936, he published Issue No. 18 of New Music
Orchestra Series,100 which included six new percussion works: Johanna M. Beyer’s IV,
Harold G. Davidson’s Auto Accident, Ray Green’s Three Inventories of Casey Jones,
choreographer Doris Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms (which had been notated by
Wallingford Riegger101), William Russell’s Three Dance Movements, and Gerald
Strang’s Percussion Music.102 Cowell had asked Green, Strang and Davidson for pieces
to be written specifically for this edition,103 while the remaining works had been
submitted by the individual composers. The works in the collection exhibit a wide range
of styles and instrumentations, as commentator Jack Kennedy notes:
The New Music Orchestra Series edition [no. 18] spotlights the surprisingly different
directions composers took in this new idiom. Some works are overtly programmatic and
even satiric (Davidson, Green, and Russell), yet they experiment with unconventional
playing techniques, found objects as instruments, and the playful contortion of traditional
musical forms.104
The new musical possibilities that the percussion ensemble presented to composers
was seemingly limitless, and the variety of musical imagination found within these works
is commendable.
Unfortunately, none of these works would receive performances until 1938 at the
Cage Percussion Players concerts in Seattle. Cowell’s sudden arrest halted his day-to-
day involvement with the New Music Society and New Music Edition (which he
100
Henry Cowell, ed. Percussion Pieces by J. M. Beyer, Harold G. Davidson, Ray Green, Doris
Humphrey, Wm. Russell, and Gerald Strang. New Music Orchestra Series, No. 18 ) San Francisco, CA:
New Music Orchestra Series, 1936).
102 Ibid., 757.
103 Ibid., 660.
104Meehan/Perkins Duo, Restless—Endless—Tactless: Johanna Beyer and the Birth of American
Percussion Music, Meehan/Perkins Duo & the Baylor Percussion Group (New World Records 80711-2,
2011), compact disc, “Restless—Endless—Tactless” essay in accompanying booklet by John Kennedy.
48
eventually sold to Gerald Strang in 1937).105 Had Cowell not been arrested, it is very
likely that he would have arranged performances of these works, and continued
promoting the percussion ensemble. Percussion concerts required a lot of effort from an
organizational standpoint, including hiring players (a challenge, as their were few
trained percussionists around), gathering instruments, finding rehearsal space (likely
dance studios or similar spaces), and promoting the concert to audiences who had little
or no knowledge of the percussion ensemble; thus, these events only happened with
the determined support of an individual, in this case Cowell, and through a supporting
organization, like NMS or PAAC. Later, Cage and Harrison would carry the mantel of
presenting percussion works, but only after a period of incubation in the modern dance
community.
Cowell and Harrison’s Early Interactions with Modern Dance
Dance is a collaborative form that requires extensive communal time in the studio
with dancers, the choreographer, musicians, and designers in order to create new work.
Cowell, Harrison, and Cage were all very familiar with the workings of the dance world
by the late thirties, as each spent much time in dance studios as class accompanists
and composers. Dance provided steady, yet meager, income for the composers, even
though it often proved to be monotonous due to repetitive accompaniments for technical
dance exercises. Classes were accompanied mostly by piano or percussion, with the
music being largely improvised based on the dancers’ movements. Despite the
monotony of classes, many musical discoveries were made while in class or writing for
49
dance, including Cowell’s aforementioned elastic form (which was a precursor to later
experiments with form and aleatory) and Cage’s well-known inventions of the prepared
piano106 and the water gong.107
Cowell’s first professional experiences with dance began while on a European
tour performing his tone-cluster piano works. One concert included a program with
dancer Yvonne Daunt, who danced to several of his pieces on a Paris recital at the
Salon d’Automne on December 16, 1923.108 Once back in the States, Cowell met
dancers Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman (from Los Angeles-based company
Denishawn) through pianist Louis Horst (who would later become Martha Graham’s
music director and husband), and choreographer Ruth St. Denis through composer
Dane Rudhyar.109 He also met and collaborated with dancers Martha Graham, Charles
Laskey (later associated with George Balanchine), José Limón, Tina Flade (from Mary
Wigman’s troupe), Sophia Delza, and Hanya Holm in the period prior to 1936.110 Cowell
106 “As Cage recounted, in 1940, while he was working at the Cornish School, Syvilla Fort asked him to
compose music for a new dance work. The Repertory Playhouse, the space in which the performance
was to take place, did not have ample room for Cage’s percussion ensembles…So Cage decided to write
for piano…But he quickly became dissatisfied with the limited range of sounds available on the piano…
Cage was familiar with Cowell’s ‘string piano’ pieces…In Bacchanale, he extended this idea by placing a
small bolt between the second and third strings for one note, a screw with nuts between the second and
third strings (etc.).” David W. Bernstein, “Music I: to the late 1940s,” in The Cambridge Companion to
John Cage, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 77-78.
107“Cage was asked to write for the annual water ballet of the UCLA swimming team. He found the
swimmers could not hear music underwater. In order to mark time, it occurred to him that he could dip a
vibrating gong in the water. When he tried it out, he found that submersion progressively shortened the
resonating area and the sound scooped lower in pitch. The effect so delighted Cage that he used it in
many subsequent compositions quite unconnected with the aquatic ballet.” Revill,The Roaring Silence,
44.
108 Sachs, Henry Cowell, 122, 209. This however, was not his very first exposure to as he had also
collaborated on theatrical productions earlier in his life that were collaborative in nature, such as music for
John Varian’s production of The Building of Bamba (see Sachs, Henry Cowell, 73-74).
109 Ibid., 209.
110 Ibid., 210-212.
50
was as well connected in the modern dance world as he was in the music word, due in
part to his various university teachings positions at schools with dance departments
(including New School, Mills College, Stanford and University of California San
Francisco111), and his regular travels that brought him into contact with many individuals
involved with dance. He was also aided by his ability to communicate clearly with
dancers, along with a broad knowledge of dance. Prior to San Quentin, he wrote at least
a dozen dance works,112 and using his contacts, he was able to recruit Harrison and
Cage into the dance world as they sought employment and artistic collaboration.
Although Cowell’s time in San Quentin limited much of his daily administrative
activities, he was able to remain professionally active as he continued to compose
music and write articles. Of special interest here was his work with dance, which
prompted his development of elastic form. Elastic form was created partially out of
necessity, as he wrote music for dances that he was unable to see first hand; thus, he
invented a system that allowed his music to be custom fit to the dance by another
composer during rehearsal. Additionally, elastic form was an attempt to provide a
solution to what he viewed as a problematic relationship between music and dance. In
his article “Relating Music and Concert Dance,”113 Cowell outlines what he sees as a
compromising relationship between music and modern dance: namely, that either the
choreography or the music must conform to whichever part is created first
(choreography created to existing music, or music written to existing choreography) in
111 Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco, 199-200.

112See Leta E. Miller’s selective list of dance pieces, many of which are now lost. Leta E. Miller, “Henry
Cowell and Modern Dance: the Genesis of Elastic Form,” American Music, 20, no. 1 (Spring, 2002),
20-21.
113 Cowell, Henry, “Relating Music and Concert Dance”, Dance Observer, IV no. 1 (January, 1937) 1, 7-9.
51
the absence of established classical dance forms (like as in ballet). Elastic form allows
both the dance and music to retain a certain amount of autonomy, while allowing a
cohesive structure and phrase-level relationships to develop:
Elastic Form entailed creating a group of melodic phrases, each of which could be
expanded or contracted by lengthening or shortening certain key tones. [Cowell]
recommended that the composer supply all the different versions. Each of those
“sentences” should be constructed so that it could function as a self-contained block able
before or after any other “sentence,” or repeated, either identically or varied, if expansion
of a part of the dance was desired.114
Cowell was able to employ his concept in a work for Martha Graham in 1937, the trio
Sarabande for oboe, clarinet, and percussion. The work consisted of a series of phrases
that were constructed in rehearsal by composers Louis Horst and Norman Lloyd115
alongside Graham. Cowell’s 1939 work Ritual of Wonder also utilized elastic form, and
will be discussed further in the next chapter.
Harrison had the most first-person experience with dance among his colleagues,
as he spent much of his younger years and early professional life as a dancer alongside
his musical activities. Harrison studied ballroom dance at a young age116 and, as
encouraged by Cowell, accompanied dance classes while in college.117 His first
professional dance collaboration was with Carol Beals (a student of Martha Graham),
writing the now-lost work Waterfront—1934 for percussion solo, a work that he
performed as musician several times.118 In 1937, Harrison took part in the Dance
114 Sachs, Henry Cowell, 337-8.

115Miller says that Louis Horst was the constructor of Sarabande (Miller, Music and Politics in San
Francisco, 202.); Sachs adds that Norman Lloyd Miller “participated” in the construction, but makes no
mention of Horst (Sachs, Henry Cowell, 338). It is unclear who exactly did what based on these two
conflicting accounts.
52
Council Festival, working with Beals and several other choreographers in a jointly-
choreographed project called Changing World: Illusions of a Better Life. The program
claimed that it was the first experiment in collective choreography, combining several
studios of dancers. Harrison not only wrote music, but performed instrumental parts
(piano, percussion, and recorder), contributed choreography, and danced as well.119
Such a large-scale collaborative project surely influenced his later musical
collaborations (Double Music and other works that will be discussed later) by providing
a collaborative model that he could emulate.
Other productions that Harrison danced in included Changing World, the 1938
opera Ming-Yi by composer Harvey Raab with choreography by Lenore Peters Job; and
a piece called Green Mansions in 1941 for the Modern Ballet Group (Beals and others),
where he once again composed music, played instruments and danced.120 His
dedication to dance was immersive, providing experience that gave him a deeper
understanding of the needs of dancers and choreographers, and how to support them
musically.
A series of meetings and collaborations further increased Harrison’s engagement
with dance, a field that relied heavily on personal connections. In 1937, Cowell arranged
a meeting between Harrison and Tina Flade, a German dancer who was teaching at
Mills College. Harrison joined the Mills staff as a dance accompanist, working with Flade
on various projects, while also meeting visiting choreographers. In the summer of 1938,
visiting artists included choreographer Bonnie Bird from Cornish in Seattle,
119 Ibid., 85.

120 Ibid., 83.
53
accompanied by dancers Dorothy Herrmann and Merce Cunningham; and
choreographer Lester Horton from Los Angeles, accompanied by dancer Bella Lewitzky.
This meeting of choreographers and dancers would prove fruitful for Harrison, who
entered a period of collaboration with Horton. In 1938, they created the piece Conquest,
a work that was largely improvised. Musically, it was performed on flowerpots, piano,
conch shell, thunder sheet, and a flute (or ocarina or recorder), many instruments that
would reappear in subsequent West Coast percussion ensemble pieces. Cage also
benefitted from Harrison’s networking during this time, as he accepted the Cornish job
that had originally been offered to Harrison by Bird.121 Harrison’s ability to negotiate
within the tight-knit modern dance community is an example of queer networking, with
modern dance consisting largely of queer men and women.
It is important to highlight the improvisational aspects of many early dance
collaborations such as Conquest, as composers were increasingly experimenting with
new instruments and sounds, new concepts of musical form, and immediate musical
responses to the dance; in this early phase of percussion composition, the composers
were often less concerned with the rigid compositional structures that would come to
characterize later percussion ensemble works. These improvisational pieces might be
considered work-concepts that were realized only in performance, as opposed to fully-
realized compositions on paper (the distinction between improvised and composed
works will be explored further in Part II of this essay). Composed and improvised works
overlap chronologically (for example, Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo, and Cage’s Quartet
and Trio were all composed prior to Harrison’s Conquest); improvisation and
121 Ibid., 86-87.
54
composition were not mutually-exclusive techniques, but rather different methods of
composition that varied depending on a given situation. Improvisation allowed
composers the freedom to explore new musical materials before having to apply formal
structures. If one views improvisation and exploration as developing out of modern
dance, and formal structure coming out of ultramodern compositional technique, the
West Coast percussion ensemble is a merging of these two traditions.
Cage: Dance, Seattle, and the Cage Percussion Players
Cage’s first experiences with dance were in Los Angeles: accompanying classes,
writing music for performance, and teaching a percussion course designed for
dancers.122 His brief move to San Francisco led to his initial meeting with Harrison, the
offer of the Cornish job, then the move to Seattle. Beyond the appeal of a regular
position, Cage suggests that the Cornish job further interested him because “Bird
described to him a ‘closet full of percussion instruments,’ among them a collection of
Chinese gongs, cymbals, tom-toms, and woodblocks belonging to German dancer Lore
Deja.”123 Lore Deja began teaching at Cornish in 1930, and had previously been an
assistant to choreographer and dancer Mary Wigman in Dresden.124 Mary Wigman
(1886 — 1973) was an important figure in modern dance whose ideas on the use of
music in dance were influential at Cornish. Her views prioritized choreography over
music, moving her to create silent dance pieces, as well as composing her own
percussion music that augmented movement:
122 Silverman, Begin Again, 27.

123 Miller,“The Art of Noise,” 225.
124 Ibid., 257.
55
Although she occasionally employed already-existing music to accompany her

compositions, she found that in its use she ran up against the intent of the composer and
this clashed with her aims as a choreographer. Silent dance provided for the greatest
expression, as she felt her intuition and creativity more free to obey spatial effects, and
not bound by the emotional stimulus of the music. She was attracted to the percussion
instruments of Java, Burma and China, especially gongs, believing that the qualities of
percussion best suited dance accompaniment. She considered skill and knowledge in
percussion essential for a dancer, and her students experimented with round hand
drums, cow bells, Chinese temple blocks, gongs and African drums. In time Wigman’s
accompaniment would be created in the studio as the dance itself was created, so that
dance and music existed together as an organic whole. In the early 1920s she was
turning towards increased use of percussion.125
Germanic Modern dance had been investigating the uses of percussion in dance since
at least the early 1920s, if not earlier.126 The instruments that Cage found at Cornish
have a direct lineage to Wigman and her preference for Asian and Afrcian instruments.
These instruments were introduced into the inventory of the early percussion ensemble,
specifically in the works composed by Cage after 1938, having had access to these
instruments at Cornish. This directly linked modern dance to the percussion ensemble
in a manner that had profound influences on the instrumentation and timbral spectrum
of the repertoire. Also, as will be discussed later, the exotic instruments preferred by
dancers has a direct relation to the orientalist qualities and influences of many early
modern dance works, further contributing to the Asian overtones of many early
percussion pieces.
Cage didn’t waste any time after his arrival in Seattle in forming the first
organized percussion ensemble, the Cage Percussion Players. CPP was a
continuation of the work that Cowell had overseen with the publication of NMOS #18.
Over the next several years, Cage presented many concerts, adding to the number of
125Maggie Odom, “Mary Wigman: The Early Years 1913 — 1925,” The Drama Review: TDR, 24, no. 4,
(Dec., 1980), 88-89.
126This would have coincided with the period in classical music when an increasing number of percussion
instruments were being added to the orchestral batterie, for example, Stravinsky’s early orchestral works.
56
percussion pieces in the repertoire, widening the ensemble’s exposure, raising funds for
instruments and travel, and continuing to make connections in the dance, music, and
arts communities. These percussion concerts existed outside of the realm of organized
classical music (even outside established contemporary music circles), and instead
found support largely within the dance community.
While many works were initially written at request of various choreographers,
Cage and his colleagues began composing concert works that didn’t necessarily
conform to the needs of any specific choreography. At times, these works were later
accompanied by dance, but often, they stood on their own as concert works, even
though they were heard outside of standard concert halls. A majority of the
percussionists were dancers themselves, performing for artistically-inclined audiences,
including a fair share of dancers. Gradually, the rigors of ultramodern composition
began to shape percussion works, while the dance ethos provided the conceptual
framework for how the works were to be conceived, performed, and received.
Percussion music was as much a visual spectacle as dance was, and for these early
concerts, the visual and theatrical aspects of the percussion ensemble were as
important as the musical components, if not more so. An examination of the early CPP
concerts will show how closely percussion interacted with the dance community, along
with the strong presence of women and queer individuals who formed the aesthetics of
West Coast percussion ensemble.
The first CPP concert took place on December 9, 1938 with a quartet formed by
Cage, Xenia, and two Cornish faculty members: pianist Margaret Jansen, and
eurythmics instructor Doris Denison, who both became regular members of the group.
57
The first program consisted of Cage’s Trio and Quartet, as well as selections from
NMOS #18: Ray Green’s Three Inventories of Casey Jones, Gerald Strang’s Percussion
Music for Three Players, and William Russell’s Three Dance Movements (only the Waltz
and Foxtrot movements). Cornish provided the instruments for this concert, including
seven gongs, three cymbals, four tom-toms, two timpani, and several wood blocks; the
players also brought in various found objects and handmade instruments.127 After the
first concert, Cage’s ensemble grew in size, and he began soliciting works from
composers, receiving several pieces for the second concert on May 19, 1939: Cowell
submitted the sextet Pulse from San Quentin; Johanna Beyer (who was helping to
manage New Music Quarterly at the time) sent in Three Movements; and Harrison
contributed two works, the quartet Fifth Simfony, and trio Counterdance. The May
program also included Cage’s Trio, as well as works by William Russell.128 This concert
was also the first program to feature works by Cage, Cowell, and Harrison all together.
The third Cornish program took place later that year on December 9, including
several new works: Cowell’s Pulse, and Return, a new work for six players and ‘human
wail’, both written at San Quentin;129 Russell’s 3 Dance Movements and Fugue;
Roldan’s Rimicas V and VI; a work for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart by
Californian composer Mildred Couper; and the premiere of First Construction (In Metal)
for six percussionists, including a string piano (inspired by Cowell), thunder sheets, and
water gong (from the UCLA water ballet). For this program, the ensemble swelled to a
127 Miller, “The Art of Noise,” 225, and Silverman, Begin Again, 32-33.
128Miller, Leta E. “Cultural Intersections: John Cage in Seattle (1938—1940)” in John Cage: Music,
Philosophy, and Intention. 1933—1950, ed. David W. Patterson, 79.
129 Meehan/Perkins Duo, Restless—Endless—Tactless.
58
size of twelve players, including several dancers, and almost all women performers.
Cage had also worked hard to achieve financial support for this program, including
financial contribution from notable queer Seattle artist Mark Tobey.130
Earlier in that same year on March 24 and 25, Cage had helped organize music
for a production of Jean Cocteau’s The Marriage at the Eiffel Tower with choreography
by Bird.131 Cage arranged for music to be written by himself, Cowell and George
McKay,132 with each man writing music for separate scenes. This collaborative structure
is reminiscent of Changing World (the 1937 dance piece that Harrison had taken part of
in San Francisco), but was in fact influenced by the collaborative model of Les Six, who
had composed music for the original 1921 production of Les mariés de la Tour.133 Cage,
Cowell, and McKay’s version of Eiffel Tower was very similar in structure, with each
composer contributing his own music that Bird then selected (including Cowell’s “Train
Finale” for six percussionists134). Additionally, the concert featured Cage’s Imaginary
Landscape No. 1, for piano, China cymbal, and two variable-speed turntables with
130
Cage met artists Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, who were both gay and on the art faculty at Cornish,
who provided another influential and supportive queer network that will be explored in the next chapter.
131 Miller, “Cultural Intersections,” 64
132 George McKay (1899—1970) was a composer on faculty at the University of Washington whose work
often used American folk idioms and melodies. Grove Music Online, s.v. “McKay, George Frederick” (by
Katherine K. Preston) http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed January 26, 2015).
133The original production of Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel had taken place in Paris by the Swedish ballet
company Ballets Suédois in 1921, with the scenario by Cocteau, choreography by Jean Börlin, and music
by five of the six members of Les Six: Auric, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc and Tailleferre (Durey did not
take part in the project). Each composer wrote for one or two dance scenes on his or her own; their
contributions were individually composed and credited. Lynette Miller Gottlieb, “Images, Technology, and
Music: The Ballets Suédois and ‘Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel,’” The Musical Quarterly, 88 no. 4 (Winter,
2005), 523-555.
134
The score for Cowell’s “Train Finale” can be found in John Cage’s collection of scores, Notations. John
Cage, Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969).
59
frequency recordings, arguably the first electroacoustic work composed.135 Bird also
created choreography for this piece, featuring, among other dancers, Merce
Cunningham.136
Over the summer of 1939 (between the second and third Cornish concerts), the
Bennington School of Dance came to Mills College for a six week residency with twenty-
six faculty and staff (including Graham, Humphrey, Weidman, Holm, Limón, and
Cunningham).137 Cage travelled from Seattle to present a percussion concert in tandem
with Harrison on July 27, including works by Cage, Harrison, Beyer, Russell, and a new
work, Changing Tensions, by percussionist and dancer Franziska Boas.138 Cunningham
and Ralph Gilbert (Bird’s former accompanist) also performed in the percussion
ensemble for this concert. The concert was overall successful, and Cage was invited to
return the following summer for another concert.139 140
In January 1940, Cage organized a tour for the core members of the CPP
members (John, Xenia, Jansen, and Denison) throughout eastern Washington, Idaho,
and Montana at several universities, and another concert in Portland, Oregon in
February. The repertoire was reprised from earlier programs, including works by
135 Silverman, Begin Again, 29

136 Miller, “Cultural Intersections,” 64-65.
138Franziska Boas (1902—1988) studied dance with Mary Wigman in Germany and Hanya Holm in New
York. She ran a dance school in New York from 1939 until 1949. Her article “Percussion Music and Its
Relation to the Modern Dance” is clearly influenced by Wigman, particularly in her preference for world
percussion instruments. (Franziska Boas, “Percussion Music and Its Relation to the Modern Dance,” in
Making Music for Modern Dance, ed. Katherine Teck (Oxford: Oxford University, 2011), 204-207.
139 Miller, “Cultural Intersections,” 62.
140Another significant event that took place during this summer was the Golden Gate International
Exposition with live performances of a Balinese gamelan (discussed previously). Harrison had attended
these performances, having composed for and performed in Van Tuyl’s production of Trojan Women on
June 10th at the exposition. Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco, 208-209.
60
Russell, Green, Beyer, Harrison, and Cage’s new work Second Construction, which was
performed on the Portland concert.141 At the end of the spring semester, Bird resigned
from Cornish at a financially difficult time for the school, prompting John to leave as
well. He, along with Xenia, Jansen, and Denison, returned to San Francisco, with
Harrison eagerly awaiting Cage’s return. Harrison had been busy writing several concert
works for percussion (independent from dance), including Bomba and First Concerto for
Flute and Percussion from 1939, Canticle #1 from 1940, and several sketches and
unfinished works.
Cage and Harrison in San Francisco
While Cage and Harrison began preparing their second concert at the
Bennington School of Dance, they were also co-teaching courses on percussion and
dance accompaniment, in addition to providing accompaniment for classes. The 1940
summer classes attracted many artists, including Horton, Limón, van Tuyl, as well as
the faculty from the former Bauhaus-group at the Chicago School of Design, headed by
László Moholy-Nagy. The Bauhaus members helped provide stage sets for the July 18th
percussion concert, including “a multilevel set-up that included knotted rope ladders in
which the musicians could hang beaters not in use,”142 adding a theatrical component to
the percussion concert. This was the largest event Cage and Harrison had produced
yet, with seventeen musicians (“percussors,” as referred to by Cowell), including the
core members and Russell, among many others. The program included several reprised
141 Miller, “The Art of Noise,” 232.

142 Ibid., 235.
61
works, Cowell’s Pulse, Roldán’s Ritmicas, and Cage’s Second Construction, alongside
three premieres: Cuban composer José Ardévol’s Suite, Russell’s Chicago Sketches,
and Harrison’s Canticle #1.143 Cage had brought along an impressive instrument
collection144 that he had acquired with funds acquired through donations by many
members; he had been forced to purchase new instruments since he no longer had
access to Cornish’s instruments (they had been recalled by their owner in New York).145
Cowell had been released from San Quentin by this point, but was unable to attend the
recital, having already moved to White Plains. However, he was able to refer to this
concert in his article, “Drums along the Pacific,” for Modern Music. This concert also
garnered much press, including a favorable review in Time Magazine, the highest-profile
review any of Cage’s percussion concerts had received thus far:
At California's Mills College last week, summer-school students filed on to a stage before
a Picasso-like background of musical scales, picked up an assortment of bells, whistles
and drums, and let go with everything they had. With ordered gusto they banged, rattled,
beat, blew, stomped and rang their way [through the program]… When they had finished,
the audience gave percussive approval. 146
Cage and Harrison had begun to attract attention to their concerts, and prepared for a
larger collaboration for their next project.
The percussion concert on May 14th, 1941 was dedicated solely to works by
Cage and Harrison, including older works (Quartet, Trio, and Canticle #1), and four new
143 Ibid., 234-237.

144 Cage’s detailed list included: “Noh drum, ten tom-toms, bongos, quijadas and claves; temple-blocks, a
tortoise-shell, sistrum, finger cymbals, a Zildjian cymbal and tambourine; three metal pipes, one tolling
bell, a conch shell and nine chopsticks; a bass drum pedal (quite an early instance); a lion’s roar, slap-
stick, a washtub, six curtains and a dinner-bell…Morris Graves paid for a pair of Puerto Rican maracas;
Nicolas Slonimsky gave ten dollars to buy a pair of bongos and a gourd. George Mantor…put in two
dollars for eight anvils.” Revill,The Roaring Silence, 55.
145 Silverman, Begin Again, 37.
146 “Fingersnaps & Footstomps.” Time, 36 no. 5 (June 29, 1940), 48.
62
pieces: Cage’s Third Construction (dedicated to Xenia for their wedding anniversary),
Harrison’s Song of Quezecoatl and 13th Simfony, and a collaborative composition,
Double Music, co-composed by Cage and Harrison. More will be written about Double
Music later in this essay, but its important to highlight that this is the peak of Cage’s and
Harrison’s artistic relationship to date. Preparations for this concert had involved
acquiring materials and instruments beyond what they already owned, and raising
additional money to purchase the necessary instruments:
They purchased metal pipe in hardware stores, ceramic flower pots in nurseries, and
delicate porcelain bowls in Asian import stores…And in a store on Market Street, they
bough a bright green quijada…Cage also built a replica of a Mexican teponazli…For
years Harrison had frequented the Chinese opera productions in San Francisco and
knew not only the stores in the area, but also the people. He had also learned to bargain
effectively: “I remember the day John Cage and I bought our big tam-tams in Chinatown.
We paid $45 apiece and had tea as well.”… Then there were the junkyards, which
yielded, among other treasures, the surprisingly decorous-sounding brakedrums.147
Money was becoming an increasingly pressing issue, as dance work and teaching were
hardly lucrative. Xenia recalled that “John was constantly on the telephone trying to
raise money to buy percussion instruments,”148 and the costs of presenting the concert
fell on Harrison and Cage, as they didn’t have any supporting institution.
This was the normal state of the modern dance community, which had little to no
institutional support. Dance critic John Martin remarked on the realities of economics in
the early days of modern dance:
There have been no subsidies such as have been lavished upon symphony orchestras,
opera companies, and art museums over the country; there has not even been any
assistance from the ordinary commercial agencies, which have stood aloof, according to
their ancient practice, from all but the showered attractions from abroad. The dancers
147 Miller, “The Art of Noise,” 240.

148 Ibid., 239.
63
themselves and a few enthusiastic laymen have simply rolled up their sleeves and gone
to work.149
New work was not financially underwritten by venues, presenters, or government arts
funds, and instead, existed through the generosity of private donors and a network
within the dance community to provide support wherever possible. Of course, the one
institution that did offer regular support and allowed dance to flourish was the college
system, specifically small liberal arts schools like Mills, Cornish, and Bennington,
although over-reliance on the college system sometimes had negative affects (like the
unfortunate situation at Cornish that prompted Bird and Cage to leave). Cage and
Harrison were operating in the dance economy, as they had had little success in the
traditional music market.150 Cowell, as an example of a composer who had figured out
how to navigate financial matters prior to his arrest, had built a network of donors and
organizations that helped his publishing, concert production, and other concerns. It of
course helped that Cowell’s main supporter was Charles Ives, who had been financially
successful in the insurance industry, and was able to underwrite many of Cowell’s
activities. Cage and Harrison didn’t have a similar donor, and thus adopted the work-
economic model from the modern dance community to self-finance and self-present
their own work. Unfortunately, they found that the model was unsustainable in the long
149
John Martin, America Dancing: The Background and Personalities of the Modern Dance (New York:
Dodge Publications, 1968), 4-5.
150 Cage was attempting to establish an Experimental Music Center at Mills once he returned to Oakland
the summer of 1940, which would have included, among other things, a space to experiment with
electronics, the next logical step in sound exploration after percussion. Despite an aggressive campaign
courting support from foundations, corporations, and universities, he was not able to raise the necessary
funds, despite many interested parties. From Silverman: “Cage often wrote to Cowell unhappy about his
unsuccess: ‘everything I’ve tried has fallen through,’ he explained, ‘and to say the least, it is depressing,’
Although he could no longer hope to accomplish anything by his present methods, he remained
determined to help keep percussion and especially electrical music alive. But being without money, he
told Cowell, his main problem now was ‘to be paid for something.’” Silverman, Begin Again, 43.
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run without larger institutional support, and thus each eventually pursued his own path
away from the percussion ensemble.
One final West Coast concert took place on July 26, 1941, before John and
Xenia left for Chicago. This was Cage’s and Harrison’s final project as percussion
ensemble collaborators, and the concert, entitled “Percussion, Quarter Tones, Dance,
Electric Sound,” presented works from previous concerts as a sort of “best of” concert:
Cage’s Third Construction and Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (with choreography by Van
Tuyl), Harrison’s Simfony #13, Roldán’s Ritmicas, Russell’s Three Dance Movements,
and Couper’s Dirge and Rhumba.151 Cage and Harrison would continue to be close
friends once they returned to New York, but this was the final time they worked together
as co-organizers. This program nicely summed up many of the currents they had been
interested in the past years, including dance, concert works, and new areas of
exploration (alternative tunings and electronics), before each man began to seek out
other avenues of artistic expression into the mid 40s.
Harrison remained in the Bay Area for another year, continuing his work with
dance and presenting his final percussion concert on May 7, 1942, including his new
works Canticle #3, and In Praise of Johnny Appleseed, the last of which was performed
with choreography by Beals and Bodil Genkel. The program also included works by
Beyer, Cowell, Russell, and Cage’s new work, Fourth Construction (later renamed
March (Imaginary Landscape No. 2).152 Leta E. Miller suggests that “the novelty [of
percussion concerts] had begun to wear off: reviews were less enthusiastic than they
151 Miller, “The Art of Noise,” 243-244.

152 Ibid., 246-248.
65
had been.”153 Cage, while in Chicago, mounted two percussion concerts in March 1942,
programming works by Harrison, Russell, and his own works, including Imaginary
Landscape no. 3. Cage’s concerts were well received, likely because they were still a
novelty in Chicago, but the Cages didn’t stay there long, moving instead to New York. It
is in New York where Cage would present his final, and most famous, percussion
concert. Sadly, Harrison wouldn’t be able to take part in this program, as he had moved
to Los Angeles with his boyfriend, dancer William Weaver, to work with Lester Horton’s
dance company in 1942. It wasn’t until the summer of 1943 that Harrison decided to
move to New York with Weaver, when Horton’s company attempted an ultimately
unsuccessful transfer to the city.154 This would once again bring Harrison, Cage, and
Cowell together for a period of time before dispersing once again. Yet, by the time all
three men regrouped, the percussion ensemble had ceased to exist in its former state.
Cage’s well-publicized and well-documented Museum of Modern Art percussion
concert took place on February 7, 1943, roughly a year after the Cages (who were then
married) had arrived in the New York City metro area. The concert was co-presented by
the League of Composers and MOMA.155 This concert was extremely important to
Cage, as it was his introduction to the New York City musical elite, and the repertoire he
programmed represented what he considered to be the best work from the previous five
years of percussion composition. This concert included reprise performances of Cage’s
own First Construction (In Metal) and Imaginary Landscape #3, Harrison’s Canticle and

154 Ibid., 23.
155The League of Composers didn’t fully support the concert because “Aaron Copland objected to Cage’s
program” and agreed to co-sponsorship with the museum. Silverman, Begin Again, 55.
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Counterdance, and Roldán’s Ritmicas V and VI. There were also three premieres:
Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo (finally receiving its premiere having been written nine
years prior), José Ardévol’s Predludio à 11, and Cage’s Amores.
One significant omission from this program is the absence of dance: none of the
works on the MOMA concert involved any dancers (beyond those that were performing
as percussionists), despite the strong history that the West Coast group had with
dance.156 While it seems reasonable that Cage would not include dance (as the
program was produced on a music series), it is telling that he was ready to divorce the
percussion ensemble from the realm of dance, and place it firmly it in the context of
music. This doesn’t suggest that Cage turned his back on dance: he, of course,
continued writing for dance throughout his career, especially after soon entering his
artistic and personal relationship with Cunningham. Harrison and Cowell also continued
writing for dance throughout their lives. However, Cage wanted to be taken seriously as
a composer, not just a dance musician. It is also likely that Cage felt the need to project
an image of masculinity upon his entrance into New York’s high art circles.157 As will be
discussed in the next chapter, music was seen as a masculine and heterosexual
enterprise, while dance was seen as feminine and queer, and Cage felt the need to
distance himself from dance at a crucial moment in his career. In the end, this was a big
156 Two other omissions from this program that are worth mentioning: there were no pieces by William
Russell, and no women composers were included on the program, despite Cage’s and Harrison’s regular
programming of Russell and women on the West Coast concerts. I don’t have an exact answer for this,
although its likely that Cage was doing his best to project an image that would appeal to what he thought
would garner the most attention, and wanted to divorce himself from regionalism. The composers he
programmed had more east coast connections, and thus, he was making a deliberate career choice. It is
unfortunate that Russell, and the several women (including Beyer, Couper, and Boaz) that had been
writing percussion works were not included, as it could have provided a platform to present new voices to
east coast audiences, and shows the sexism that occurs regularly in classical music.
157 See Jones, “Finishing School,” 628-665.
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time for Cage, as he received a lot of press for this concert, including favorable reviews
in Life, Time, and New York Herald Tribune. This helped him to build his reputation as a
provocateur, and provided a successful entrée into New York’s elite art circles. As he
moved into the next phase of composition, he left many of his previous interests behind
in California.
It is here where the story of the West Coast percussion ensemble ends, as the
MOMA concert marked the culmination, and finale, of a decade’s work. Even though the
MOMA concert was the highest-profile percussion concert to take place so far, Cage
turned his attentions elsewhere, particularly the prepared piano, which further led, in
part, to his explorations of indeterminacy. Harrison’s post-percussion period works were
largely concerned with dissonant harmony (followed by his mental breakdown and
return to California), and Cowell started to devote his time to deeper study of various
world musics. All three men continued writing for percussion in various capacities, but
never again did such a focused period of percussion composition for any of these
composers. Even had they redoubled their percussion ensemble efforts after
reconvening in New York, the practicality of keeping a percussion ensemble alive in
New York would have been daunting, if not impossible. Issues surrounding storage and
maintenance of instruments would have been impractical and expensive; also, as none
of the ensemble’s musicians were “trained percussionists”, a longterm commitment to
performing in a percussion ensemble may have been a difficult sell after the initial
appeal wore off. The increased economic pressures of living in New York would have
placed practical employment matters ahead of the time-consuming logistics surrounding
running such an ensemble. Also, as had happened in California, it is likely that the initial
68
novelty factor of the percussion ensemble would have worn thin in New York, and
audiences would have demanded constant reinvention, or would have eventually just
turned away from it.
Luckily, a large amount of the repertoire has been preserved, although much of
the early dance music was not notated in a way that would allow for modern
performance, that not being the point of the work. Percussion straddled the bridge
between the ephemerality of dance, and the permanence of ultramodern composition.
The transition from an improvised and intuitive music into a highly notated and
controlled music took place over the course of several years, with the score inevitably
surviving the historical record, and much of the non-scored, theatrical components
being lost, as is their nature. To deny percussion its theatrical past greatly neglects one
of the appeals of writing for a medium that has a natural tendency towards theatricality
and visual impact, more so than many other instrumental genres. The musical score is
able to capture certain aspects of the composer’s intention (rhythm, pitch, dynamics,
basic timbres), but there is also much that is left un-notated and unsaid; as there is little
documentation of the early concerts, it is difficult to know exactly how the concerts were
performed, and how the audience understood the work in terms of dance versus
music.158
As the West Coast percussion ensemble was the creation of mostly queer men,
and women, who were operating outside of the strictures of the classical music
community, their music and performance was the result of a unique blend of references
158There does exist a recording in the collection of Lou Harrison of the May 19, 1939 Cornish concert,
along with selections from the MOMA concert. It can be heard online: https://archive.org/details/
OTG_1971_03_10
69
and influences. In the next chapter, several of these influences will be explored, using
the historical narratives that have been presented as a jumping off point to explore the
shared musical-biographical motifs that appear throughout the history of the West Coast
percussion ensemble, and leading to a fuller understanding of the queer influences on
the percussion ensemble. 
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CHAPTER 2: Queer Influences
The percussion ensemble’s birth occurred during a time of developing awareness
about queer sexualities that were not accepted by dominant, heteronormative society.
Queer individuals, including Cage, Cowell, and Harrison, could either live their lives
safely in the closet, or live as out queers with a constant risk to their personal safety and
livelihoods, as well as destroying familial, personal and professional relationships. While
the closet provided protection, it also required a double life of lying and its attendant
psychological impacts. The decision to come out (either as a personal decision, or
because one is forced out by others) allowed individuals to live an honest life and stand
up for their personal rights to be queer. In both scenarios, straight society was not a
welcoming place, so queers sought protection and camaraderie through socializing in
bars, parties, and other queer spaces.
Queer artists frequently sought out other queer and queer-friendly artists, both to
provide safe space, and to produce artistic works and performances. There are many
examples of queer artist circles and communities (or mixed circles that were welcoming
of queer artists) in the early-to-mid twentieth century, including the London-based
Bloomsbury group, the Harlem Renaissance, Gertrude Stein’s Parisian salon, the
Beats, the New York Copland-Thomson modernists, Warhol’s Factory, and many others.
Sexuality was not necessary the main reason these circles existed; rather, artists were
attracted to each other mainly through their shared artistic and aesthetic goals.
However, sexuality provided a secondary raison d’être159 for many artists to bond, even
159
Additional identificatory categories, such as gender, nationality, race, etc., could also serve as grouping
mechanisms.
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if it happened in a cloaked, non-public manner. As Michael Bronski notes, “because of
social and legal injunctions against homosexuality, many artists and writers could not be
public about their sexuality and their work was infused with a plethora of signs and
codes that allowed the like-minded to identify one another.”160 The overlap between art
and sexuality, and specifically the ways in which sexuality can influence art in such a
circle, is what is under investigation in this essay.
What are the “signs and codes” that Bronski is referring to? In the context of this
essay, Nadine Hubbs’ term “shared musical-biographical motifs” provides an entryway
into understanding the signs and codes that are infused into queer composers’ music.
Shared musical-biographical motifs are themes that emerge upon examination of a
queer circle’s influences, interests, and lived realities; these were examined in detail in
Chapter 2. For the West Coast Group, there are three motifs that link their queer lives to
their music: affiliation with modern dance, a consciously self-selecting queer group;
influence of Asian/Pacific Rim culture, with which many queers were fascinated with,
tinged with exoticism and eroticism; and collaborative artistic production models, which
provided an alternative to the standard singular-composer model of concert music, and
mirrored the non-standard (non-heteronormative) queer relationships of the composers.
As a result of these motifs, the percussion music of the West Coast group bears the
traces of the composers’ queer lives, both on the large scale, when viewing the
repertoire as a whole, and on smaller scales, when focusing in on individual works and
their components.
160 Bronski, Culture Clash, 9.
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Yet, in order to more deeply understand how these three topics were charged
with queerness, it is necessary to understand their queer associations. The following
discussions are often tangentially related to music and the percussion ensemble, in
order to present a broader context in which queer influence operated; the focus is on
the pathways leading towards an understanding of queer music. This chapter is in some
ways a digression, albeit an important one, providing a necessary link into an
understanding of the percussion ensemble as a queer space, with its own brand of
queer sensibility. It is my aim to highlight some ideas surrounding these areas,
suggesting where further thought can be applied, and also acknowledge my reliance on
writers more informed than I am working in other fields. In the end, by bringing these
various threads of thought together in the same place, I hope to provide a larger
framework that allows the queerness of the percussion ensemble to come into focus.
The Queer Influence of Dance
As was laid out in Chapter 2, the history of the percussion ensemble is
inextricable from the history of American modern dance. Cage, Cowell, and Harrison
each spent significant amounts of time collaborating with dancers, both in the studio, in
performance, in social settings, and for Cage and Harrison, as romantic and sexual
partners. Modern dance was a nuanced and, at times, conflicting world that attracted
many gay men while simultaneously projecting a non-sexual, masculinist public image,
thus appealing to queers who sought an affirming surrounding that wasn’t ultimately
about sexuality. This paradox of modern dance as a queer-friendly space where
sexuality was rarely confronted not only exemplifies the nature of many queer artistic
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circles, but parallels the conflicted sexualities of Cage, Cowell, and Harrison. Gay male
dancers were assumed by outsiders to be fey (feminine), and therefore, they countered
with images of masculinity on stage. This conflict between the feminine and masculine
in queer dance communities is mirrored in the diametric influences of ultramodernism
music and dance on the percussion ensemble (as was laid out in the previous section),
where ultramodern music is understood to be masculine, and dance is understood to be
feminine, as will be discussed below.
Most of the prominent men in modern dance were queer, living as out
homosexuals, closeted men in marriages, or somewhere in between. Many of the
influential male choreographers and dancers that were working in modern dance, lived
queer lives to varying degrees, including Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, Charles Weidman,
José Limón, and Merce Cunningham.161 The American modern dance community was
close-knit, and widely considered to be an outsider group that wasn’t likely to attract
much attention; therefore, queer men (and women162) were able to have a career
without risking legal and professional scandal. Because dance required full-time
commitment for rehearsing and touring, along with low and unreliable income,
unmarried and childless individuals were well-suited for this lifestyle. Dance was one of
the few professions that attracted out homosexuals, thus strengthening the association
between male dancers and homosexuality.
But despite a strong queer presence in modern dance, most male modern
dancers were not interested in depicting queerness in their works, and instead projected
161Julia L Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Grahama to Alvin Ailey
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 80.
162 Queer women were also attracted to dance, see Foulkes, Modern Bodies, 47-48.
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a masculine idealization of male bodies. In fact, much modern dance avoided overt
depictions of sexuality on stage, instead preferring abstraction. This was partially a
reaction against classical ballet, which presented a romanticized and repressed
sexuality, as seen in restrictive costuming (i.e. pointe shoes and tutus) and
heteronormative gender roles (“the heterosexual framework of desire between female
performer and male audience member”163). As modern choreography explored the
expressive possibilities and full-range motion of the body (in the work of choreographers
such as Graham and Humphrey), it avoided literal representations of sexuality, a
seemingly contradictory stance to take, albeit one that brought critical respectability to
the field. Critics found the “sexlessness” of modern dance “as a sign of artistic
seriousness and worth,”164 as opposed to other contemporary forms of dance, such as
burlesque, that were much more overt in the presentation of sexuality. By disassociating
the formal and modernist body from sexual desires, modern dance was able to aim for,
and achieve, the status of high art, a realm that was unable to directly confront the
sexualized body.
Not only did high art seek to avoid confrontation with sexuality, but society in
general felt threatened by sexualized male dancers. The story of John Bovington, a man
who was associated with the queer coterie of the Schindler’s King’s Road House in Los
Angeles during the 1920s (where John Cage lived with Don Sample a period of time)165
demonstrates mainstream society’s discomfort with and oppression of dancers.
Bovington performed for the residents at the King’s Road House, as he “astonished and
163 Ibid., 46.

164 Ibid., 46.
165 Cf. 29, footnote 52.
75
delighted the King’s Road circle with his ‘erotic’ dances in the courtyard depicting the
‘ascent of man.’”166 Many years later in 1943, he was fired from his Texas job in the
Office of Economic Welfare because they discovered his “record and career as a ballet
dancer.”167 The fact that the discovery of his “double life—one as an academician, one
as esthete”168 was unacceptable enough that he couldn’t keep his job, illuminates an
underlying societal mistrust of male dancers, due to a homophobic association (which
may or may not have been accurate as he was married to a woman, dancer Jeanaya
Marling). It seems odd that someone would have to hide a past as a ballet dancer, but
this incident demonstrates the effeminacy associated with dance, and the reasoning
behind why many dancers chose to leave their sexuality off the stage, and instead
adopted masculine mannerisms in their performances.
Ted Shawn exemplified this distinction between actual sexualities in private life
and projected sexuality on the public stage. Shawn was married to Ruth St. Denis in
1914, with whom he cofounded the dance company Denishawn, in existence from 1915
to 1931. This company was an important training ground for the next generation of
dancers, and several important careers were nurtured there, including those of Graham,
Humphrey, and Weidman. The marriage between Shawn and St. Denis was largely
professional, and while they never divorced, their separation came about in 1930 after
years of affairs (both having had affairs with other men). After the closing of Denishawn,
Shawn founded a new company, Shawn and His Men Dancers, an all-male company
that was based at his new retreat in Lee, Massachusetts, known as Jacob’s Pillow.
166 Hines, “Then Not Yet ‘Cage,’” 83.

167 “The Strange Case of John Bovington.” Life, 15 no. 7 (Aug 16, 1943), 34.
168 Ibid.
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The goal of Shawn’s company was “to re-create a Greek ideal in his group of
men dancers, combining athletic grace, philosophical import, and the quest for beauty
through the male body.”169 His “conception of dance for men relied on an emboldened
masculinity,” and “in his attempt to dispel the popular link of dancing and effeminacy…
he upheld distinctive, essential differences between men and women and heralded
masculine traits.”170 Shawn was the first choreographer in modern dance who created a
self-consciously masculine dance in order to counter what he viewed as a negative
feminine image of men (as homosexuals) in dance. Perhaps the most influential male
dancer at this time was Vaslav Nijinsky who danced in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes
in the 1910s.171 Ballet Russes toured widely and garnered much critical and popular
attention, catapulting Nijinsky into celebrity status. Shawn did not hold Nijinsky’s
dancing in high accord, referring to him as “the decadent, the freakish, the feverish,”
adding that “American demands masculinity more than art.”172 Shawn disdained the
effeminate queer, and instead sought out male dancers with athletic backgrounds,
choreographing them in heroic dances that featured masculine movement in masculine
settings (field work, athletics, etc.), while also in minimal costuming to reveal highly
sculpted male bodies. In order to instill these values, his dancers physically labored at
Jacob’s Pillow to upkeep the grounds, as well as partaking in a required nude lunchtime
hour; the charged queer atmosphere at the retreat became well known throughout the
arts community.
169 Hines, “Then Not Yet ‘Cage,’” 86-87.

170 Ibid., 88.
171 Diaghilev and Nijinsky were also lovers during this time. Kevin Kopelson, The Queer Afterlife of Vaslav
Nijinsky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 4.
172 Ted Shawn, “A Defense of the Male Dancer,” New York Dramatic Mirror, May 13, 1916, 19.
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Shawn’s choreography adopted heteronormative masculine imagery and placed
it within a homoerotic artistic context, further attracting queer men to modern dance
without ever directly confronting queer sexuality in his dances. Shawn and His Men
Dancers were the most prominent example of flagrant queer masculinity in the dance
world,173 although Limón, Weidman, and Horton also “embraced virile dance in
response” to the perceived assumption of femininity in dance. Julia Foulkes notes that
“homosexual allure often molded their dances, but it remained an undercurrent, an
allusion most often picked up on only by other gay men.”174 While many non-queer
audience members were unaware of the queer associations in Shawn’s choreography,
gay men implicitly understood the homosexual content of male-choreographed modern
dance (which, in return, influenced works by women as well), creating another cultural
site that held special meaning within the gay subculture. Dance could depict
heteronormativity via masculinity, but communicate homosexuality to a receptive queer
audience.
As queer men, Cage, Cowell, and Harrison would have been attuned to the
queer undercurrent in modern dance during the 1930s and 40s, as they had spent
significant amounts of time in this community, developing musical works—particularly
percussion works—to accompany dance. The series of romantic and sexual
relationships that Cage and Harrison had with male dancers during this period was not
merely tangential to their musical output, but directly influenced their relationship to the
field of modern dance, and in turn, their compositional output. It doesn’t appear that any
173
This reputation was aided by photographer John Lindquist’s erotically-charged photographs of Shawn
and the dancers at Jacob’s Pillows, which were widely distributed among gay men. (Foulkes, Modern
Bodies, 88).
174 Ibid., 80.
78
of them had direct artistic contact with Shawn in this period, but it is likely that they
would have been aware of his work, and those choreographers who had been
influenced by Shawn.
The queer connection between modern dance and percussion involves the
interplay between masculinity and femininity in both dance and music. Dance,
historically associated as a feminine pursuit, was infused with masculine energy with the
introduction of modern dance—by both male and female dancers—in order to gain
respectability on the cultural stage. The adoption of a masculinist stance was an attempt
to purge dance of sexuality (as masculinity was not traditionally associated with overt
sexuality), but because of the queer desire that helped to shape modern dance, it was
imbued with a subcutaneous queer desire that other queers were able to recognize and
identify with. In a similar fashion, the Ivesian, masculinist ultramodernism that
underpinned early percussion ensemble writing, combined with the queer (feminine)
subculture of modern dance, allowed Cage, Cowell and Harrison to exist in a queer-
friendly social and artistic community, while themselves projecting masculinity in their
percussion concert works (especially those not involving dance). For example, a Time
review of the 1940 Mills concert included this quote from Cage discussing his marriage
to Xenia: “Asked how long they had been wed, Cage quipped: ‘Five years, but I didn't
begin practicing percussion on her until after we married.’”175 Cage’s out-of-character
innuendo connects masculine heterosexuality with the action of percussion, knowing
that he needs to establish such a reputation in order to be taken seriously; a fey
response would jeopardize his aesthetic enterprise from favorable response.
175 "Fingersnaps & Footstomps."
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The influence of dance upon the percussion ensemble is a wide-reaching one,
one that is deep-seated and affects the repertoire on a large scale. Part II of this essay
will focus closely on how the West Coast percussion ensemble developed out of its
relation to modern dance, seeking out musical traces of dance’s influence; and since
American modern dance is understood to be a queer space, the music that developed
out of it also has queer traces. Because both modern dance and percussion music dealt
with various forms of experimentation and abstraction, one can find a common rejection
of popular culture, one that instead sought out new forms of experimentation. Notice
that Cage, Cowell and Harrison never wrote pieces that borrowed popular dance forms,
while some of the other early percussion non-queer composers did (for example, works
by William Russell and Ray Green). The most successful percussion ensemble pieces
eschewed imitations of, and influences from, popular heteronormative culture, and
instead relied on the ethos of experimentation and abstraction. Finding an absence of
reference to popular dance music, and in many ways, contemporary society overall,
suggests a desire to exist beyond the limits of heteronormative popular culture, and a
desire for new realms of art and life discovered via experimentation. Queer composers
and dancers were caught between their sexualities and the pressures of a society that
refused to acknowledge their desires, yet one that could also reward artistic
achievements if presented in acceptable forums.
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The Queer Influence of Asia
Fascination with oriental music has been an important factor in the development
of Western classical music, including the use of Janissary instruments in Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the use of tuned gongs in
Puccini’s Turandot, and gamelan references in the music of Debussy. Percussion often
plays an important role when outside musics are adopted into the realm of classical
music, as they are clear signifiers of “ethnic” influence and can more clearly project
multicultural sounds than other classical instruments can. The introduction of non-
Western sounds and instruments in the twentieth century was even more rapid and
widespread than it had been previously, due to advances in recording, transportation,
and communication technologies. For example, while Cowell was on a study grant in
Berlin in 1931, he had access to the Phonogramm-Archiv at University of Berlin, which
boasted 22,000 cylinder recordings of music from around the world.176 The ability to
access such a wealth of sounds opened new vistas of comparative enthomusicology
and a wider breadth of inspiration and influences.
The Asian influences that reached the West Coast School came from many
sources, and the composers’ biographies are full of anecdotes and references to early
Asian exposures. Cowell grew up around the multicultural sounds of the Bay area,
taking solo trips into Chinatown as a teenager to hear Chinese opera, and learning folk
81
songs from neighbors of several East Asian races.177 After his Berlin study period, he
taught classes in California and New York on the music of world cultures, which were
attended by both Cage and Harrison as students. Commercial recordings of oriental
musics, especially those of gamelan, were passed around by friends and colleagues,
including queer composer and gamelan expert Colin McPhee, who was likely among
the first to introduce Cowell to this entrancing music.178 The 1939 Golden Gate
International Exposition included a live Balinese gamelan (as part of the Gayway, see
Chapter 1) that had a lasting influence on Harrison, both musically and culturally for
years to come.179 Cage and Harrison frequented Chinatown in search of gongs and
other instruments, as they bargained and socialized with vendors.180 Another early
experience in the early 1930s brought Cowell to the aforementioned Schindler house for
a solo shakuhachi recital by a visiting Japanese musician (Cage had also attended this
recital).181 These stories help demonstrate some of the ways that the West Coast
Composers sought out and came in contact with East Asian culture in their communities
and social circles.
The social associations that underlined these interactions with Asian culture
helped to solidify the relationship between Asia and queer sexuality. Orientalism was
pervasive during this time, especially on the west coast, and its fascination was not
177 Ibid., 25
178 Ibid, 188.
179 Miller and Lieberman, Lou Harrison, 48-49.
180Harrison remembers a time in Chinatown with Cage: “I remember the day John Cage and I bought our
big tam-tams in Chinatown. We paid $45 apiece and had tea as well. Today, of course, it’s just a one-price
tourist business. But in those days, if you started to bargain with a Chinese merchant you were invited to
tea.” Miller, “The Art of Noise,” 240.
181 Hines, “Then Not Yet ‘Cage,’” 65.
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limited to only queers; therefore, one cannot suggest that any interest in Asian culture is
itself a signal of queer sexuality. Rather, it is the manner in which queer sexuality and
interest in Asian culture interacted that prompts investigation, questioning how queer
orientalism could be distinct from non-queer orientalism. This difference is found in the
manner in which Asian influences were experienced and accumulated via other queers
and queer situations, which were then infused with a (queer) sexualized meaning that
would only be perceptible to other queers (much in the same way that masculinity in
male modern dance communicated different meanings to queers and non-queers).
The origin of gamelan references has a particularly queer origin, showing one
way in which Asian influences are traded among queer social circles. Not only did
McPhee introduce Cowell to gamelan, but he also first introduced Benjamin Britten to
gamelan music, which greatly influenced his later compositions. McPhee and Britten
initially met at the Long Island home of Elizabeth Meyer, who’s circle attracted many gay
composers and writers (including Copland), and continued a collaborative relationship
that included performance and recording of McPhee’s Balinese Ceremonial Music for
two pianos.182 Back on the West Coast, Cowell introduced gamelan to both Cage and
Harrison, with Harrison taking particular interest in the gamelan by studying articles on
gamelan by McPhee, and eventually creating his own gamelan instruments with his
partner Colvig much later in the 1970s.183 These interactions show a sort of queer
genealogy of gamelan that was highly influential on percussion music (and twentieth
182
For more on McPhee and Britten, see Phillip Brett, “Eros and Orientalism in Benjamin Britten’s
Operas,” in Queering the Pitch: the New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, edited by Phillip Brett, Elizabeth
Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1994), 239.
183
For more on Harrison and gamelan, see Leta E. Miller and Frederic Lieberman, “Lou Harrison and the
American Gamelan,” American Music, 17 no. 2 (Summer, 1999), 146-178.
83
century music in general). In fact, Philip Brett goes so far as to suggest that “gamelan is
a gay marker in American music,”184 a position that I largely find persuasive, although I
would not go so far as to suggest that any use of gamelan suggests queer sexuality;
rather, that gamelan is a gay marker in gay/queer American music.185
Another queer social circle that deserves examination is that of Cage and queer
artists Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. The three men met as faculty members at the
Cornish School. The dada movement was a strong influence on the men, especially on
Graves who would spontaneously give public dada performances (including a disruptive
performance at a concert of Cage’s Quartet).186 In 1939, Nancy Wilson Ross gave a
lecture at Cornish on “the subject of dadaism and Zen Buddhism, making associations
between the philosophical principles of the two,”187 which, for Cage and Graves, was an
important exposure to Eastern thought that would affect their later works. Later, in early
1940’s New York, Tobey’s Zen-inspired “white writing” paintings,188 which, after viewing,
Cage noted, “I happened to look at the pavement, and I noticed that the experience of
looking at the pavement was the same as the experience of looking at the Tobey.
184 Brett, “Eros and Orientalism,” 238.

185A counterexample to Brett would be the music of Evan Ziporyn, a non-queer contemporary composer
who’s music is extremely influenced by gamelan (including an opera of McPhee’s memoir A House in
Bali.
186 “Graves decided to attend Cage’s concert the better to mock it and arrived with a large bag of peanuts,
a lorgnette with doll’s eyes in place of the glass…At the end of the third movement of Cage’s Quartet,
[Graves] cried enthusiastically, “Jesus in the everywhere!”…[a certain] Mrs. Beck had the men throw him
out onto the patio. Free, and with the faster drumming of the Quartet’s final movement under way, Graves
began immediately to move. ‘His dance,’ Mrs. Beck later reported, ‘was very sinuous.” Revill, Roaring
Silence. 46.
187Wesley Wehr, “Mark Tobey: A Dialogue Between Painting and Music,” in Sounds of the Inner Eye: Jon
Cage, Mark Tobey & Morris Graves, eds. Wulf Herzogenrath and Andreas Kreul (Tacoma, Wa.: Museum
of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, 2002), 34.
188These paintings were a precursor to the white paintings of queer artist Robert Rauschenberg which
lead directly to Cage’s 4’33” in 1952.
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Exactly the same. The aesthetic enjoyment was just as high.”189 Cage’s comment was
influenced by his recent exposure to Eastern thought, acquired through his queer
colleagues. All three men “shared an interest in Eastern religion and culture in a place,
the Pacific Rim, in which Asian cultures were easily encountered.”190 So throughout this
queer coterie, ideas of orientalism and aesthetics were discussed and as a result,
influenced each other’s works; queer sociality helped mediate the diffusion of orientalist
influence.
Another major aspect of the queer orientalist influence came from the modern
dance community, which was itself enamored with oriental imagery and exotic sounds.
As was already mentioned, Wigman used gongs and other “ethnic” instruments in her
studio, but her choreography also borrowed oriental tropes:
Wigman was influenced by the art of the Orient, but her work contained little conscious
adaptation of Oriental dances. To the audiences of her day, to whom her work often
looked un-European, her delicate use of hands and arms evoked visions of the Orient.191
It is important to note here that “Orient” refers to not just Asia, but the entire Orient from
North Africa to East Asia and beyond; essentially, anywhere that was non-Western.
Sources of orientalist influence were often non-specific (particularly in the dance
community), and their use was often only aesthetic, with little demonstration of depth or
authentic understanding. Still, the mere evocation of the “East” was a frequent topic
found in many dances, notably in those works of Ruth St. Denis, but also by other
choreographers, including Ted Shawn, Jean Erdman, Erick Hawkins, and Cunningham.
189Ray Kass, “The Art of Morris Graves: Mediation on Nature,” in Sounds of the Inner Eye: Jon Cage,
Mark Tobey & Morris Graves, eds Wulf Herzogenrath and Andreas Kreul (Tacoma, Wa.: Museum of
Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, 2002), 48.
190 Ibid., 47.
191 Odom, “Mary Wigman,” 89.
85
Orientalist themes were more prevalent in early modern dance and went out of fashion
as other themes, including Americana and abstraction, came into vogue. Still, the early
influence of orientalism and exotica on modern dance had a lasting impact, particularly
its impact on the music that was being composed for the new dances.
Oriental references in music by West Coast queer composers are infused with a
specifically queer meaning, just as, for example, certain European references were
coded with queer meanings for East Coast queer composers:
Both the New York and California groups of gay composers expressed, sublimated, or hid
their sexuality with their particular musical choices: in the case of Copland and his circle,
with neoclassicism, and in the case of Cowell and his circle, with orientalism… The
Californians began their careers absorbing the transgressive sexual and racial sights and
sounds surrounding them in San Francisco. Just as Copland turned his gaze
transatlantically…these Californian composers turned their gaze transpacifically to carve
out a space for themselves among their musical peers.192
As was mentioned in Chapter 1, San Francisco’s Chinatown had developed a strong
association with gays who also patronized the nearby North Beach neighborhood. The
“transgressive sexual and racial sights” combined with the alluring musical culture of
Chinese opera and other musics, solidifying the connection between sexuality and
music. Not only was orientalism traded among queer circles, but it also had an erotic
element, both in its association with pleasure and vice establishments, but also through
a deeper and less precise eroticization of the Other (in this case, East Asia). Edward
Said highlights this connection when he discusses “an almost uniform association
between the Orient and sex,” asking why “the Orient seems still to suggest not only
fecundity but sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, [and]
deep generative energies.”193 Scholars have long connected depictions and evocations

193
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979. Reprint, New York: New York University Press,
1994), 188.
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of the Orient to sexual desire on behalf of the Western creator and viewer. I have no
evidence or am even attempting to suggest that the West Coast School had specific
sexual desires towards the Asian populations that they were influenced by; but instead,
that there was a general sense of eroticism in the idea of Asian cultures, prompting
curiosity, fantasy, and other feelings of vague desire. Further discussion of this topic is
outside of the scope of this paper, but several scholars have established the relationship
between orientalism and erotics.194
The West Coast School composers’ percussion works are full of oriental
references that connect their music to their queer sexuality, in part because of the
various ways in which knowledge of oriental music and ideas were shared and acquired
via queer social circles. These references can be found in any number of places,
including the usage of specific instruments (i.e. gongs); entire collections of instruments
(i.e. First Construction (in Metal) as an interpretation of a gamelan); musical figurations
(i.e. sliding tones that suggest Asian musics); rhythmic structures (i.e. ostinati that
reference gamelan music); and aesthetic/conceptual frameworks (i.e. the adoption of
Zen and other oriental philosophies and their influence on composition). These
references simultaneously point to two sources: the oriental sources themselves, and
the queer pathways that introduced the oriental sources to the composers. So for
example, the use of a gong is a reference that points both to original source of the gong
itself (China or Bali), and the queer social path that helped bring the gong into realm of
the musical composition by the queer composer. This double reference is similar to how
194
For further reading on the connection between orientalism and erotics, see Joseph Allen Boone, The
Homoerotics of Orientalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) and Irvin C. Schick,The Erotic
Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alterist Discourse (London: Verso, 1999).
87
masculinity functioned in modern dance, providing one interpretation for the general
(non-queer) audience, and another differently layered interpretation for the clued in
queer audience. In general, I believe that oriental references are generally quite broad,
and not necessarily queer specific; however, to deny the queer component of these
references is to ignore the rich and layered sexual and cultural network of the
composers.
The Queer Influence of Collaboration
Collaboration takes on a special meaning when queer artists engage in this
practice. This is not to suggest that any instance of collaboration is categorically a queer
signal; of course, artists of any sexuality can take part in collaborative methods (and in
fact, not all of the composers who engaged in collaborative composition in the West
Coast group were themselves queer). However, the presence of collaboration in queer
artistic practice leads one—who is already attuned to queer signals—to focus in on the
group dynamics and various conditions that can produce collaborative work. The wider
implications, as well as detailed accounts of how these works were composed, are
outside of the scope of this essay, and thus, only a brief introduction into some of the
concepts that might guide further exploration will be put forth. Academic writing on the
intersection of musical collaboration and sexuality is scant, so I shall present some
research in related artistic fields that could serve as a starting point for tackling this
topic, adding an acknowledgment that much more consideration needs to be given to
this topic.
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In discussing the image of the artist within abstract expressionism, Caroline A.
Jones notes that “the variant of modernism that became canonical in the United States
during the cold war period celebrated the artist as a masculine solitary whose staunchly
heterosexual libido drove his brush.”195 Replace “brush” with “pencil on the score,” and
one sees a familiar image of the ‘genius’ composer as traditionally projected throughout
Western music history: male, heterosexual, and solitary. Gender aside (as most of the
West Coast composers were male), queer collaboration inverts the model of artistic
creator that Jones articulates. The idea of a homosexual and communal artistic identity,
as opposed to heterosexual and solitary, is in many ways a radical position that
subverts the dominant archetype, and proposes an alternate model of artistic
production. In challenging the hegemony of the solitary, male artist, collaborating queer
artists were claiming a space that validated their work beyond the strictures and norms
of established art making, allowing their queer libidos to drive their art. As has been
shown, the percussion ensemble, in its early days, was a project that existed outside of
the trajectory of traditional heteronormative artistic activities, with its presence of
queers, women, and other nonconformist individuals performing in, composing, and
supporting the percussion ensemble. There were many experiments taking place during
this period, and collaboration was one possible area of exploration that was available to
artists.
One interpretation of how to understand queer collaboration is by viewing it as a
manifestation of queer desire, where in the desire itself produces an artistic work or
performance. Literary critic Wayne Koestenbaum delves into this topic in his book
195 Jones, “Finishing School,” 628-665.
89
Double Talk: the erotics of male literary collaboration, and suggests that male
collaboration is always quasi-erotic: “Men who collaborate engage in a metaphorical
sexual intercourse, and…the text they balance between them is…the child of their
sexual union.”196 In his book, Koestenbaum engages in psychoanalytic criticism,
wherein he examines a series of texts co-authored by men in the early twentieth century
to reveal that “within male [collaborative] texts of all varieties lurks a homosexual desire
which, far from reinforcing patriarchy, undermines it, and offers a way out.”197 Much like
Jones, Koestenbaum views the collaborative act as an antidote to the dominant
“patriarchy,” which here is parallel to the “male, heterosexual and solitary” artist that
Jones articulates. Queer collaboration, then, is an alternative path to the one proposed
by the heteronormative patriarchy, and an act that is not only artistic, but one that also
engages in social and political critique of heteronormative society at large.
I don’t believe that it is necessary to take Koestenbaum’s thesis literally (as he
says, it is “metaphorical”) for the concept to still be useful in understanding collaboration
among the composers. Is collaboration actually sexual intercourse, and the resultant
score of a queer collaboration an actual child? No, of course not, and I don’t need to
convince the reader otherwise. Yet, taking a step back, the discussion of queer198
collaborative texts as a class worthy of examination in the first place is what I’m
interested in. Koestenbaum offers one provoking theory that is likely more applicable to
196
Wayne Koestenbaum, Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration (New York: Routledge,
1989), 3.
197 Ibid., 5.
198So as not to miscategorize his work, many of Koestenbaum’s subjects are not queer, and he employs
the term “homosocial” rather than “homosexual” to differentiate between the two. I don’t mean to skim
over this fact, but it is not highly relevant here.
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literature than music, but it suggests that, perhaps, different sexual identities were
capable of producing works of art conceived in new ways.
One possible way to view queer collaboration is to consider how such artistic
models were modeled on real-life romantic and sexual queer relationships. Just as there
are a wide range of sexualities, there are also any number of different relationship
models. Queer partners could define their relationship outside of what would be
considered a “traditional” straight relationship. This would allow for various combinations
of identity: dominant/passive, older/younger, masculine/feminine, etc.; also pairings that
are more homogenous, including partners who both identify as masculine (or feminine),
dominant (or passive), etc. What Judith Butler refers to an “oppositional, binary gender
system,”199 where all sexual and gendered roles are predetermined, need not apply to
queer relationships, which have the power to reinvent themselves as necessary. Rather
than a de facto relationship based on a hierarchy, queer relationships can exist with
partners on equal footing. This, then, is where queer relationships can mirror
collaborative artistic relationships: in an ideal collaboration, each side is contributing
equally towards the artistic product without either side dominating the process; or,
perhaps, partnership moves freely between partners with a dominant role trading back
and forth; or, etc. There are many ways that one could realize a queer relationship as an
artistic relationship, and as will be seen, there were many different models of
collaboration that the West Coast composers compositionally engaged with.
But before discussing the specifics of West Coast collaboration, it is necessary to
discuss what exactly the nature of collaboration is, and how that affects further
199 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. 2nd ed (New York: Routledge, 2006) 31.
91
discussion of this topic. The concept of collaboration, while frequently invoked, means
different things to the parties who invoke it. For the purposes of this essay, I would like
to separate out two possible instances of how artists use the word “collaboration”: first,
as a surface level term used to denote various parties working together on a given
project, each providing his or her own artistic specialization to a work of art or
performance; and second, as a deeper process that involves multiple creators seeking
out ways to merge their creative energies into a single work/performance with the goal
of eliminating any traits of each individual involved, in favor of a singular group identity.
Both types of collaboration can be understood as having influenced the percussion
ensemble in queer terms.
Any performance-based art is inherently collaborative in nature on some level, as
most performance requires contributions from artists of various disciplines and
practices. Music performance, which often gives a preferred position to the composer, is
also reliant on many other entities, including musicians, conductors, presenters,
producers, publishers, and so on. Further, including the disciplines of dance and theater,
this list expands to dancers, actors, choreographers, directors, stage designers,
costumers, and beyond. Each individual brings their own expertise to the larger project,
working in a capitalist manner of art and performance production. The term
“collaboration” is often used to define what is more appropriately discussed as a division
of labor: the composer writes the notes, the performers realize them, the producer pays
for the concert. If collaboration simply means “working together”, then this is quite a
broad area in which to conduct inquiry.
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There were many instances of the West Coast composers engaging in this broad
sense of interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly in projects that involved a
combination of dance and music, including some of the early percussion ensemble
concerts that featured choreography, sets, and other theatrical constructs. In these
cases, while there were indeed many individuals contributing to the larger production,
the focus was still on the music as the primary motivator. Composing music for dance
(which will be discussed in detail in Part II) is often viewed as collaborative, but is, in my
opinion, more accurately understood as a division and interaction of various disciplines:
choreographers create the dance, composers create the music, and dancers and
musicians realize those creations. I’m not suggesting that this is a trite practice: many
highly sophisticated and fully realized artworks have been produced in this manner, and
in rare cases, the various constituent parts merge into a successful Gesamtkunstwerk.
But in many cases of interdisciplinary work, I find use of the term “collaboration” to be a
bit specious, as a result of the desire on behalf of artists to claim an artistic practice that
appears to be less ego-driven than it actually is. I would argue that unless a significant
amount of cross-fertilization of ideas has occurred among the parties, then true
collaboration did not take place in these instances.
Yet, this vague sense of interdisciplinary collaboration was crucial to the
development of the modern percussion ensemble, both on logistical and musical levels.
Because the dance world was a queer-friendly space, and dance requires many people
working together (including composers who had a fondness for percussion), musical
experiments were able to be undertaken in a supportive environment. For example,
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Harrison was thrown into a collaborative situation with choreographer Tina Flade, who’s
choreographic process required a composer who was willing to work closely with her:
Flade was trained in the Mary Wigman school, which stressed improvising dances until
they had jelled, and this approach created a challenging situation for a young composer
because the dance kept changing, and one did not know in advance how many beats
and measures would be used.200
Harrison was reacting to the dance as it happened, thus, the collaborative process was
initiated by the dance with the music following the dance’s impulses. One can consider
that this is a collaboration only to the extent that the music is created in response to the
dance, with music exerting a minimal amount of influence upon the dance. It is more
accurate to suggest that, in this case, the collaboration is taking place more on the side
of the music than on the dance, as the music is more likely bending to meet the needs
of the dance; the collaboration is uneven.201
Also, the overall project of the percussion ensemble in this period was a
collaborative effort, traced to specific individuals, organizations, composers, performers,
patrons, and publishers. As has been shown previously, Cowell was at the center of
many of these entities, with support from Cage and Harrison, along with the many
composers who were submitting works for concerts. The logistics of playing percussion
are also inherently collaborative, as it requires many individuals collecting, setting up,
storing, and transporting instruments, in addition to the number of players involved to
perform the works. As has been shown, the majority of individuals involved in this
200 von Gunden, The Music of Lou Harrison, 14.

201 Stated another way: Harrison as composer is collaborating more than Flade is as choreographer. The
music is more likely to be affected by the dance, and the dance is less likely to be affected by the music,
since the dance is the primary motivator in this collaborative model. I don’t mean to criticize this model as
somehow flawed, but only point out that the collaboration is not evenly distributed between the two
parties. If the music were to have been composed first with dance added later, or if an improvisation
process began with music and the dancers were to respond, then the collaborative model would be
flipped.
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practice were women and queer men, thus a further link of queer collaborative action
that was required for the percussion ensemble to come into existence. To the extent that
collaboration can be discussed as various parties coming together to work on a larger
project, the early percussion ensemble developed as a direct result of the collaborative
efforts of many people, including those who would be considered queer.
A more exacting sense of collaboration is when multiple creators combine talents
to produce a multi-authored work that attempts to erase, or diminish, the presence of
the individuals involved. Instances of this type of collaboration are far less common; and
because collaborative composition is a deliberate act on behalf of the creators, multi-
authored compositions are deserving of focused attention. The West Coast composers
engaged in collaborative composition in three different scenarios: (1) a single work with
multiple authors, such as Double Music by Cage and Harrison; (2) in the realization of a
musical kit of one composer by another, in the case of Harrison realizing Cowell’s
elastic dance scores; and (3) a larger work divided into discreet sections, such as
incidental music for Marriage at the Eiffel Tower by Cage, Cowell, and their colleague
George McKay. In the instance of (1), individual compositional voices are subsumed as
they are presented simultaneously; (2) the musical language of one composer is
remixed by another (content by one, form by another); while in the instance of (3),
composers are presented in alternation, resulting in a serialization of styles. I find that
(1) and (2) to be a more pure form of collaboration, wherein the ego of each creator is
sublimated for the sake of the art work; whereas (3) tries to have it both ways, creating
a work that involves multiple creators, but allows each to remain distinct to a certain
degree.
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Among Cowell, Cage, and Harrison, there are three collaborative works that bear
the names of multiple composers: Double Music (194) by Cage and Harrison for
percussion quartet; incidental music for Marriage at the Eiffel Tower (1939) by Cowell,
Cage, and George McKay for two pianos, percussion, and various small instruments;
and Sonorous or Exquisite Corpses (c. 1945) by Cowell, Cage, Harrison, and Virgil
Thomson, for unspecified instrumentation (arranged for wind quintet by Robert Hughes
in 1963, and published as Party Pieces in 1982). Further, two works by Cowell in elastic
form composed during his incarceration at San Quentin were realized in the dance
studio for performance by Harrison: Ritual of Wonder (1937) for percussion and piano;
and Chaconne (1940) for piano.202 Each of these works was the result from different
circumstances, either as a deliberate collaboration from the outset (Double Music and
Eiffel Tower), a party game (Sonorous or Exquisite Corpses), or as a result of the
circumstances (Cowell’s dance pieces). Only Double Music is for percussion alone, and
as such it will be considered in detail later; Marriage at the Eiffel Tower and Ritual of
Wonder include percussion parts. And as Sonorous or Exquisite Corpses is for
indeterminate instrumentation, it could, in theory, be performed by percussion
ensemble. This last work is outside of the time period under examination, but because
of the personalities involved, which includes queer composer Virgil Thomson, it is worth
considering under the heading of queer collaboration, as it will provide a framework for
understanding other works.
202As Chaconne does not contain any percussion writing, it will not be considered any further. Also, John
Cage produced several collaborative works later in his career with different artists, but these works are
outside of the scope of this essay, and thus will not be discussed.
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Cowell’s development of elastic form was, conceptually, well suited for
collaboration, and as was discussed in the previous chapter, was developed out of
necessity as Cowell continued to compose dance scores during his incarceration. It was
Harrison who was given the task of turning Cowell’s musical material into a fully-realized
composition for performance. Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman explained how this
process worked in the following narrative:
While Cowell was in prison, he enlisted Harrison’s help in exploring flexible musical
forms. Though Cowell composed for dancers Bonnie Bird, Martha Graham, and Marian
Van Tuyl in this period, he obviously could not visit their studios to observe movement
patterns; therefore he developed a form of musical elasticity, allowing choreographers to
rearrange elements of his scores to suit the dance. In several cases Cowell asked
Harrison to realize the finished works. On a visit to San Quentin in October 1939,
Harrison apparently brought Van Tuyl, at the time director of the dance program at Mills
College in Oakland. As an outgrowth of this visit, Cowell wrote two works (Ritual of
Wonder and Chaconne), and authorized Harrison to construct the final versions after Van
Tuyl’s choreography was completed. “The work planned will be rather goodly-sized…”
Cowell wrote Van Tuyl two days after her visit. “I gather that if I send you an outline, Lou
will be willing to put the finishing touches on it.” Ritual of Wonder includes a few fully
composed movements, but most of the piece was created by Harrison using thirty-seven
single-measure cells provided by Cowell. The Chaconne is a set of variations that
Harrison combined, rearranged, repeated, or omitted according to the needs of the
choreography.203
Cowell, as musical progenitor, “authorized” Harrison to be his musical executor. In doing
so, he released control of the final musical product in an effort to provide maximum
flexibility to Van Tuyl, thereby allowing her to fully realize her choreography, while
Cowell retained ultimate authorship of his musical creation. So here, Cowell’s elastic
form is collaborative in two ways: first, in allowing Harrison the ability to manipulate his
musical material into an intelligible form; and second, in the overall conception of the
elastic form to provide a sort of absentee dance collaboration. Because of his situation,
Cowell surrendered his control of certain aspects of the particular instance of the work,
although from moment-to-moment, the music retains his compositional thumbprint; in
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the end, the music will sound like Cowell’s, even though it may not have been organized
formally in the manner he would have done so had he been physically present in the
dance studio. That task was left to Harrison, as well as Van Tuyl, since her
choreography ultimately dictated the form of the music. The collaborative network that
develops among the three figures is itself essentially queer, eschewing the normative
image of singular, male composer.
An even more complex network of relations emerges when examining Sonorous
or Exquisite Corpses, a series of twenty-two brief pieces that came about as a party
game that took place between Cage, Cowell, Harrison, and Thomson. These pieces
were composed while all four men were living in New York in the 1940s, playing their
own version of an exquisite corpse game (a drawing game from 1920s Paris where
“each member of a group creates one part of a larger piece, with little or no knowledge
of what the others are contributing”204). James Moore has discussed the general
process of how these pieces were composed, discovering that the pieces were written
according to different rules that the composers agreed upon for each group of pieces,
likely written in different meetings, with different combinations of composers present at
different times.
The ways in which each piece, never longer than a dozen measures, was
constructed varied: each composer wrote one measure (or part of one), folded the
paper to conceal what he wrote, then passed it on to the next person. Sometimes the
next composer could see the last note that was written, sometimes not; sometimes a
person could only see treble, alto, or bass part, or none of the existing parts; several
204James Moore, “Sonorous or Exquisite Corpses,” in Arcana VII: Musicians on Music, ed. John Zorn
(New York: Hips Road, 2014), 168.
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pieces start on the same pitch; and, they were composed starting from the beginning,
end, or middle of the piece.205 Moore notes that on the original manuscript, Harrison
initialed which composer contributed each part, but in performance, it would be highly
difficult to separate which composer was responsible for which notes. This is because
the textures of the pieces are widely divergent, moving between polyphony and
homophony, depending on which parts were available to each composer at a given
moment as he composed the next section; the various contributions remain inextricable
from each other due to the nature of the musical texture. Sometimes the textures
remain constant throughout a single piece, while others vary from measure to measure.
Overall, the work is prismatic and capricious as a result of the score being
passed between the hands of the composers. There is a constant negotiation of power
among the parties, allowing each composer to determine his dominance or passivity in
a given moment, as he can decide to either continue with, or change the flow of an
established musical gesture. What makes this network even more complex is that since
the correlation between composer and musical material is unknown from moment to
moment, we (the listener) are left to either merge everything into one mega hybrid
composer, or a series of unknown, disembodied composers. This presentation of
queerness invokes sexual concepts of anonymity, group sex, and a play of roles and
identities that is messy and tangled, avoiding any clear-cut delineation.
Sonorous or Exquisite Corpses is an oddity, a work with too many composers
that lacks a clear formal trajectory. It is a musical documentation of a queer social circle
that had no real intended use beyond its creation and its resultant delight by its
205 See Moore’s article for a detailed description of how each piece was constructed. Ibid., 167-192.
99
participants. A performance of the work is, perhaps, less interesting than the work itself,
a result of the tangled relationships and histories among the men who partook in game.
I find this piece to be one vision of what queer collaboration, and queer music in
general, could potentially be: a compositions by multiple composers whose individual
contributions are obscured.206 It adheres to concepts of queerness in its very disposal of
what “straight” musical society would deem acceptable practice, and is thus a radical
work that runs against standard musical tradition.
Double Music will be discussed in the next chapter, as a case study in which to
seek out traces of the three queer influences that have been discussed thus far. As a
work that was co-composed by Cage and Harrison, with both overt references to Asian
music, and coded references to modern dance, Double Music will tie together the
various discussions that have taken place so far. It is also the only purely collaborative
West Coast work that is also for percussion only, thus it is a crucial work in
understanding queer collaboration in a percussion-specific context. Looking at the
careers of Cage, Cowell, and Harrison beyond the forties, all three partook in
collaborative practices in various forms, as all they each engaged with dance, theater,
and other art forms. Harrison’s life-long relationship with instrument builder William
Colvig generated many works; and of course, Cage and Cunningham were extremely
prolific in their partnership. Queer collaborative composition, as well as a broader sense
of collaboration that can occur in queer artistic circles, are both areas that have much
206
A contemporary example of this would be several collaborative works by the New York-based
composers of Bang on a Can (Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe), including Shelter, Carbon
Copy Building, and Lost Objects, although these composers do not identity as queer.
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room for exploration, especially within the context of percussion and its reliance on
collaborative practices.
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Chapter 3: Analysis: Double Music
Three general areas of queer influence have been shown to intersect with the
burgeoning percussion ensemble of the 1930s and early 1940s. Modern dance was a
queer-friendly space that served as an incubator, providing funding, personnel,
rehearsal space, as well as a general framework of how to create new work. Dance
profoundly affected the development of the percussion ensemble, and this crucial
relationship is strengthened further when one overlays an understanding of queerness.
Asian cultures were highly prevalent on the West Coast, and queer cultures developed
in close proximity to ethnic neighborhoods, such as Chinatown. Queer fascination with
the orient had an erotic element to it; thus, any musical references to Oriental culture
were charged with queer desire. Finally, engagement in collaborative practices that
came out of queer working methods injected the percussion ensemble with a unique
artistic practice that shows a network of queer lives seeking alternative forms than those
coming out of heteronormative practices.
While none of these areas are unique to queer lives only, at the intersection of all
three, one finds the percussion ensemble, which is full of queer references throughout
its early years. Many of these influences are cultural, in general; they are not
necessarily particular to music. However, if one seeks out these references in
percussion music, one can begin to see traces of queer influence in many percussion
ensemble works, especially those by queer composers. It is important to remember that
the queer influence is not direct; it must be mediated through something else. And in the
case of the three queer influences, they are themselves also not direct, but lenses
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through which to view a work in question. So, for example, the presence of an oriental
reference contains both the oriental reference itself, as well as the attached queer
reference; the queerness itself is empty, therefore, it attaches itself to something else.
Finding queerness in a percussion ensemble score, then, means that one must seek
out references to dance, orientalism, and collaboration, and then connect these
references to queerness as much as one can understand each of these areas to itself
be queer.
I shall tease out queerness in Cage and Harrison’s Double Music, a work that in
many ways, strongly supports a queer reading. While I do not believe that music itself
can sound queer, tracing references in the score, along with a deeper understanding of
the conditions that produced the score (and the lives of the creators), will bring about a
queer reading of the piece (which is, obviously, only one of many possible readings).
Using traditional musical analysis tools, I shall highlight traces of modern dance,
orientalism, and collaboration in the notes as they exist in the score, along with remarks
made by Cage and Harrison in reference to Double Music.
Double Music is a joint composition for percussion quartet, written in April 1941
by Cage and Harrison while they were living in San Francisco. By this point in their
professional relationship, they had been working together for several years. They were
planning a percussion ensemble concert for May 14th, 1941, which was to be held at
the California Club Auditorium. The concert presented three works by each composer in
alternation,207 and closed with the premiere of Double Music. After agreeing to the
207The entire program order was as follows: Song of Quezecoatl by Harrison; Quartet by Cage; Canticle
by Harrison; Third Construction by Cage; 13th Simfony by Harrison; Trio by Cage; and Double Music by
Harrison/Cage.
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general premise of creating a collaborative composition, Cage and Harrison agreed to
similar pre-compositional strictures, and split the parts between them, as Cage
explained:
Lou Harrison and I wrote Double Music together. It is a "voiced"' percussion piece. One of
us wrote the soprano and tenor parts. The other wrote the bass and alto. After agreeing
on a rhythmic structure, the phrases and the sections, we worked independently. When
we brought the parts together in rehearsal, no notes had to be changed. We were
delighted.208
Harrison provided more information on the exact compositional practice that he and
Cage agreed to in an interview with Leta E. Miller:
We agreed to use a specified number of rhythmicles and/or rests of the same quantity,
which could be put together in any combination. Then we shaped the full length of the
piece in half notes. We each did our own form. We wrote separately and then put it
together and never changed a note. We didn’t need to. By that time I knew perfectly well
what John would be doing, or what his form was likely to be. So I accommodated him.
And I think he did the same to me, too, because it came out very well.209
The account that Harrison provides of the exact nature of composition is extremely
helpful, because in many ways, it helps demystify the coming together of Cage’s and
Harrison’s contributions to the work. Double Music is not a magical occurrence where,
against all odds, the parts just happened to work out together. Rather, because of smart
pre-compositional planning, they knew that they were working with the same cellular
materials (the rhythmicles210), which helped to control the rhythmic contour of the work,
as well as a general sense of phrasing in half notes (which works out to 200 measures
of 4/4). Thus, while the results of this collaboration are quite remarkable, its not as if
they had an unlimited range of possibilities from which to pull musical material.
208David Shapiro and John Cage, “On Collaboration in Art: a Conversation with David Shapiro,” RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 10 (Autumn 1985), 103.
210 Harrison’s concept of rhythmicles will be explained in further detail later, see pg. 173.
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Further, because they were working with unpitched percussion, issues of
harmony were completely avoidable, an issue that would have changed the scope of
the collaboration had they been working with pitched instruments. The only general area
of pitch that was discussed was a relation among the parts (arranged roughly as SATB,
as Cage mentioned). In fact, the instruments for Double Music are all metal (after a
suggestion from Harrison, who was inspired by and greatly respected Cage’s all-metal
First Construction), distributed among the four players from high to low, including
several Asian instruments: Player 1 has six water buffalo bells and six muted brake
drums; Player 2 has two sistrums, six sleigh bells, six brake drums, and a thundersheet;
Player 3 plays three Japanese temple gongs, tam tam, and six cowbells; and Player 4
plays six muted Chinese gongs, tam tam, and water gong. The choice of instruments in
Double Music is very similar to First Construction, the former being essentially a subset
of the latter. Many of these instruments naturally have wide pitch and overtone arrays,
so harmony is a non-issue; however, many of the instruments are in graduated sets to
allow melodic writing. The resemblance to gamelan music is not lost on many writers,211
and the choice to use not only metal instruments, but several graduated sets of metal
instruments in both Double Music (and its sonic predecessor First Construction) point to
this Asian source. So, in the use of an ad-hoc Americanized gamelan, one can find two
queer connections. The first is the use of Asian references, including instrument choice,
the mimicry of gamelan surface textures (which will be explored further below). The
second connection is the manner in which queer collaboration was facilitated because
211“A series of works for percussion ensemble demonstrated Cage’s fondness for the gamelan…
especially in the stratified ostinato patterns and syncopations of First Construction in Metal and Double
Music.” Mervyn Cooke, Britten and the Far East: Asian Influence in the Music of Benjamin Britten
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 21.
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of the sonic nature—specifically, the pitchlessness—of the percussion ensemble. By
working with pitchless percussion instruments, Cage and Harrison were able to execute
their collaborative process in a successful manner; the pathway between instrument
choice and collaboration is itself, thus, queer.
A major queer aspect of Double Music is understanding how Cage and
Harrison’s contributions musically related to each other, and how this musical
relationship mirrors a queer relationship. In order to understand this relationship, it is
necessary to focus in closely on how each man’s compositional processes differed. An
examination of how each composer composed his respective parts will further illuminate
the collaborative process. While both Cage and Harrison were using the same basic
musical materials, they each approached the compositional task in their own respective
ways after they had agreed to the previously outlined guidelines.
Cage worked out a division of the two hundred measures in fourteen groupings
of fourteen measures each (plus a four-measure coda), which were furthered
subdivided into subgroups of 4 + 3 + 2 + 5, utilizing his micro/macro structure. Cage
largely articulates this subdivision via player entrances and exits, but it is most clearly
heard in Player 3’s part, aligning with the placement of gongs. Throughout most of the
piece, Cage places gongs at the downbeat of the 2 and 5 groupings, along with
occasional gongs at the beginning of each 4 grouping (figure 1).
Fig. 1: Cage, Double Music, player 3, m. 57 - 71
4 + 3 + 2 + 5
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Fig. 2: John Cage/Lou Harrison, Double Music
Allegro Moderato (O = gong)

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Percussion 1
water buffalo bells muted brake drums
Percussion 2
sistrums sleigh bells brake drums sleigh bells
Percussion 3 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
Japanese temple gong tam tam Japanese gong tam tam Japanese gong tam tam
Percussion 4 O O O OO
O OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OO
OOOO
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muted gongs tam tam muted gongs tam tam muted gongs tam tam
100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 165 170 175 180 185 190 195 200
brake drums thundersheet sleigh bells sistrum

O O O O O O O O O O
cowbells Japanese gong tam tam cowbells
OO O O O O O O O
The tam tam is struck in two different spots: on the edge, producing the higher partials,
and in the center, producing more of the tam tam’s fundamental pitch. The placement of
the gongs within the subdivision of each cycle provides a regularity that references the
colotomic gong structure found in various Balinese and Javanese gamelan musics.212
This is a direct reference to oriental music that is deeply imbedded in the structure of
Double Music.
On a surface level, Cage has also used his subdivisions to control the distribution
of motivic material within each larger grouping. Examining the first 14-measure section,
one can see that he has arranged material to conform to the subdivided sections (fig. 3).
Fig. 3: Cage, Double Music, Player 1 (water buffalo bells), m. 1 - 15
4 3
A B A B B1
2 5
B B C B C B C
Each subsection organizes material in a different way: In the 4-measure group, Cage is
alternating measures of material (A B A B); 3-measure subsection does not repeat any
material, although it includes motives that are echoed elsewhere; the 2-measure
subsection is a direct repetition of material (B B); and finally, the 5-measure group
returns to the idea of alternation (C B C B C). The pattern of alternation/nonrepeating/
212 More on colotomic structures can be seen below in discussion of Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo pg 162.
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repeating/alternation could be mapped onto a general pattern of consonance/
dissonance/consonance that would be found in standard tonal music practice, if one
finds the use of repetition here to be a stable concept. When he utilizes repetition (or
alternation, which is essentially repetition on a larger scale), the music feels grounded,
as opposed to m. 5 - 7, which feels unstable in since the material is in constant flux.
Also note how Cage uses m. 9 to pivot into the following section, setting up a two-
measure ostinato (C B C B C); however, m. 9 only sounds as a repetition of m. 8 (B B),
not as part of a two-measure pattern. It isn’t until m. 11 that one hears m. 9 differently,
thus showing how Cage found ways to blur his seemingly distinct formal plan by
creating moments of ambiguity.
The manner in which Cage uses repetition at various levels within this passage is
playing with the idea of the ostinato, a concept that will be examined in detail in Part II of
this essay. The connection between the ostinato and modern dance is strong,
suggesting that modern dance exerted significant formal influence upon percussion
writing. Here, one can see Cage invoking the ostinato at various moments, like m. 8-9,
repeating a single measure, and in the outer subdivisions, repeating in two-measure
groups. The use of the ostinato, as will be shown, is another instance of the influence of
dance, which in this context is also understood to be a queer influence. Many moments
of ostinato can be found in Double Music, albeit they are often momentary, or even
implied (quasi-ostinati).
Returning to Cage’s process in Double Music, one finds a similar style of writing
that exists in many of his other works, including the Constructions. He begins with the
largest structure (the entire piece), which gets divided into fourteen equal parts, which
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are then each divided further into the repeating pattern of 4 + 3 + 2 + 5. Once this
structure (the form) has been constructed, he’s able to fill it up using the rhythmicles
(the content) that he and Harrison had agreed upon. Cage’s skill as a composer is in
finding ways to articulate the form using content, but by also maintaining musical
interest using a combination of repetition and non-repetition. Cage continued to
approach form in this manner throughout his career, organizing music through divisions
and articulations of large groups of time, and then filling the form with musical content.
This is a top-down approach to musical form, or a divisive process of form creation, as
opposed to, perhaps, the opposite, which would be a form that accumulates, building up
from the smallest structures into larger accumulations.
Harrison also began by dividing the two hundred measures of Double Music into
smaller sections, creating twenty-one sections of nine and one-half measures long
(which leaves an extra half measure left at the end of the piece), so in that sense, he
was borrowing from Cage’s technique. However, the level of formal organization stops
there, as he is not dividing each nine and one-half measure phrase into further small
sections, at least not uniformly across the piece. Yet, much like Cage, he makes much
use of repetition. Take, for example, the opening phrase, played by player 2 on sistrums
(fig. 4). Harrison begins with a five-beat pattern that repeats five times, then a three-
Fig. 4: Lou Harrison, Double Music, Player 2 (sistrums), m. 1 - 10
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beat pattern that repeats three times, and finally a two-beat pattern that repeats twice.
This is a very elegant organization whereby the length of the pattern determines the
number of repetitions, filling out the nine-and-a-half measures exactly. The gradual
shortening of the successive patterns form a trajectory that heads to the end of the
phrase. This entire passage consists of only two pitches, and Harrison has found a way
to provide formal interest, a difficult task with such limited means.
The next passage, played by Player 4 on muted gongs, begins on beat three of
measure 10 (figure 5, occurring directly after figure 4).
Fig. 5: Harrison, Double Music, Player 4 (muted gongs), m. 10-19
4 3 3 4 3 3 4 3 3 4 3 3 4
3 3 4 2 4 (2) (2)
The passage begins with a twice-repeated two-and-a-half measure eighth-note figure
that falls into groupings of 4-3-3. In contrast to the sistrum passage, this one is highly
melodic, quickly spanning the entire range of the six muted gongs in the opening
gesture. Here, Harrison is writing in a scalar manner, a clear reference to gamelan,
which the West Coast composers understood to be largely made up of step-wise
movement.213 The melody rises twice, the first time (m. 10) reaching higher than the
213 In Cage’s article “The East in the West”, he suggests that there are “certain large musical conditions
which are characteristically Oriental” including “an integral step-wise use of scale.” Harrison is adopting
this quality of scalar motion to invoke the Orient. John Cage, “The East in the West,” Modern Music 23,
no. 2 (1946), 113.
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second time (beginning m. 12). Beginning in m. 15, Harrison abandons the initial
melody, but maintains the 4-3-3 grouping. He then introduces a new idea in m. 16,
which is itself repeated twice. The phrase finishes by moving towards the lowest gong, a
gradually increasing emphasis that began in m. 16 (see the circled low notes); the final
notes are a single repeated pitch. Overall, this passage can be seen as a gesture that
begins across the entire range of the gongs, gradually narrowing in range as it ends on
one note. The phrase generally follows this overall plan, but allows for some deviation
(particularly, m. 16 - 18), providing both structure and interest.
Both excerpts for sistrums and gongs from Harrison exhibit a movement from
larger gestures moving towards smaller gestures. In the sistrum example, this
movement is found in phrase motive length, whereas in the muted gongs example, it is
found in the narrowing of the range. While Cage is using a predetermined subphrase
structure to organize his music, Harrison is a bit more structurally free, while still
providing clear musical direction by choosing one parameter to control the shape of the
phrase. Harrison’s phrases are generally conceived of more melodically, while Cage’s
are conceived more motivically (although, both exhibit aspects of melody and motive at
various points throughout the piece). This is a result of the manner of organization at the
smallest levels by each composer; and yet, it is interesting to remember that they were
both working with the same set of rhythmic cells, and that they had both adopted similar
large-scale formal plans. The main difference between the two composer’s contributions
are on a local level by constructing phrases in their own individualized ways.
One notable aspect of the piece is how restrained each composer was in not
overwriting their parts: they were both careful to give each other space, often by only
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having one of their two parts playing at a time, or by writing extended passages of rests
(especially the case in Player 3 and 4 who play sparse gong passages periodically
throughout the piece). There’s no documentation to suggest that they had discussed the
overall texture explicitly, but the overall effect of the piece is one of an elegant
transparency.214 Regardless of whether this was arrived at serendipitously, or if it was a
clear goal that had been laid out from the start, there are very few places where all four
players are playing at the same time. Harrison, especially, was sensitive to leaving
space in the score, oftentimes alternating between his two players, and even in two
places, giving both players rests for an entire phrase. Cage’s parts are generally more
dense and active than Harrison’s are, especially in the second half of the piece, but he
still provides empty space in which to hear his collaborator. When Harrison said that he
“accommodated [Cage]…[a]nd I think he did the same to me, too, because it came out
very well,” part of this might have been each composer erring on the side of writing less
rather than more. This was an accommodation of musical space, whereby, at least in
theory, restraint would allow the other composer’s material to come through. This
restraint and space refer specifically to the use of periodic silence in one or both parts,
allowing the other composer’s voice to be heard. One could consider Double Music a
conversation, where each composer is stating his material, then providing space for a
reply. Of course, part of the challenge in this is that neither composer was aware of the
other’s formal structure, so they had to trust that the other composer would, in return,
provide space for their parts to be heard.
214 However, it doesn’t mean that there was no discussion about the transparent texture of the work, and
considering the density of many other Cage and Harrison percussion works, it would not be unreasonable
to suggest that they had had some discussion about maintaining a generally more sparse texture.
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Another way of viewing this is to consider the power structure that underlies
Double Music, similar to what was found in Sonorous, or Exquisite Corpses: an exercise
in negotiating the constantly shifting balance between dominance and passivity, and the
related queer associations that come with an understanding of power dynamics. Double
Music has a similar negotiation taking place, albeit one that isn’t obvious until the parts
were put together. For example, beginning in m. 101, Cage’s Player 1 plays constantly
through until the end of the piece. This results in Player 1 becoming the de facto
dominant voice, simply through its persistence. Cage amplifies his dominance with an
entrance by Player 3 in m. 127, which also plays throughout the remainder of the piece.
Against this constancy, Harrison employs various musical tactics, organized by phrase:
m. 102 - 114, Players 2 and 4 play constant eighth notes in alternation, and briefly
overlap for four measures; m. 114 - 124, tutti rest; m. 114 - 133, constant eighth notes
for the entire phrase (one of the few places in the work where all four players play at the
same time); m. 134 - 143; tutti rest; m. 143 - 162 (two phrases), water gong and
thundersheet tremolos; m. 162 - 171, Player 2 eighth notes, Player 4 rests; m. 172 - 190
(two phrases), Player 4 eighth notes, Player 2 rests; and m. 191 - end, Player 2 plays
the opening phrase on the sistrums, with Player 4 playing occasional gong hits. Viewing
the second half of the piece as a comparison between Cage’s and Harrison’s use of
texture, one can see Harrison changing frequently, while Cage remains static. As
Harrison’s players enter and exit out of the dominant texture that Cage has created,
they can affect it in several ways: by enhancing the timbre, providing rhythmic accent, or
by adding an additional voice into the counterpoint. Cage has blocked Harrison from
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taking over the dominant voice, allowing him instead the possibility of inflecting Cage’s
ever-present music.
What we see here are two general techniques with regard to texture: the use of
silence, understood as moments of passivity, allowing the other composer’s music to be
heard; and the use of activity, which is understood as being dominant. Sections that
include no silent parts (where all players are playing) create the most tension (especially
if the players are have constant eighth note music), as all players are assuming
dominant musical roles. Yet, these moments are rare in Double Music, and usually at
any given point, at least one player is either sitting out, or is playing music that can be
understood to be more passive (such as water gong tremolos and cup gong sustained
notes). The choice to either write music, or to write rests, is at the core of the work, with
the composers clearly understanding that their choices would affect, through presence
or absence, the overall trajectory of a given passage.
Leta Miller has suggested that “Double Music is thus an example of both
collaboration and independence.”215 Collaboration and independence are both present
in Double Music, which are to be considered opposing forces. This is a contradiction
that lies at the heart of the piece: a collaboration that essentially fuses two independent
processes into a single work. Had Cage and Harrison composed the piece in a different
manner, and instead of working independently, sat down to work out moment-to-
moment details, they would have obviously arrived at a completely different work. But,
because percussion facilitated a fusion of independently-created sub-compositions by
each composer, Cage and Harrison were able to maintain their musical independence
215 Miller, Music and Politics, 209.
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in the collaborative process. This foreshadows (and one could argue, leads directly
towards) the Cage-Cunningham collaborations that embraced a similar structure and
ethos. The independence allows each personality to remain intact (unlike, for example,
Sonorous, or Exquisite Corpses, where individual contributions are anonymized in the
overall texture) in a non-hierarchical relationship; Cage and Harrison’s music is united,
yet distinct from each other.
This leads one to consider Double Music as an idealized instance of a queer
relationship, be it sexual, romantic, or platonic. Unlike a heteronormative relationship
that privileges one partner’s desires over the other in a fixed power dynamic, Cage and
Harrison’s artistic relationship is queer. In this queer relationship, both parties are
essentially equal, with a constant negotiation of shifting power dynamics that privilege
the overall autonomy of each party. It is important to note that in such a queer
relationship, there is not an absence of power dynamics—at any given moment, there
exists forces of both dominance and passivity—but, rather, that the net result is one of
equality between the composers, inasmuch as Cage and Harrison are each able to
exert their own artistic voices within the same space, and negotiate their own desires in
terms of dominance and passivity. Queer relationships in the modern era can take on
any number of forms, but the idea of a partnership that also practices autonomy is, for
many self-identified queer individuals, a liberating aspect of queerness. By rejecting
heteronormativity, queers are able to create their own relationship models as they build
the one that works for all parties involved. This can mean adopting a more radical
relationship model, or one that is more traditional, resembling a heteronormative
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relationship, if that is what is desired. Further, the nature of the relationship can change
and morph over time; it need not remain a fixed entity, but rather is fluid and dynamic.
Queerness allows individuals to define their lives and identities in accordance
with their own desires. Therefore, because of the deliberateness with which how Cage
and Harrison were able to define how their artistic relationship functioned, set their own
specific formal constraints, and then proceed to integrate their musical contribution
within a form that supported both collaboration and independence, I consider Double
Music to be the prototypical queer composition. Musically, one finds two similar, yet
distinct, sub-compositions that move alongside one another, inflecting each other, and
allowing space for the other. This is the ultimate facet of queerness in the work: the
coexistence of collaboration and independence, two ideas that are in conflict with each
other, but ultimately motivate the structure and content of the work.
Beyond the queer collaborative relationship that helped birth the work, Double
Music also has queer influences found in modern dance, and in various references to
Asian music on many different musical levels. Further, this collaboration could not have
existed without the musical properties of percussion, which because of its unlimited
scope and mutability, facilitated Cage’s and Harrison’s collaboration. Percussion came
to be the ideal vehicle through which to transmit ideas that queer creators in several
fields were interested in during this time period on the West Coast. The percussion
ensemble’s development was tightly entwined with experiments taking place in the
world of modern dance, and a close examination of how dance transformed percussion
music will further demonstrate how the web of queer lives and influences surrounding
the percussion ensemble functioned on a basic level. The next section of this essay will
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examine how modern dance shaped percussion repertoire by paying close attention to
how the ostinato, a simple musical device, permeated dance music, and thus,
percussion music. If one understands the relationship between dance and percussion to
be queer, then a deeper reckoning of exactly how modern dance shaped percussion
music will be crucial in understanding the percussion ensemble overall as a result of
queer desires. This examination of the specific mechanics that underlie the queer
relationship between dance and percussion should also be undertaken for Asian music,
as well as collaboration, both within a queer context; but due to the limited amount of
space and time, my essay will focus on dance as a case study, providing a framework of
how to potentially examine these other areas of queer influence at a later time. Taken
together, these discussion will further strengthen the queer networks that existed as the
American percussion ensemble was developing in its early phase.
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Part II - Repertoire and Analysis of the West Coast Percussion Ensemble:

Ultramodernism and Modern Dance
As was discussed in Part I, one of the main queer influences on the percussion
ensemble was modern dance, both as an artistic practice, and as a social forum. Dance
and music have been closely entwined throughout all of human history, and in many
cultures and artistic practices, music and dance are codependent on each other, having
been developed simultaneously. Western classical music is no exception, with many
musical forms and tropes having dance roots, even if they are no longer understood as
such. There are, of course, many clear music-dance relationships, such as music for
ballet, theatre, and opera; instrumental dance suites; dance movements in sonata
forms; and other classical forms that were influenced by folk dances. Into the twentieth
century, many of the early orchestral masterworks were the result of fertile
collaborations between dance companies and composers, notably the work of Ballet
Russes,216 many of which now form the core of the modern orchestra’s 20th century
repertoire. As instrumental music rose in prominence throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, it was not uncommon for music that was originally created explicitly
for dance to be repurposed as concert music in a process of separation from the original
dance it was created for. Thus, it is common for musicians and composers to consider
only the musical components of dance works which were not usually created apart from
choreography, but closely alongside it. The impact of modern dance on contemporary
216Some of the Ballet Russes’s commissioned dance pieces include the musical works Debussy’s
L’Après-midi d’une faune, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade, and Stravinsky’s
Le Sacre du Printemps, Firebird, and Petrushka,
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music (and all classical music, in general) is a complicated relationship, as there are
several models of how the relationship between dance and music can exist.
An examination of how dance and music interacted in the early percussion
ensemble and modern dance will help show these two practices were closely
intertwined and cross-fertilized each other. Analysis of several percussion ensemble
scores and the performance contexts in which they existed will demonstrate exactly how
the music was influenced by dance. In doing so, this will further strengthen the
connection between the queer-friendly modern dance space and the early percussion
ensemble.
However, in this section I am not particularly concerned about queer composers
and bodies, but am opening up examination of works by composers of any sexuality.217
While the previous section focused on sexuality, this section is concerned with
articulating the ways in which dance influenced percussion music. Although modern
dance in general was a queer-friendly space, it was not only composed of queer
individuals, but also heteronormative men and women who worked alongside queer
artists. Sexuality was not necessarily a binding force that brought artists in these groups
together, as they instead came together to create art. These non-queer individuals218
were also engaged in the development of dance-inflected percussion music, and thus
further influenced the queer composers that have already been discussed. Looking at
217In fact, the sexuality of composers whose works are being analyzed will not be discussed in this part.
While the addition of sexuality would likely result in interesting and illuminating discourse, it is best to
narrow the topic for the sake of clarity and concision.
218 At the very least, all individuals can be considered potentially queer, as their sexual biographies will
not be taken into consideration; it is not correct to assume all subjects as straight, although many, or all,
of them might have identified thusly. For the sake of analysis, I shall put my sexual blinders on, and
consider all subjects as asexual/nonsexual.
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music and dance beyond the context of sexuality will help establish the terms of music-
dance collaboration, which can then be later examined in relation to sexuality in the final
section.
In order to examine the influence of modern dance on the modern percussion
ensemble, I shall look at the early collection of percussion pieces in Issue No. 18 of
Henry Cowell’s New Music Orchestra Series, specifically two works: Doris Humphrey’s
Dance Rhythms and Gerald Strang’s Percussion Music. Published in 1936 during the
beginning phase of West Coast percussion composition, many of the works in this
collection make explicit references to modern dance. They provide a glimpse into some
of musical characteristics of percussion-based accompaniments and compositions
written for modern dance, while providing historical perspective both on the composition
process of percussive dance music, and performance practice of these works. Following
discussion of Humphrey’s and Strang’s pieces will be a discussion of a later work Third
Construction by John Cage written in 1941, showing how mature concert percussion
works were influenced by earlier dance music, but not directly involved with any
choreography.
As will be seen in the examination of repertoire, the generation of new material
for percussion works in the West Coast School (1) began in the dance studio via
improvisation and loosely-structured sequences, which then led to (2) more formalized
composed works for dance theater (perhaps with composed or less strictly determined
elements), developing into (3) fully-realized works that were composed in tandem with
(or in support of) choreography, and finally led to (4) fully-composed concert works
without dance elements. This taxonomy can be used to understand the relationship
121
between music and dance, and is a guide in understanding how modern dance directly
influenced the percussion ensemble. The movement from first-level to fourth-level works
is traceable on both micro and macro scales, demonstrating the profound influence that
modern dance exerted on the percussion ensemble. As representative works of each
level are understood in their relation to dance, a rubric indexing the qualities of each
level will be constructed.
122
CHAPTER 4: Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms and Second-level Works
The work that demonstrates the most explicit connection between modern dance
and percussion in NMOS #18 is Dance Rhythms, composed by choreographer Doris
Humphrey (along with Charles Weidman, see below), and notated by Wallingford
Riegger. Humphrey was an influential choreographer in the modern dance period who
collaborated and created dances with music by many prominent ultramodernist
composers, including Henry Cowell, Dane Rudhyar, Carlos Chávez, Wallingford
Riegger, and Vivian Fine.219 Humphrey, who lived from 1895 until 1958, was one of the
major figures in mid-century American modern dance, alongside Martha Graham,
Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm, having created some of the early masterworks of
dance with her company, the Humphrey-Weidman Company. Humphrey danced in
Denishawn (the orientalist dance group founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn),
along with Graham and Weidman before all three left to form their own companies. The
Humphrey-Weidman Company existed from 1928 until 1945, roughly the time period in
which early experiments were taking place with the percussion ensemble. Together,
Humphrey and Weidman created an impressive repertory of works, many of which are
still performed today, and fostered many notable dancers and choreographers, including
José Limón.220
219 Doris Humphrey, The Art of Making Dances, ed. Barbara Pollack (New York: Grove, 1959) 177 - 180.
220
Joanna Gewertz Harris, Beyond Isadora: Bay Area Dancing, The Early Years, 1915—1965 (Berkeley:
Regent Press, 2009), 47-50.
123
Cowell, Humphrey and Weidman likely met through Louis Horst, who was at the
time working with Denishawn.221 Cowell and Humphrey’s first project together took
place in 1926 on a piece called Atlantis for vocal soloists and chamber orchestra;
unfortunately, due to financial issues, Humphrey never choreographed this score.222
Later in 1928, Humphrey choreographedThe Banshee (which was not originally
composed as a dance work), with Cowell as performer, a piece that would find a place
in the Humphrey-Weidman repertory.223 While Cowell was teaching at The New School,
he brought Humphrey as a guest artist and eventually secured a faculty position for
her.224 His next attempted dance collaboration with her was in 1932, on Two Appositions
for chamber orchestra;225 however, this work also seems to have never been
choreographed by Humphrey, despite the piece’s dedication to her. Cowell also
composed works for Weidman in this period, including two pieces in 1931, Dance of
Work and Dance of Sport, both for piano (and later arranged for ten instruments).226
Despite the constant struggles to get his pieces performed, Cowell, Humphrey and
Weidman seem to have had a positive working relationship, and its likely that funds to
hire chamber orchestras were often dubious, thus it is understandable that a chamber
orchestra could not always be a sure thing.
The exact circumstances surrounding the inclusion of Humphrey’s Dance
Rhythms in NMOS #18 is unclear, as to whether Cowell solicited Humphrey, or visa

222 Miller, “Henry Cowell and Modern Dance,” 20.
223 Sachs, Henry Cowell,” 157.
224 Ibid., 194 & 211.
225 Miller, “Henry Cowell and Modern Dance,” 20.
226 Ibid., 20.
124
versa. She is the only dancer included in the collection, with the remaining pieces by
trained composers. In John Kennedy’s liner notes to a recording of this work, he notes
that:
The inclusion by Cowell of Doris Humphrey as a “composer” in the New Music Edition
collection demonstrates Cowell’s appreciation of the relationship of dance and music, and
how the vocabulary being developed in modern dance around rhythmic experimentation
paralleled that of the new percussion music.227
While I feel that Kennedy underestimates the connection between the “vocabulary being
developed in modern dance” and “new percussion music” — these categories are not
“parallel” so much as intertwined, and possibly indistinguishable from each other, an
argument that will be pursued later — he is correct to hypothesize exactly why Cowell
included Humphrey’s work in the collection, as the work does appear to be out of place.
At the very least, this opens up an inquiry into the nature of this work, and what it means
in terms of the relationship between modern dance and the percussion ensemble.
The following note (presumably written by Cowell himself as publisher)
accompanies the published work:
These rhythmic patterns are from a group of dances by Doris Humphrey. Nothing but
percussion instruments are used for this particular number, the rhythms being improvised
by Miss Humphrey and Charles Weidman. Wallingford Riegger, who wrote the music for
the remaining numbers, has notated the rhythms. The number of repetitions and the
order of the patterns may be varied at will also the types of drums and gongs [sic]. What
appears is exactly as used by Miss Humphrey.228
227 Meehan/Perkins Duo, Restless—Endless—Tactless.

228Doris Humphrey, “Dance Rhythms,” Percussion Pieces by J. M. Beyer, Harold G. Davidson, Ray
Green, Doris Humphrey, Wm. Russell, and Gerald Strang, edited by Henry Cowell. New Music Orchestra
Series, no. 18 (San Francisco, CA: New Music Orchestra Series, 1936), 14.
125
The printed score is therefore a transcription of the rhythms as performed by Humphrey
and Weidman, divided into two parts: player one with three drums,229 a bass drum, and
a tambourine; and player two with a gong, cymbal, three blocks, tambourine, a tom tom
and a bass drum (typical instruments that would have been found in the Wigman-
influenced instrumentarium of the West Coast percussion group). It is likely that players
shared several of the instruments, including the bass drum, tambourine, and gongs,
thus arranging the instruments in a manner that would provide easy access for both
players.
This short piece consists of six phrases of varying lengths that are each repeated
a different number of times (see figure 6). The musical ideas presented are overall
simple and monophonic, containing clearly marked rhythms that generally avoid
syncopation or other expressive rhythmic devices. A defining feature of the work are
straight eighth notes, which appear in several places (m. 1, 2, 3, 9, 11-14), and in a
slight variation as eighth note triplets in m. 10. Straight eighth notes provide a very clear
pulse for the dancers, and it is not surprising to find these here. In fact, the entire piece
has somewhat of a consistent feel because the tempo and meter are always extremely
audible, save for phrase C, which, not only is in 5/8, but is syncopated sans eighth
notes. Phrases C and E provide moments of contrast from the rest of the eighth note-
dominated music and give a small sense of form to the piece. Phrase D is relatively the
most metrically complex moment of the piece, layering an ostinato of three quarter
notes in player one overtop an ostinato of seven eighth notes in player two; the pattern
229The three drums includes one tom tom and two “drums,” without a clear distinction what the difference
between the tom tom and the “drums” are. Based on the pattern at m. 15, it would make sense that the
tom tom is higher in pitch than the drums. Perhaps tom tom would be a Chinese tom, and the “drums”
would be another type of drum (congas, another drum of African origin, etc.).
126
Fig. 6: Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms (condensed score)
A B C
takes three measures of 7/4 in order to work out to the same downbeat (which never
arrives in this case, but would take place in m. 15 had the pattern continued). This idea
of layering ostinati comes directly from Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo, albeit used in a
much more rudimental manner here.
127
One further remark needs to be made regarding the performance direction given
at the start of phrase F, which reads “Stop vibration with fingers, making audible another
beat.” The accompanying passage is a string of eighth notes. However, those notes on
the beat are (in the original score, not pictured here) beamed together with stems down,
and those off the beat are beamed together with stems up. The performance direction
suggests that the lower notes are played using a deadstroke or muffled stroke, which is
an articulated stroke that produces a sound but prevents further ringing of the
instrument. This technique also later appears in John Cage’s Third Construction (1941)
at rehearsal J in the teponaxtle part in an extremely exposed passage. Cage and
Humphrey (and Weidman) never collaborated together in any serious manner (although
its possible that they would have made contact at the 1939 Bennington School of Dance
at Mills230), so it is unlikely that this technique was generated by Humphrey and passed
to Cage. What I believe is a more likely scenario is that this technique was developed
directly in the dance studio by dance accompanists and passed from player to teacher,
especially during the various dance meetings that occurred, such as Bennington.
A further complication in the consideration this work is the performance note
regarding form: “The number of repetitions and the order of the patterns may be varied
at will.” It is difficult to tell whether this remark can be attributed to Humphrey, or if it is
perhaps a direction that Cowell added himself. This idea of freely arranging
precomposed material sounds very similar to the concept of elastic form that Cowell
developed in relation to dance composition. Cowell didn’t publish his article “Relating
Music and Concert Dance” until 1937 (the same year that he wrote several elastic form
230 Miller and Lieberman Composing a World, 88.
128
dance pieces while in San Quentin), which was after Dance Rhythms was published in
NMOS #18. Cowell would have likely been developing his elastic form/musical kit
concept around the same time that he came into contact with Dance Rhythms. Is it
possible that Cowell superimposed his concept of elastic form on to Humphrey’s
composition? It seems highly unlikely that she would have come up with this concept,
since she places emphasis on dance over music (see below), and rearranging the
musical form would alter the dance that it was based upon. I suspect that Cowell
suggested this idea to her after the piece was composed and had been performed in its
dance context as a way to aid the transition from dance work to concert work. This
would allow performers the freedom to arrange musical materials as they see fit since
they were no longer beholden to the dance. It seems reasonable that Humphrey would
have signed off on this addition to the piece, if this is indeed what happened. Of course,
this is conjecture on my part, but it does seem suspect that Humphrey added the note
about reordering sections. It is possible that she would have offered the option to alter
the number of repeats, but the overall sequence of events would have needed to remain
intact in order to line up with the originally choreography to which the music was
composed.
Dance Rhythms is very likely an excerpt from Humphrey’s landmark work New
Dance, premiered at the first Bennington Summer Festival in 1935. New Dance later
formed part of her larger work, New Dance Trilogy (which also includes the dances
Theatre Piece and With My Red Fires).231 Stephen Spackman claims the music that
Cowell published as Dance Rhythms was for the Third Theme of New Dance, a section
231 Margaret Lloyd, The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance (New York: Dance Horizons, 1949) 94. Humphrey
later extended New Dance, adding a section called “Variations and Conclusions.”
129
of the dance choreographed by Weidman—not Humphrey—for men only (hence, it is
also referred to as the “Men’s Dance”).232 The majority of the music for New Dance was
composed by Wallingford Riegger, likely written for piano four-hands and ad lib
percussion,233 but it is not clear why he did not compose the percussion music for the
“Men’s Dance.” It is clear that the music for the “Men’s Dance” is not by a seasoned
composer (Spackman, upon examination of the dance’s performance materials,
mentions that the percussion section “gives a pulse to the dancers, but there is little
excitement in its rhythmic patterns or inventiveness in its tone colors. It was clearly not
composed by Riegger.”234). Thus, it is easy to connect the published work Dance
Rhythms as the missing piece in New Dance using Cowell’s performance note as a
guide.
As the previous analysis of the piece demonstrated, there is little complexity in
Dance Rhythms, and one might find this work uninteresting as a concert work. Despite
the few interesting aspects to this piece, it is overall highly repetitive and lacks a strong
compositional intent. The focus for us, then, is not on the craft of musical composition,
but rather, the utility and support that the music offers the dancers and choreography.
232
Stephen Spackman, “Wallingford Riegger and the Modern Dance,” The Musical Quarterly, 71 no. 4,
437 - 467.
233 Ibid. Spackman discusses the difficulty in locating the exact music used for the 1935 performance in
Bennington, as well as a subsequent performance with revisions in New York on October 27 (which
created further problems for a 1972 reconstruction that had no access to the original score). Spackman is
strongly convinced that the original performance was for piano four-hands and percussion. This might
suggest that the pianists also played the percussion parts, which would have been standard practice at
the time in dance theater music. A copy of the score for the reconstruction exists in the Dance Notation
Bureau in New York, and its exact provenance is difficult to ascertain (the original copy exists in the
Bureau’s University of Ohio location). The score that DNB has in their archives is for piano four-hands,
along with percussion in the opening section, and written-in ad lib parts in various sections of the piece.
To perform the score as is written, it would require two pianists, and one percussionist, with the pianists
both playing percussion as well.
234Ibid., 448. However, as discussed below, the music that Spackman was examining for New Dance was
not in fact Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms, but another composition entirely.
130
An inquiry into how this piece was composed is necessary, particularly the ideas about
the relationship between music and dance that underline the work.
Humphrey (along with Martha Graham and others) was at the forefront of a
modern dance practice that insisted on the primacy of dance over music. Dance
musician Louis Horst articulated the relationship thusly:
The dancer began with movement plus idea, and fashioned the entire structure of his
composition without the aid of a note of music…If the dancer then elects to have a tonal
frame written to the dance…it in no way compromises the dancer’s achieved freedom.235
Instead of the centuries-old dependence on music dictating the form of dance (à la
ballet), modernist choreographers flipped the relationship, first creating dance, and then
seeking composers to create music that supported the movement, if music was to be
used at all. Composing in this manner was common, as the modern dance movement
rejected choreography to precomposed music (known as interpretive dance236),
sometimes even preferring silent dances (without any musical accompaniment at all).
This process required composers that were sympathetic to the needs of choreographers
and dancers, which often meant spending time in the dance studio. For the composer,
this could be a challenging process, as the first task was to compose music that fit the
metric structures and emotional content of the choreography, and only second could
one be concerned if that music was at all interesting as music on its own terms. Music
that did not conform to the dance could not be used, thus would fail under the category
of a dance composition. Thus, criticism of dance music must partially shift from the
235 Louis Horst, “Music and Dance,” Dance Observer, 49 (May 1935), 55.
236 Leta Miller defines interpretive dance as “developing choreographies to previously composed music.”
Miller, “Henry Cowell and Modern Dance,” 2.
131
perspective of the musician onto that of the dancer and choreographer and consider the
needs of both parties: dancer first, musician second.
So taking Humphrey’s views into consideration, it follows that Dance Rhythms
was composed after the choreography for the Men’s Dance was created (by Weidman),
allowing the music to closely adhere to the dancers’ movements. Cowell, in his notes to
Dance Rhythms, claims that these rhythms were improvised by Humphrey and
Weidman, but it makes no mention of the dance, but this must have been a simple
omission. Humphrey and Weidman were not just simply improvising any rhythms, but
rather particular rhythms that provided structure and support to the already-
choreographed dance. Percussion served as the perfect vehicle for music created by
dancers (as opposed to, for example, improvised piano music): the only musical
concern was rhythm that had already been created in the dance. Dance Rhythms
requires very little classical technique, specifically stick manipulation beyond simple
patterns (no rolls, for example), and there are no fast passages. This means that
dancers could have performed the percussion parts, as could have pianists who played
the rest of Riegger’s score. There’s no record of who played percussion in the
performance, but it was neither Humphrey nor Weidman since they were both dancing
in the production. This leads to several questions, which may not be answerable: At
what point did Riegger notate the rhythms? Who played the percussion parts, and were
they reading off a score, or taught the rhythms by rote? Unless an early copy of Dance
Rhythms is unearthed, it is unlikely that these questions can be answered, and further
information about the performers will remain unknown.
132
The reconstruction of New Dance from the American Dance Festival at
Connecticut College on June 30, 1972, does not contain Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms
due to the reconstructors’ inability to access the original scores (see footnote 211
above). In the video of this production,237 Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms has been
replaced with different music, also for percussion (similar instruments as in Dance
Rhythms) and in a comparable manner: short phrases that are repeated several times
in contrasted succession. This music from the 1972 production has been transcribed by
Tom Brown and can be found in the Dance Notation Bureau (DNB). The following note
is found in the labanotation score238 that accompanies the musical score: “The music for
Theme III was transcribed from a tape by Tom Brown. Rhythmically, this music is current
[sic], pitch and meter are questionable.”239 In communication with Brown,240 he
explained that his score of the Men’s Dance is a 1980 transcription of the 1972
reconstruction; the written score he notated was created based on a of tape of the
music used in the 1972 performance. As he explained, he is a dancer and labanotator,
and not a musician, thus his score is a rough outline of a transcription, and doesn’t
necessarily reflect the composer’s intent. The composer of this work is not made clear
237An edited version of this video can be viewed online: “DNB — New Dance (1935) by Humphrey and
Wiedman.” YouTube. Flash video file. https://youtu.be/EA4KmKnYRwM (accessed March 18, 2016). The
Third Section begins at the time mark 2:31.
238Labanotation is a form of notation that records physical movement by bodies, including the direction of
a movement, the part of the body that is moving, the level (height) of the movement, and the rhythm of
the movement. The DNB holds primarily labanotation scores, along with accompanying materials for the
dances, which often include musical scores.
239Wallingford Riegger, “New Dance,” holograph facsimile score [hand unspecified], two pianos and
percussion (number of performers unspecified), includes additional “Men’s Dance’ [composer unknown]
transcribed from a recording by Tom Brown, includes accompanying performance notes [by the Dance
Notation Bureau]. n.p.: n.p., n.d. Reproduction at Dance Notation Bureau, New York, NY, viii.
240 Tom Brown, interview by author via email correspondence, 9/24/15.
133
in any of the sources that I was able to locate, although it might be possible to deduce
what happened in the process of the reconstruction of New Dance.
Dance reconstruction is a complicated process that will not be discussed in detail
here, but in general, reconstruction is the recreation of a historical dance using primary
and secondary sources, which can include dancers who took part in the original
production, photographs, and other materials that are accessible. In the era prior to film
and videography, very little of a dance could be retained if it were not placed into the
regular repertory of a company, or if there were gaps in performance history. While
many of the dances of the early modern era were able to be recorded on film, this was
not always the case, complicating the process for the reconstructor. One important
aspect of reconstruction is consultation with the musical score (or recording, if available)
to help provide information regarding the rhythm and meter of the dance. However, if
the score cannot be located, then it is very difficult to expect dancers to remember exact
counts and other metrical features of a dance that a score would otherwise provide,
especially if the reconstruction is taking place many years after the original production
(in the case of New Dance, over thirty years). The New Dance reconstruction involved
“Charles Weidman and several Humphrey-Weidman dancers [who] attempted to
recreate it from memory,” as “the majority of New Dance had disappeared,”241 and
overall, the “reconstruction posed major problems” with “no musical score at hand”.242
So, if the published Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms was unknown to the reconstructor, the
exact structure of the Men’s Dance would not have been able to be reproduced exactly
241 Riegger, “New Dance,” iv.

242 Spackman, “Wallingford Riegger,” 445.
134
as it existed in 1935. Weidman, then, would have had to recreate the men’s dance from
memory and other sources that were available to him, inevitably creating different
choreography on a micro level from the original (the larger formal structure is more likely
to be similar to the original, while smaller moments, like counts and exact movements
are less exacting). Finally, someone (possibly Weidman, as he was involved in the
reconstruction) composed percussion music that supported the new choreography,
similar in sound and feel to the original music.243 An interesting consequence of this is
that the new choreography could not be retrofitted to Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms, as
they would not line up. If Dance Rhythms was to be used in a future production of New
Dance, new choreography would have to be created once again, presenting an
interesting dilemma for the dancer who is attempting to present a work in its most pure
form as realized by the original creators.244
While there is nothing particularly remarkable about the new musical
accompaniment for the 1972 Men’s Dance, what I do find interesting is the
interchangeability of Dance Rhythms with another (unknown) composition in the larger
context of the dance; the musical effect is similar because both were created following
the dictates of the preexistent choreography, and both lack any qualities that set the
music apart from the dance (the music is non-autonomous from the dance in this
regard). If we are to assume in both the original and reconstruction that the integrity of
243 When I proposed this sequence of events to dancer Douglas Nielsen, who’s had experience
reconstructing Weidman dances, specifically the work On My Mother’s Side from 1939, he felt that my
“assumptions are right on the money” and this was a likely scenario, although, as he said, “dance history
is fluid and in limbo,” an acknowledgement of the difficulty in making definitive statements about a largely
lost history. Douglas Nielson, interview by author via email correspondence, 9/25/15.
244 As a musician, I have no grounds to express an opinion on the appropriateness of the re-inclusion of
Dance Rhythms in New Dance; this would be an issue to be tackled by a Weidman or Humphrey scholar
or reconstructor.
135
the choreography is intact, and that the music was created to conform to the
choreography, then the exact music is ultimately of lesser consequence in a purely
musical context divorced from the movement. While it does not follow that any music
written to existing choreography is necessarily uninteresting, I find that Dance Rhythms
is best understood as a second-level work for this reason: it is most successful as music
in support of movement, but falls short when placed in a purely musical third-level realm
without the accompanying theatrical element.
John Cage would agree with this assessment, finding musical accompaniment
composed by dancers often insufficient as musical works in their own right:
The materials of dance, already including rhythm, require only the addition of sound to
become a rich, complete vocabulary…Some dancers have made steps in this direction
by making simple percussion accompaniments. Their use of percussion, unfortunately,
has not been constructive. They have followed the rhythm of their own dance movement,
accentuated it and punctuated it with percussion, but they have not given the sound its
own and special part in the whole composition. They have made the music identical with
the dance but not cooperative with it.245
His statement seems to be in direct opposition to comments that Humphrey made about
the relation between dance and music, in which she would have found Cage’s criticisms
to actually be desirable qualities of dance composition. “I believe that out of the
rhythmical structure of movement has grown the rhythmical structure of music,”246 she
said in the essay “The Relationship of Music and Dance” from 1956, two decades after
Dance Rhythms. “A musician who does not cultivate the body is overlooking the source
and the regulator by which rhythm is perceived.”247 According to Humphrey, “movement”
245 John Cage, “Goal: New Music, New Dance,” Dance Observer (December 1939), 296-297.
246Doris Humphrey, “The Relationship of Music and Dance” in Making Music for Modern Dance:
Collaborations in the Formative Years of a New American Art, ed. Katherine Teck (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 74.
247 Ibid., 76.
136
(dance) is primary, and it is from the body where all rhythm is generated. If the rhythms
found in music originate in the dancing body, then the musician must understand the
body’s rhythms and produce music that aligns with them. In this configuration, music is
derivative of dance. This does not mean that the music is necessarily uninteresting, or
compositionally insufficient per se, but only that the music’s prime responsibility is to
serve the dominating choreography in terms of rhythmic (and metric) structure. Cage,
however, believes that the music should not limit itself to the rhythmic content of the
dance, but instead should move beyond the dance, serving as a partner to the dance,
not subservient to it. This, of course, is the basis for his theory of the independent
relationship between dance and music that would come to define his work with
Cunningham in the 1940s and beyond. While Cage and Humphrey would likely disagree
on the proper relationship between music and dance, it is important to point out that
they are each pursuing their own ideal, and it would be wrong to dismiss Humphrey’s
opinion simply because her realm is dance, and therefore, her opinions on music should
be taken less seriously. A deeper understanding of her music must take into account the
dance upon which is it based.
So how does this dependence on movement manifest itself in the music? If a film
or score from original production was available, it would be possible to analyze the
movement and the ways in which the music complemented it: in unison, in counterpoint,
in contrast, or in other arrangements. However, because is not possible to view the
original production, we are forced to develop some imaginative methods of analysis.
Having only the notated score of Dance Rhythms from the original production, alongside
the video of the reconstruction allows, at the very least, one to understand how the
137
music and dance were connected in a general sense, even though they do not in any
way synchronize between themselves.248 Rather, discussing how the reconstruction
music and dance relate can be applied to Dance Rhythms and the now-lost original
choreography.
In the filmed dance, the dancers repeat short phrases in succession, each
distinct from each other. Each phrase is synchronized with the accompanying musical
phrase, beginning and ending together. Strong, distinct movements are often articulated
by an instrumental accent, while less pronounced movements may or may not be
accompanied by a musical event. For example, the opening movement by the dancers
happens a total of four times: first by male dancer #1, second by male dancer #2, third
by dancers #3 and #4, and fourth by dancers #1 and #2. Each movement consists of
the dancer running diagonally across the stage, doing a grand jeté (leap) in the middle
of the stage, and ending with a soubresaut (vertical jump) at the opposite corner. As
each dancer executes the choreography, a percussionist rolls on a tam tam, making a
crescendo throughout the combination with an accent and release at the apex of the
soubresaut (this is mm. 1-8 in Tom Brown’s transcription of the 1972 Men’s Dance). In
order for this to be synchronous, its likely that the percussionist is able to view the
dancers and time the musical gesture thusly. Proceeding throughout the dance, one find
series of movements collecting into short phrases that are repeated by individual or
groups of dancers, either in succession (a a a a), or in alternation (b c b c b c), with
music that aligns with each dance phrase.
248
As an experiment, I attempted to play the rhythms of Dance Rhythms along with the video (“DNB -
New Dance”) of the reconstruction of New Dance, and they did not align.
138
Looking now at Dance Rhythms, the series of repetitions begin to make more
sense, and it is possible to imagine what the accompanying choreography would have
been that generated the musical gestures. For example, phrase A repeated a total of
four times, much like the opening phrase of the reconstruction. Regardless of whether
the choreography is similar or dissimilar to the reconstruction, we can understand that in
the original production, the first bit of choreography was repeated four times, and that
the rhythms in the percussion were closely aligned to the dancers. We cannot know if
the pattern of dancers was the same as the reconstruction, or if it was different, but at
the very least, it is probable that the dance phrase occurred four times. Looking through
the rest of the the piece, several of the musical phrases (B, C and D) are repeated in
succession, as the musical phrase is rather short and homogenous throughout the
measure. Because B and C are rather short with only a few repetitions, these two
phrases would likely coalesce into one larger phrase (b b b c c c c) that would be
visually cogent in some manner (for example, perhaps the dancers were in a similar
formation on stage for B and C, but executed different movements for each). Phrase F
is an example of two subphrases in alternation, each four measure long, and repeated a
total of five times (f1 f2 f1 f2…) This suggests that the choreography was contrasting in
four-measure subphrases, a similar structure to an antecedent-consequent phrase
pairing.
Phrase D is the most interesting section when analyzed via potential
choreography. Player 1 is in groups of 3 quarter-notes, a total of seven repetitions, while
Player 2 is in groups of 7 eighth-notes, a total of six repetitions. Did this metric
counterpoint originate in the choreography, with one or more dancers dancing the
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contrasting groupings simultaneously? I doubt that the counterpoint was added for
musical interest, otherwise, wouldn’t there be more counterpoint in other phrases of the
piece? I strongly believe that there is a choreographic impulse behind the layering of
metric groupings, but in what form this was manifested in the dancing is unclear.
Also, the first and last measures of phrase D are not part of any surrounding
patterns (m. 5 and 9). What is one to make of these moments? A similar moment
happens in the 1972 Men’s Dance in m. 15: the established eighth note pattern is
extended for two beats, but is never repeated, and m. 16 begins a new phrase. In the
choreography, this brief extension in the music (taking place at 3:25 in the video) allows
the dancers four beats of transition to arrive in the next formation. Thus, the composition
has built in the necessary time for transitions on stage, likely something that was
worked out on stage. We should then view m. 5 and 9 as similar moments, likely as
extra counts inserted in between phrases to allow for transitions or extra steps to
prepare for the next section. These two measures, in particular, don’t follow with the
structure of the rest of the piece; the don’t seem to have any place in the musical logic
of the work. However, once the choreography is considered, a potential choreographic
necessity of these moments comes into focus, then changing the musical understanding
of the passage.
Thus, while Dance Rhythms is not a third- or fourth-stage work (like the rest of
the works in New Music Orchestra Series No. 18), it provides a snapshot of the role that
percussion served in modern dance works: namely, to clearly demarcate phrases, meter
and rhythms, or the metrical-rhythmic scaffolding of the dance. Percussion serves as
the most direct channel available between dance and music; the nature of percussion
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allows an immediacy that other instruments cannot achieve. Percussion is a logical
instrument group to work with for individuals without specialized instrumental technique:
almost anyone can strike a drum with a hand or mallet and produce a sound. For music
that is created in a rehearsal setting, percussion would have been the ideal vehicle
through which to communicate basic rhythmic and metric patterns; pitched instruments
would have required additional time negotiating pitch-based issues—harmony, for
example—that would have slowed down rehearsal or required additional expertise (like
notation, and harmonic theory). Note that Humphrey chose instruments that all have
clear articulation (or ictus), such as drums and woodblocks. Humphrey lacks the
compositional skills one would normally expect of a classically-trained composer, but
her needs did not necessarily require this level of technique and nuance, as the dance
(or at least this portion of it) only necessitated a thin musical framework to support the
already-existing dance.
In fact, as Riegger composed the remainder of the score to New Dance, the
artistic decision to have Humphrey (and Weidman) compose/improvise the music for the
Men’s Dance is significant. Perhaps, as this dance was for men only, the desire for the
music to sound “primitive” was accomplished through the use of percussion (as well as
a more rudimentary approach to musical composition), whereas the remainder of the
dance, in contrast, featured more highly refined composition along with the largely
female cast. While I will not delve into issues surrounding gender and music here, there
seems to be much territory in this line of inquiry, requiring further examination of
repertoire. Nonetheless, Dance Rhythms marks an important stage in the development
of the percussion ensemble, as a transitional work from percussion music for the dance
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studio into more fully-realized concert works. There are, of course, concert percussion
works that predated Dance Rhythms, such as Varese’s Ionisation, William Russell’s
Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments, Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo, and possibly
Harrison’s Waterfront (a work that is sadly lost, and would be extremely valuable to
compare alongside Dance Rhythms, as it was also for dance), so I am not suggesting
that Dance Rhythms was in some way groundbreaking or influential. Rather,
Humphrey’s work is very much a minor piece in the repertoire, but it provides a unique
glimpse into the largely-lost working methods of choreographers and percussionist (who
here are one and the same!) in the early days of modern dance.
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CHAPTER 5: Gerald Strang’s Percussion Music for Three Players (1935) and
Third-level Works
Several other works in New Music Orchestra Series No. 18 have overt
connections to dance, including Ray Green’s Three Inventories of Casey Jones
(choreographed by José Limón and Green’s wife, May O’Donnell); William Russell’s
Three Dance Movements, with the movements “Waltz”, “March”, and “Foxtrot” (this work
was written as a concert work and not intended to be performed for dancers, yet the
connection is still present in the movement titles); and finally Gerald Strang’s
Percussion Music for Three Players in three movements. Strang’s work is useful to
consider in comparison with Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms, especially considering the
difference between second- and third-level works. The work was not written for a
specific choreographer, but as will be seen, was intended to be used as dance music.
Gerald Strang lived from 1908 until 1983, having been born in Canada, but
spending the majority of his professional life in California. He worked with Schoenberg
at UCLA as a teaching assistant, and later edited Schoenberg’s Fundamentals of
Musical Compositions. He was a close colleague of Cowell, having met him in 1929 at a
New Music Society concert. Cowell published several of Strang’s works in New Music,
including his piano piece Mirrorrorrim in 1932, two piano works, Fifteen and Eleven in
1934, and his piece Percussion Music in the NMOS #18 in 1936. Strang was given
control of New Music Edition while Cowell was at San Quentin until 1940, after which he
worked as an acoustician, and later became involved in computer music at Bell
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Laboratories and as a professor at UCLA. Percussion Music is the only percussion
ensemble work that he composed.249
The score for Percussion Music includes the following note written by Strang,
which not only discusses the work at hand, but also provides context for the
performance practice of early percussion ensemble music. It presents many keys issues
relating to percussion composition and performance, and deserves close reading:
The aim in composing the Percussion Music has been to write pieces possessing a
musical value in their own right, yet suitable for dancing, and capable of performance by
a small number of reasonably well equipped and trained dance percussionists. Hence the
number of players is limited to three and the instruments are fairly common among dance
groups. If any of the instruments are lacking, players may feel free to improvise
substitutes which give a somewhat similar effect .
[…]
The parts appear in the score in the order of difficulty. Part 1 requires a player of
considerable skill and dexterity, with facility in reading the rhythmic value of notes and
rests. Part 2 also requires some skill, but it is not so difficult because of such repetition of
patterns. Part 3 is not so complex or so difficult, but it requires a player of good rhythmic
sense, who can maintain the basic pulse.
Players should try to use their instruments as expressively as possible. By striking their
instruments in various places and in different ways, they can contribute a variety of color
difficult to indicate in the score.250
Strang claimed that the category of “Percussion Music” should serve in two capacities:
first, as a musical work with “musical value in [its] own right”; and second, to be “suitable
for dancing” as a dance work. Percussion music, then, had functional duty as dance
music, and also an aesthetic side as concert music; yet, no percussion work should be
divorced from dance. I don’t believe that this suggests that he believed that percussion
music should only be composed for dance performance, but could also include works
249Jean-Claude Risset, “Gerald Strang: 1908-1983,” Computer Music Journal, 8 no. 4 (Winter, 19843), 5.
Rita Mead, “The Amazing Mr. Cowel,l” American Music, 1 no. 4 (Winter, 1983), 77-85. Rita Mead, “Henry
Cowell’s New Music” (Ph. D thesis, City University of New York, 1978), 660.
250Gerald Strang, “Percussion Music,” Percussion Pieces by J. M. Beyer, Harold G. Davidson, Ray
Green, Doris Humphrey, Wm. Russell, and Gerald Strang, edited by Henry Cowell, New Music Orchestra
Series, no. 18 (San Francisco, CA: New Music Orchestra Series, 1936), 21-27.
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that could potentially involve dance. Strang would of course have been aware of
Ionisation, a work that was composed as concert music, but was later used for dance.251
Ionisation is not considered a dance work, and while there is no record of what Strang
thought of Varese’s piece, it is conceivable that he would have found that it met his two
criteria (provided that Ionisation is, in fact, “suitable for dancing,” or possesses
danceability. “Danceability” is a term that I shall use to refer to music that has the quality
of being suitable for dancing, or more specifically, has a clearly audible and regular
pulse, or other predictable rhythmic features). Thus, Strang put forth an aesthetic stance
that placed a higher value on percussion music that had danceability than percussion
music that supposedly did not have danceability (was unsuitable for dancing). What
exactly he considers danceability to mean will be examined later, as an understanding
of this concept seems to be an important component to understanding the influence of
dance upon the percussion ensemble's development.
Yet before I examine the concept of danceability, there are other interesting
threads to follow in Strang’s performance directions that provide historical perspective
on the early interactions between modern dance and percussionists. His reference to
“reasonably well equipped and trained dance percussionists” suggests that
percussionists who performed for modern dance were distinct from other percussionists.
I believe this is most likely referring to orchestral percussionists (working in symphony
orchestras, theaters, and other mainstream classical institutions) who were absent from
the activities of the early percussion ensemble, and who wouldn’t have had either the
skill set or interest to work with dancers and the attendant repertoire. Thus, the
251Ionisation was used as dance music on a May 28, 1934 New Music Society Program in San
Francisco, featuring choreography by Betty Horst. Mead, “Henry Cowell’s ‘New Music,” 546-547.
145
“reasonably well equipped and trained dance percussionist” was a special class of
musician who was a competent musician with a specific set of skills, which could have
potentially included improvisation, composition, knowledge of dance, and more
traditional music skills (reading music, instrumental technique, etc.).
Strang mentions that the piece is “limited to three” players (a “small number”),
which is a reference to his attempt to write a score that could be interpreted and
performed in a professional manner. By using the word “limited”, he suggests that there
were not many percussionists who could accurately realize his score, thus it was
necessary to keep his personnel needs small for quality control; it was much easier to
find three well trained percussionists than, say, six or eight. As many of the original
ensemble percussionists were dancers and other non-classically trained musicians, a
work such as Strang’s Percussion Music would have likely placed unreasonable
demands on many of these performers. Because Strang strived to write a work with
musical merit, he did not trust that a large number of performers could be found to
produce a successful performance-realization of a piece for larger forces (such as the
thirteen players in Ionisation, and the eight players in William Russell’s Fugue for Eight
Percussion Instruments), and instead opted for a much more manageable trio. He
cleverly composed the parts in gradated difficulty to allow a wider range of abilities
suited to the available performers, with Part 1 using a player of “considerable skill and
dexterity,” Part 2 requiring only “some skill”, and the third part less so, being “not so
complex or so difficult.” While the parts are indeed written in this tiered manner, the
piece still requires relatively sophisticated players, since the tight nature of the
ensemble writing requires trained players even for the easiest part. The smaller size of
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the ensemble is also part of a larger trend that shrunk the size of the larger earlier
ensembles (Ionisation, Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments, Pianissimo Ostinato,
etc.) into more logistically-minded chamber groups, including the early percussion works
of Cage and Harrison for trio and quartet.
Part of what allows Strang to limit the size of his ensemble is that each performer
is required to play multiple instruments, a technique that had been developing in
percussion music with pieces by Stravinsky, Bartók, Milhaud, and others beginning in
the 1920s. This allowed composers to write for a large number of instruments producing
a wide timbral range, while reducing personnel needs (especially important in the
Depression era when greatly reduced budgets could not support concerts with large
numbers of personnel). The distribution of instruments in Percussion Music is not an
extreme example of large set ups that will become standard in percussion writing by
mid-century (e.g. Xenakis, Stockhausen, etc.), but shows a transitional moment in the
logistical expansion of percussion set ups alongside a reduction in the number of
players:
Instrumentation
1: Suspended cymbal (small); 5 temple blocks; 5 small bells (preferably Japanese cup
bells); Anvil or iron pipe; 2 temple block sticks; 2 metal bell strikers; 2 soft headed sticks
2: 2 wood blocks (high, low); 3 Chinese drums (small, medium, large); 2 wooden sticks, 2
Chinese drum sticks
3: Triangle; 2 Maracas (rattles); 2 gongs (medium, large); Bass drum (or very large
Chinese drum); Triangle beater; Gong or bass drum stick; 2 hard, leather-headed sticks;
2 soft headed sticks252
The three set ups are roughly similar in size and timbral diversity, and each player must
also manage a variety of mallet-implements to extract the most ideal sounds out of each
252 Strang, “Percussion Music,” 21.
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instrument (as opposed to using a single mallet on all instruments, which would
compromise the ideal timbre of each). Strang is somewhat inconsistent in his mallet
specifications in the score, but at times exploits timbral contrast via mallet changes (for
example, in movement I, m. 21 in Player 3’s part uses “soft sticks” played “near edge”
on the gongs at pianissimo until m. 27, when the player switches to “bass drum stick”,
played at ff, figure 7).
Fig. 7: Gerald Strang, Percussion Music, I. m. 18 - 27, Player 3
It is conceivable that Strang could have used more than three players, each in
charge of half of a set up and achieving a similar musical effect, but because he wrote
the piece with logistics in mind, he was able to achieve efficiency in personnel, resulting
in a tighter chamber musical ensemble with musicians each playing more challenging
parts. Historically, there is an overall trend in percussion writing of condensing musical
materials from larger to smaller numbers of players, both as players become more
technically proficient managing multiple instruments, as well as technological
innovations in instrument design (for example, new mounting systems that allow a once-
handheld instrument to become hands-free). One such example of this is Georges Van
Gucht’s 1967 arrangement of Ionisation for percussion sextet (originally composed for
thirteen players). Performed by the French ensemble, Percussions de Strasbourg, the
arrangement employs “particular ways of making instruments (claves on a stand, pedal
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sirens, etc …) which in no way mutilate the original version,” combined with the
virtuosity of the ensemble.253 What would have been inconceivable in 1929 was by mid-
century possible, and now, into the early twenty-first century, is executable by many
student ensembles. These processes of condensation and synthesis underlay many of
the innovations in percussion music, and Strang’s Percussion Music is one example in
this larger development.254
Another remark in Strang’s program note refers to instruments that are “fairly
common among dance groups.” This comment lends further support to the idea that it
was the dance groups themselves that owned percussion instruments, as opposed to
the individual players. Strang composed this work in 1935,255 prior to the formation of
Cage Percussion Players and the explosion of percussion pieces that followed. There’s
no record, and it seems unlikely, that most players at this time would have
independently owned a large collection of instruments in an era before mass
manufacture and commercialization of instruments, particularly those that were not
indigenous to the United States. As was outlined earlier, Mary Wigman was responsible
for the make up of the initial percussion instrumentarium as it was brought from
Germany to the United States, and in this instance, the dance troupe held responsibility
for the instruments. Percussionists would have relied on the instrument collections of
253
“Ionisation | Les Percussion de Strasbrourg,” accessed August 19, 2015, http://
www.percussionsdestrasbourg.com/repertoire/ionisation-5/.
254A more illuminative example, although one that is outside of the scope of this paper, is the
development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the modern drumset, an interfusion of
various instruments that were originally performed by individual players, and slowly came to be brought
together and played by a single player. For further reading, see Royal Hartigan, “The Heritage of the
Drumset,” African American Reveiw, 29 no. 2 (Summer, 1995), 234 - 236.
255
November 1-11, 1935 are the dates of composition as is published at the end of the piece in New
Music Orchestra Series. Strang, “Percussion Music,” 27.
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the dance groups until they began to amass their own collections (likely the first being
that of the Cage Percussion Players), another instance of the symbiotic relationship
between modern dance and the percussion ensemble.
Finally, Strang acknowledges that instrument “substitutes” may be made when
the requested instruments are “lacking”, provided that they “give a somewhat similar
effect.” One difficulties in the composition of percussion music is, as Steve Schick
states, that
instrument choice is a part of every percussion piece. Even in a strictly determined

instrumentation, a percussionist in search of just the right cymbal, wood block, or yarn
mallet exerts a profound influence on the final sound of a percussion piece.256
The attempt by any composer to be highly specific regarding the percussion instruments
she is writing for is a near impossibility due to the drastic differences in instruments,
including wide variability in sizes, materials, design, timbre, resonance, etc. The simple
request for “small bells” as is called for in Player 1’s part, for example, could result in
different instruments from player to player based on their individual instrument access
and taste. Strang understands this, especially in a time when there would have been
little standardization and homogeneity between different instrument collections. He not
only allows substitution when necessary, but goes one step further, inviting the
performers to “[strike] their instruments in various places and in different ways,”
accessing “a variety of color[s] difficult to indicate in the score.” Strang is approaching
his score having worked with his materials—percussion instruments—directly,
understanding that there is more complexity in the sound production than can be
realized in the notated score. These two ideas, instrument substitution, and the timbral
256
Steven Schick, The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams (Rochester: University of
Rochester Press, 2006), 25.
150
exploration of instruments within the limited parameters of the notated score, are related
in their acknowledgement of the pragmatism of percussion composition that developed
out of the modern dance tradition. Once again, as was seen in Humphrey’s Dance
Rhythms, Strang’s work is an extension of the practices developed in the studio, one
that values exploration and discovery. For Humphrey, the music developed out of
specific choreography; for Strang, he transformed the music from the dance studio and
shaped it using classical compositional practice.
The difference between Humphrey's and Strang’s compositions is the degree to
which each is a fully-realized musical composition. Strang, being a trained composer,
was able to transform first-level dance music into a third-level musical composition while
maintaining his necessary quality of danceability. Before articulating what exactly the
tangible differences between Humphrey’s and Strang’s pieces are, it will be necessary
to examine the formal characteristics of Percussion Music.
The work is in three movements: I. Alla marcia, II. Moderato, and III. Rondino
(see figure 8). Each movement is a slight variation of a simple ternary form, and in
general, each movement contains contrasting materials between the A and B sections
via shifts in dynamic quality, instrumentation, meter and/or rhythmic profile. Much of the
work makes use of various ostinati in at least one of the parts at any given moment, a
key aspect of what I consider the danceability of the piece to be. Some of the rhythmic
and metric techniques that Strang employs include hocketing and interlocking parts (I,
m. 13-14); slight rhythmic variation in repeated figures (II, m. 13-16); hemiola and
metrical dissonance (II, m. 2-4); cross accent patterns (I, m. 5-8); and (implied)
polymeter (III, m. 56-63). The variety of rhythmic and metric techniques Strang employs
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Fig. 8: Gerald Strang, Percussion Music
Movement I
Alla marcia, 5/4 Trio-Mysterioso reprise

Intro ||: A :|| B A Coda
1-4 5 - 17 21 - 34 5 - 17 18 - 20
Movement II
Moderato, 4/4 Meno mosso, 6/8 reprise

Intro A B A
1-4 5 - 12: ostinato a ||: 24 - 33 :||
13 - 20: ostinato b 34 - 37 transition
21 - 23: transition/coda
Movement III
Rondino, 3/4 Piu mosso

A B A’ Coda
1 - 8: a 21 - 30 31 - 39: a 56 - 63
9 - 12: b 40 - 44: b
13 - 20: a’ 45 - 55: a’-transition to coda
provides the activity and interest in a sound-palette that is otherwise static due to the
fixed timbres of the percussion set ups.
Strang employs larger-scale techniques to create cohesion throughout the entire
piece. The global metrical structure progresses from 5/4 to 4/4 to 3/4, providing a sense
of metrical shortening throughout the work (although the tempi do not map in a similar
way: I, 116 - 120; II, 102; III, 132). The musical material is generally discreet among
movements (there is no reprise of themes or common music among movements),
except for one crucial moment in the coda of the Rondino at m. 56 (figure 9). Player 2
plays an ostinato used in movement II, m. 12 - 17 (which I’ve called “ostinato b” in the
analysis above), while Player 1 plays an ostinato derived from the opening measure of
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the theme in movement II, m.5. On top of this, Player 3 plays another ostinato, this one
found in movement I, m. 1 - 4. The combination of these three ostinati creates the most
complex metrical moment of the piece: the notated meter is in 3/4, Players 1 and 2 are
in 4/4, and player 3 is in 5/4. Then, in m. 60, Players 1 and 2 shift their patterns, player
1 in 2/4, and player 2 in 6/8 (both parts derived from music in movement III, m. 3 - 4). By
bringing together music from all three movements in the final measures of the piece,
Strang has employed a subtle yet effective technique to provide cohesion among the
movements.
Fig. 9: Gerald Strang, Percussion Music, III, Coda, mm. 56 - 63
153
Functionally, Strang uses the coda to bring the otherwise unrelated movements
together into a larger, comprehensible form. Historically, a composer could link
movements in a multi-movement suite (for example, a dance suite) using a large-scale
harmonic plan, allowing contrasting movements to “belong together,” even if they share
no other shared formal characteristics. However, because he was unable to organize
the movements using an intra-movement harmonic plan due to the nonharmonic nature
of the instruments, he instead unified the movements via the coda by reprising thematic
material from each movement in a simultaneous juxtaposition of musical materials from
different sections of the piece. I don’t believe that this moment is clearly audible to the
listener as a reprise of musical material, since the various themes themselves are
somewhat indistinct from each and blur into the overall sound of the piece. However,
analysis of the score clearly shows that moment was carefully crafted by Strang. This
unification was necessary, for Strang, as a way to help achieve one of the goals he laid
out in his introduction: “musical value”. “Musical value” can mean many things, but in
this context, it points to the practice of learned musical composition as being distinct
from the practice of movement-initiated composition that is less concerned with the
intricacies of musical composition.
Strand is ultimately making a statement about compositional craft and its place in
dance music. Dance movements that belong together as opposed to movements that
are merely placed together are the result of artistic intent on behalf of the composer.
This is in reaction against a practice that was common (and still is) among many
choreographers who would, when not collaborating with composers, pick and choose
music to form their own ad hoc dance suites. This meant mixing composers and works
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(or parts of works) into a suite as a way to support the choreographic concepts that they
had developed independently from any musical influence. Louis Horst explained this
practice:
The dancer created her own idea, and perhaps also had some definite plan as to
movement, and then set about finding a suitable piece of music. This also did not always
work out satisfactorily. The music was either too long, in which case it was mutilated; or if
too short, it had to undergo unnecessary repetition or another composition was added
often by a different composer.257
Once again, dancers were not necessarily concerned about maintaining the musical
integrity of a dance, as long as it served the choreography. But Strang, in linking his
dance movements together via the coda, is demonstrating the deliberateness of his
craft and musical authorship beyond the mere patchwork dance suite that he was
careful to avoid. The simple addition of this brief coda is not just a final musical
statement to conclude the piece, but a signal that telegraphs his status as a composer.
Percussion Music is a third-level composition because of his intent as composer to
consciously craft a musical work, even as the work is functionally tied to dance.
When comparing Strang and Humphrey specifically, and second- and third-level
works generally, it should be stated that I am not making a value judgement as to which
work is a better piece of music, but rather an assessment of the nature of the work in
question. A comparison of these works, and their attendant categories, helps illuminate
the differences between second- and third-level works. The key concepts that are in
play are autonomy versus non-autonomy in relation to dance, and the primacy of the
score versus the primacy of the body. Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms is non-autonomous
music (dependent on specific choreography) that considers the body as the primary
motivator, whereas Strang’s Percussion Music is autonomous music (not dependent on
257 Horst, “Music and Dance,” 55.
155
specific choreography) that considers the score as the primary artistic impulse. Strang is
still concerned with the danceability of the music; he must take the dancing body into
consideration in his creative process, and thus shares a common goal with Humphrey.
However, unlike Humphrey, his attempt to achieve musical value in tandem with
danceability is a step closer to absolute percussion music, created completely
independent from the dance. If a work were to completely disregard the dancing body
and choreography, but share musical characteristics with dance percussion music, this
would then be a fourth-level work. Put another way, a fourth-level works can exhibit
traits of danceability, but not be concerned with the dance itself.
This leaves one final question in relation to Strang’s piece: what makes music
“suitable for dancing,” a quality that I have been referring to as danceability? He
unfortunately does not define this concept, yet I would like to propose that danceability
is the use of clear rhythmic ostinati (with minimal variation or embellishment) as a
structural element of the work. If dancers are to synchronize with the music, the
rhythmic profile must be easily discernible in order to match choreography counts, and
this is most easily accomplished when the music has a certain amount of predictability
and regularity. This is essentially what an ostinato is, a regular and repeated pattern, the
essential nature of a first-level work.
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CHAPTER 6: Percussion in Dance Class: First-level Works
Up to this point, I have not discussed first-level musical works in detail, and it will
be necessary to discuss what constitutes a first-level work before moving further. Studio
musicians (dance accompanists) provide a musical framework, often extemporaneously,
for the dancers’ exercises as lead by a teacher. These are usually not formal
compositions, but often small phrases of repeated music that provide tempo, accents
and a general mood or feeling to help give the various technical exercises a rhythmic
framework. All the composers discussed in this paper spent significant time as dance
accompanists, having spent countless hours playing for dance classes. Ballet classes
have almost always used live pianists to perform selections from the classical repertory,
but modern dance opened up the possibility of other instruments accompanying
classes, especially percussion. While there were still many (and likely a majority of)
pianists who played for classes, the introduction of percussion allowed new sounds to
proliferate, and many composers, including Cage, Harrison and Cowell, deepened their
musical relationship with percussion in this forum. Not only did dance classes serve as
their introduction to the modern dance world, but they also provided somewhat regular
employment for the young composers at the beginning of their careers when other work
was less reliable.
One difficulty in an historically-informed discussion about dance class
accompanying in the 1930s is a general lack of specific documentation of percussion in
the dance studio beyond passing references and anecdotes in the literature. I have yet
to be able to find concrete examples of the music percussionists performed in dance
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classes, either as written scores or sketches, or in films of dance classes of the time. I
have found many examples of filmed live piano accompaniment in classes of various
teachers (Graham, Humphrey, Weidman), as well as several silent videos that could
have potentially included percussion accompaniment, but of course, we cannot tell
without a soundtrack. A dance class must have been considered a somewhat mundane
event, and in a period where film technology was not as ubiquitous as it is today,
choreographers would have preferred to use their resources filming performances
rather than such a pedestrian event as a dance class.258 Similarly, there does not
appear to be written records of the music that players performed in class. It seems
unlikely that anyone would have taken the time to notate what they were playing in
class, especially since music was generally improvised and there was no need to
remember exact patterns from class to class, as new music could just as easily be
created. It stands to reason that percussionists would have tended to develop their own
personal repertoire of patterns for various exercises, especially if they were playing
regular classes taught by the same teachers, and that this music was simple enough to
commit to memory. Also, patterns could be traded between players, or between
teachers and players aurally or by rote when something worked well; however, at no
point was it crucial to anyone involved to have specific notations of the music as it used
in class, since it was essentially disposable.
As a dance accompanist, I have personally played for many dance classes and
understand what is expected musically from accompanists. This, of course, cannot be
258I hope in the future to continue exploring film archives at a greater depth to find filmic records of
percussionists in early modern dance classes, but at this point, I have not been able to locate such
resources.
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projected onto the circumstances seventy years ago; yet, a short account of my general
experiences of playing in dance classes could provide some insight into the process of
creating and improvising music for modern dance. As the teacher shows students each
exercise, he or she generally counts off a tempo and shows how the movements relate
to beats (dance counts are communicated generally as “one, two, three, four…” etc.).
As accompanist, I pay attention to the general quality and type of movement, and
consider what types of rhythms might best suit the dance, while also taking into
consideration the meter and accents that might help provide clarification or support for
the dancers. One musical aspect that I’ve found very important is that it is helpful to
make the downbeat of each measure audibly distinct from the surrounding music, either
by using a lower pitched sound (low drum or gong, for example), or some type of
accent. This helps to ensure that dancers are correctly synchronized with the music,
especially if the choreography is new, or they are focused on technical concerns (rather
than musical ones). Beyond this general rule of thumb, the rest of the pattern can be
filled in, keeping the music generally sparse, but still providing enough structure for the
movement.
An example of this sort of playing can be found on a video of Charles Weidman
teaching a modern dance class in 1970 at the University of Iowa.259 In it, he is serving
both as teacher, as well as musician, accompanying the class himself on a small frame
drum. In this class, he is having the students engage in a pantomime exercise, where
they spend two bars pretending to eat strawberries, then two bars pretending to
frantically play jacks. He creates a loop out of this four-bar structure, having the
259 Charles Weidman: "On his own,” video (Pennington, N.J.: Princeton Book Company, 1990).
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students quickly alternate between these actions, while he plays the pattern shown in
figure 10. The change between the “Strawberries” music and “Jacks” music is
rhythmically subtle (only an added eighth note in the second pattern), but in Weidman’s
Fig. 10:
performance, there is clear difference between the two, as the “Strawberries” is calmer
and more relaxed, while the “Jacks” music is more tense and louder. The student
dancers are in sync with the music, changing the quality of their physical movements on
the downbeats of measures 1 and 3. Note that the beginning of each measure is played
on the head, producing the lowest possible sound on the instrument, whereas the rest
of the rhythm is played on the rim. The music clearly sounds in 4/4, as there is nothing
complex about the rhythm: all the beats of the measure are audible with no cross
rhythms or syncopation. The ostinato continues throughout the exercise several times
without any variation until the exercise is complete.
This is a very clear and uncomplicated rhythm that typifies, in the most basic
sense, how dance accompaniment music functions. In Weidman’s Pantomime
accompaniment, there is very little musical interest, only as much is necessary to
communicate tempo, meter and rhythm to dancers. The music is wholly dependent on
the dancers’ movements, and it would make little musical sense if divorced from the
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dance. Weidman’s music could easily be adapted to any number of dances by changing
the tempo or dynamics to suit the needs of any variety of moods. Even if the exercise
was to be modified into 3/4, or 5/4, the same general structure of the music could
remain in place—downbeat on the head and other beats on the rim—to a similar effect.
While this is not the only type of possible dance accompaniment rhythm, it provides a
simple starting place as to understanding how this music is constructed: rhythmic
ostinati that clearly project the desired meter and internal counts. Often, accompanists
might fill in a simple rhythm with more interesting rhythms or embellishments to add
interest (especially as dance classes can easily become tedious, and dancers often
appreciate a change in music), but the same basic structure is present. I have found
that the quality of a dance accompanist is partially determined by the ability to project a
clear metrical structure, while adding interest via change in timbres, rhythm and other
musical qualities that do not interfere with the clarity of the meter.
Thus, Weidman’s Pantomime accompaniment is a first-level work. It is this type
of music out of which the initial musical impulses for percussion-based dance works
were created. In both the Humphrey and Strang, similar sorts of rhythms can be
detected, if one is looking for the following two qualities: rhythms that clearly project
audible meter, and the use of ostinati. I can combine these two concepts into the term
“metrically-aligned ostinato”, meaning an ostinato that repeats every measure on the
downbeat.260 Several examples of metrically-aligned ostinati can be found in Dance
Rhythms and Percussion Music. For example, look at Humphrey, phrase B, m. 3, Player
B (figure 11): a gong on the downbeat marks the beginning of the measure, while the
260A counter example would be an ostinato that is not aligned with the meter, for example, a three-beat
ostinato in 4/4 meter. Movement II of the Strang has such an example in Player 3’s part beginning at m. 2.
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accented note in the bass drum delineate the beats of the measure. The syncopated
drum part in Player A’s part adds rhythmic interest, but there is no confusion as to where
the agogic beats are.
Fig. 11: Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms, m. 3 (phrase B)
Similarly, in phrase F, m. 11-18, Player A (figure 12) plays four straight measures
of eighth notes, changing drums on the downbeat of the third measure. In the next
measure begins a somewhat syncopated line at m. 15, but the gong strikes provide a
clear downbeat each measure.
Fig. 12: Doris Humphrey, Dance Rhythms, m. 11 - 18 (phrase F)
The Strang also has many instances of metrically-aligned ostinati (see analysis above);
in fact, Percussion Music is structured as a series of ostinati, and there are very few
sections that do not have an ostinato present.
The use of ostinati, specifically metrically-aligned ostinati, is a major component
of what I believe danceability means. Metrically-aligned ostinati can be found in most
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percussion works of this period at all stages, from first-level to fourth-level works, and
this is the main musical connecting tissue among the repertoire. The relatively simple
dance accompaniment pattern imbedded itself within the repertoire, as percussion
composers used studio rehearsal music as a jumping-off point from which to create
works. In essence, this was the “sound” of the percussion ensemble, and a defining
feature of the repertoire. The usage of ostinati in works from this period is revealing, as
these ostinato point to their musical roots in modern dance. Once percussion became
more independent from dance mid-century, this deep connection between ostinato and
dance would remain, even as percussion writing matured and no longer relied on the
ostinato for formal organization and coherence.
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Chapter 7: Works for Concert Percussion Ensemble: Fourth-level Works
As the percussion ensemble matured, percussion works became more complex
and eventually separated from the modern dance world that had incubated the early
percussion ensemble. New works were composed for a more formal concert format, as
the John Cage Players presented concerts that were no longer exclusively associated
with dance performance. Dance, however, still exerted an influence on this repertoire,
found not only in the music itself, but also in the social aspects of music production
(dancers formed the core of the ensemble, and it was often dance spaces that held the
early concerts). The transition from dance work to concert work was gradual, and
composers were often working in both genres at the same time. But as composers were
freed from the strictures of metrically-concerned dance music, they were able to explore
new compositional practices while retaining the language that had developed from
dance music. It is fourth-level works that form the core of the early percussion ensemble
repertoire, and they are distinct from the other classes of percussion works (first-
through third-level works) in that they were not written with dance as a motivating factor,
but still retain certain formal influences of dance-based writing.
The difference between a third-level work, like Percussion Music by Strang, and
a fourth-level work can be difficult to discern on first glance; they often share many
musical features, and in fact, a third-level work could very well be a more sophisticated
musical work than a fourth-level work. Thus, the difference between third- and fourth-
level works is not about quality or craft, but instead, the utility and intention of the work.
Fourth-level works make up a distinct class only in that they are no longer explicitly
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concerned with dance. This is a large group of works, as any concert work during this
period not written for dance would fit into this category.
The main musical connector between dance and fourth-level works is the
presence of the ostinato in one form or another. As works became more complex and
sophisticated, the literal repetition of an ostinato became abstracted. There are
generally three types of ostinato at use in these works: 1. works that have one ostinato
throughout the duration of the piece; 2. works that use ostinati only in specific moments
of the work (not throughout the entire work); and 3. works that use morphing or quasi-
ostinati (ostinato-like passages). Instead of exploring one single work in depth, a survey
of works will be conducted, examining the use of ostinati as a trace of the influence of
modern dance. Works by Cage, Cowell, and Harrison, and their contemporary, Johanna
M. Beyer, will be analyzed, specifically focusing on several examples of ostinati to
illuminate how composers engaged in a diversity of approaches to post-dance
percussion composition.
I. Works with ostinato throughout
Several concert percussion works are built from a single repeated ostinato that
serves as the structural basis for the entire work (or movement). These are the works
that exhibit the most explicit connection to dance pieces, as the use of ostinato is
always very present and audible. Two examples of this type of ostinato usage can be
found in Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo and Johanna M. Beyer’s IV. Both of these pieces
are relatively short single-movement works that feature a one ostinato (or, in the case of
these works, two or more parts combined into a single ostinato) running throughout the
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length of the work. Both works are also, notably, written for somewhat larger numbers of
personnel (eight and nine players, respectively). Because there are several players, it is
possible for one or more parts to be dedicated to the repeating patten while other parts
add musical interest in non-ostinato parts. Also, because the early ensembles were
comprised largely of untrained percussionists, these ostinato parts were relatively
simple to execute in performance, especially by dancers who were playing in the
ensemble. These works were written in the earlier portion of the West Coast percussion
period, thus exemplify an earlier style that centers around the ostinato.
Henry Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo
As the name suggests, Henry Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo, written in 1934 for
eight players, is constructed out of layered ostinati of various lengths. Each of the eight
parts has its own ostinato that repeats throughout the entirety of the piece with minor
variation (specifically, different accent patterns superimposed over top of each ostinato).
Ostinati are added into the texture successively, and at no point do the patterns all end
or begin together, resulting in a texture that consists of regular patterns, but one that is
constantly changing. There are three ostinati that combine to form the core of the piece,
the woodblock/tambourine/guiro part, the drums, and the gongs (figure 13). They are
the most regular patterns, mimicking the colotomic261 structure of the gongs in gamelan
music; however, here, the drums are playing a four-measure ostinato, while the gongs
play a five-measure ostinato and the woodblock/tambourine/guiro part is a ten-measure
261Colotomic refers to “use of specified instruments to mark off established time intervals,” especially in
Javanese and Balinese gamelan music. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "colotomic structure",
accessed March 19, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/art/colotomic-structure.
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Fig. 13: Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo, colotomic instruments, m. 1 -8

(woodblocks/tambourine/guiro, drums, gongs)
cycle. This means that the three parts come together every twenty measures; yet,
because of the simplicity of the parts, they sound as one unit, and led by the gongs, as
they are on the downbeat of each measure and are the lowest sounds in the ensemble.
It is over top of this three-part structure that all of the other instruments play,
either having primarily melodic content (both string piano parts, jalatarang (rice bowls),
and xylophone) or rhythmic content (bongos). The complexity of this piece arises in the
different ostinato lengths combined with the rhythmic value of each part (figure 14).
Because none of the cycle lengths match each other, there is no coordination between
the parts. Cowell does provide an important signal, however: the last measure of each
cycle is a tremolo or trill (depending on the instrument, and not occurring in the gong or
Fig. 14: Cowell, Ostinato Piannissimo, ostinato

lengths, melodic and rhythmic parts
Instrument Cycle Length Rhythmic Value

String Piano I 13 m. eighth notes
String Piano II 11 m. quarter notes
Jalatarang 15 m. eighth notes
Xylophone 9 m. sixteenth notes
Bongos 6 m. sixteenth notes
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Fig 15: Henry Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
string piano 1 13 m. eighth notes, no accents 13 measures (3+3+1+3+3+3) 13 measures (3+5) 13 measures (2+3)
string piano 2 11 measures, quarter notes, no accents
rice bowls 15 m. eighth notes, no accents 15 m. (4+4+3+2+3) 15 m. (1+2+2)
xylophone 9 m., sixteenth notes, no accents
WB, tamb, guiro 10 m., quarter notes, no accents 10 m. (2, offset by 1) 10 m. (3) 10 m. (3+1) 10 m. (2+3)
bongos
3 drums 4 m. whole
3 gongs 5 m. whole notes
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49 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85
string piano 1 13 measures (4+3) 13 measures (5+2)
string piano 2 11 m. (5) 11 m. (1+2+2) 11 m. (2+3+4) melodic instrument
rice bowls 15 m. (5+4) 11 m. (6) incomplete cycle colotomic instrument
xylophone 9 m. (3) then (5) 9 m. (7) 9 m. (9) 8 m. (1+6+1+4) incomplete [tag] rhythmic accentuation instrument
WB, tamb, guiro 10 m. (no accents) 10 m. (no accents) 10 m. (no accents) coda material
bongos 6 m. sixteenth 6 m. (3+5) 6 m. (1+3)(2+6)(3+9) 6 m. (5+3)(3+3+3+3) 6 m. (2+3+2+2) number in ( ) refers to accent pattern
3 drums
3 gongs
drum parts), alerting the listener that a new cycle is about to start. These tremolos add
some interest to the otherwise static texture, further aided by the shifting accents.
Overall, the piece does not develop from the established texture, but rather sits
suspended in time, and likely could have extended on indefinitely (although, three
minutes here seems long enough, and Cowell was wise to not make it that much
longer). As a reviewer in 1973 remarked, the work shares many similarities to later
minimalist works of the 1970s by Reich, Riley and Glass: “Henry Cowell's percussion
[piece] Ostinato Pianissimo of 1934 sounded very up to date in its repetitiveness and
suggestion of sonorities moving in and out of phase…”262. This comparison is well-
placed, especially considering some of the non-Western influences of minimalism
(including the influence of African drumming on Reich, Asian influences on Glass and
Riley, etc.), and the way they are expressed in the music, mainly through references to
cyclic, non-linear musical structures.
His use of ostinati is primarily a reference to Asian musics, particularly gamelan
music, and is evocative of the timelessness (or, at least, perceived timelessness of
Eastern music by a Westerner) he and many other composers found appealing in those
musics. But Cowell was also involved in dance at this time, so it is not unreasonable to
assume that even a minimal amount of influence could have been exerted upon this
piece by modern dance. The Asian influence is stronger (more easily audible) in the
work then the dance is, but in fact, the dance is present as the work has danceability
(because of the presence of ostinati), even though it was not conceived as a dance
262"Wuorinen's 'Speculum Speculi' in Debut," The New York Times, February 23, 1973, quoted in
H. Wiley Hitchcock, “Henry Cowell's ‘Ostinato Pianissimo’” The Musical Quarterly 70 no. 1 (Winter, 1984),
23-44.
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work. This appears to me to be an instance of two different influences—dance and East
Asian music—that manifested themselves in the music in the same manner. Thus, the
ostinati point to two different sources, yet are musically indistinguishable from each
other in the piece.
Johanna Beyer’s IV
Johanna Magdelena Beyer had met Cowell while in New York City in the 30’s,
and was generally involved in the avant-garde music community of the time. She wrote
a total of six percussion ensemble works in the period from 1933 to 1939, including the
work IV, a piece for nine players that was published in NMOS #18. The work is notable
as the only indeterminate instrumentation piece in the collection. Rather, Beyer only
provides rhythm, dynamics, articulation and other musical directions. Each of the nine
parts is for a single instrument, allowing for a wide variety of possible instrumentations.
The ensemble is divided into two groups. Group A (Players 1 through 4) has the
main thematic-motivic material, while Group B (Players 5 through 9) play an ostinato
pattern throughout the entire piece. Group A’s material changes throughout the piece,
while Group B’s remains constant. The work is constructed out of six phrases of equal
length (8 measures a phrase), with four bars of crescendo and accelerando, followed by
four bars of diminuendo and ritenuto. The main ostinato is found in the parts of Players
5 and 9, consisting of eighth notes with an accent on the downbeat of each measure.
This is the simplest possible form of an ostinato, as it provides clear pulse and
emphasizes the meter without any rhythmic ornamentation. The ostinato continues
unchanged throughout the entire work, except for the fluctuations in tempo and
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dynamics. Players 6, 7 and 8 establish their own patterns in groups of 2, 3 and 5 as
they are layered in, then out of the texture (figure 16). These layers of pulse challenge
the hegemony of the constant eighth notes by coloring and complicating the implied feel
and established meter of 7/8, only to fade out to the resumed constancy of the ostinato.
This sequence of simplicity-complexity-simplicity found in the rhythm is perhaps an
analogue to the pattern of consonance-dissonance-consonance found in standard-
practice tonal music.
Fig. 16: Johanna M. Beyer, IV, Group B, main phrase
Zooming out to a large picture of the entire piece, one can see the larger pattern
that emerges in Group B (figure 17). This repeated geometric pattern appealed to
Beyer, for as Harrison said, “she had the typical 20's and 30's attitude of geometry in
music, or schemes that were carried out and beautifully executed.”263 In fact, the direct
repetition of this eight-measure pattern forms its own higher level hyper-ostinato, a
repeated gesture, but only on a larger scale (and further heightened by the tempi and
dynamic changes). The ostinato concept is used as a formal organizing device for the
entire work, providing a structural regularity that exemplifies an organizing principal of
263Siwe, Thomas, "Lou Harrison at the University of Illinois with Tom Siwe," Percussive Notes 18 no. 2,
(Winter, 1980), 30.
171
Fig. 17: Johanna M. Beyer’s IV
Phrase 1 Phrase 2 Phrase 3 Phrase 4 Phrase 5 Phrase 6
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
accel rit accel rit accel rit accel rit accel rit accel allargando
perc 1 | | | | | | | | a a b o a a b o a a b o a a a a’ a’ a a a’ a’ b o a’ a’ b a’ a’ | || ||| o
perc 2 | | | | | | | | a a b c a a b o a a a c a a b o a a b a a b | || o
perc 3 | | | | | | | | || || || || a a b o a a a o
GROUP A
perc 4 | | | | | | | | || || || || ||| ||| ||| o a a a o
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perc 5
perc 6 2 2 2 2 2 2
perc 7 3 3 3 3 3 3
perc 8 5 5 5 5 5 5
GROUP B
perc 9 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
ostinato, steady eighth notes coda ostinati
o o ostinato, downbeat gongs a a’ b c motivic material
ostinato, eighth notes in groups of x |, ||, ||| downbeat strikes, eighth note, 2 sixteenth, 3 sixteenth triplet
percussion ensemble music, that of block-like structures that are then filled in with
rhythmic details. Cage’s square root formula is the most well-known example of this, but
many percussion composers arrived at this organizing principle, since harmony was no
longer the overriding determinant of form.
The music for Group A, however, is less regular, and relies on Group B’s
constancy around which to structure motivic material. The bulk of the music for Group A
is built around three motives, which are presented in different configurations, and
sometimes slightly varied. But beginning in measure 36, each of the four parts develops
its own ostinato (based on previous material), and they entered in succession, a lá
Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo. These ostinati (played by players 1 and 2) change with
some slight variation,264 building to the final climax measure of the work. Group A
presents teleological music that heads towards an end (telos), while Group B presents a
cyclical, non-teleological music, repeating endlessly, and not influenced by the trajectory
of Group A. Beyer’s music juxtaposes these two modes, but without any mixture or
resolution of the conflict, suggesting a comfortable cohabitation that refuses to be
compromised on either side. This is an interesting course of action, especially
considering the integration of Asian musics into Western art music in the percussion
ensemble; here, there is no integration at all.
Yet, it is wrong to imply any Asian influence on this work, as IV is an abstract
work and doesn’t deal in exoticism (especially since the instrumentation is left open).
The one possible Eastern connection would be the “gong” in Player 9’s part, only insofar
264I considered placing IV in the category of “Use of morphing or quasi ostinati” for this final passage, as
the ostinati slowly change measure by measure; but as the entire work is structured around the ostinato
that remains constant in Group B, I decided that this was a stronger example of a work based around a
single ostinato.
173
as it functions as a gong, much like in Ostinato Pianissimo. Rather, beyond her
invocation of geometrical patterns, Beyer’s use of an ostinato-based work points to
dance, even if in a very casual way. In fact, her music flirts with undanceability, as she
layers on different pulse patterns that obscure the meter, but IV ultimately sounds
clearly in 7/8 due to the constancy of Parts 5 and 9. Without these parts, the piece
would be quite different, and it is possible that she included them as a way for the
remaining parts to have a baked-in metronome to aid performance (especially if the
piece were to be performed without a conductor).
II. Works with momentary usage of ostinato
As composers became more practiced in writing works for the percussion
ensemble, the need to have a regular ostinato diminished. The constancy of the
ostinato became constrictive compositionally, and the desire for new musical forms
necessitated a variety of textures, especially as works became longer over time.
Percussionists became more technically proficient, and better chamber musicians, not
needing to rely as heavily on an ostinato to orient themselves in performance. Also, as
fewer players were required for a work, it became unwise to devote a single player’s
part to maintaining an ostinato when it could be doing something more interesting
instead. However, this did not mean that the ostinato disappeared altogether; rather, it
appears in moments of a work as a compositional choice. Unlike an instance where an
ostinato undergirds the entire structure of a work’s form, here the ostinato appears as
musical topic (to invoke a term from musical semiology): the momentary use of the
ostinato is a reference to modern dance. The work under investigation is by Lou
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Harrison’s 1939 quartet, Fifth Simfony, written during the peak of Harrison’s percussion
output.
Lou Harrison’s Fifth Simfony
Fifth Simfony is one of the longest works for percussion ensemble written during
the early period, lasting roughly fifteen minutes. It was premiered by the Cage
Percussion Players on the May 19, 1939 concert at Cornish College along with several
other new works. This quartet features a wide range of instruments, including drums,
gongs, bells, various shakers, sistrums, woodblocks, and a thundersheet,265 and in
many ways, the work is an exploration of the many new sounds that were available,
exploiting the timbal heterogeneity of the ensemble. The work is a movement away from
the ostinato-based compositions of Cowell and Beyer, and is seeking out new ways in
which to organize unpitched sound.
Key to understanding this work is Harrison’s concept of melodicles, and its later
development into rhythmicles. Melodicles, explains Heidi von Gunden, are “motivic
neume-like arrangements which could be diatonic, chromatic, transposed, inverted,
used in retrograde, or joined to form a mode.”266 Harrison composed several early
works (including several pieces for keyboard) using this method of pitch organization,
finding the technique flexible enough to create musical interest while retaining
265Heidi von Gunden says that the work “uses many non-traditional instruments, such as tortoise shells,
thundersheets, sistrums, flowerpots, and automobile brake drums;” yet, a score published by Warner
Brothers in 1999 does not have several of these instruments listed (no tortoise shells, flowerpots or
automobile brake drums). I imagine that the original work was adapted when it was published to only use
instruments one could easily find in a university or high school, but there is no mention of this in the
score. It would be helpful that a new, more accurate score be published, if this is indeed the case. (von
Gunden,The Music of Lou Harrison, 30-31.)
266 Ibid., 7.
175
Fig. 18: Harrison, Fifth Simfony, rhythmicles for movement I
compositional coherence. Rhythmicles are an extension of melodicles, short rhythmic
motives that can be manipulated in various ways. Rhythmicles can be subject to serial
processes, such as retrograde and inversion (possibly stemming from Harrison’s
knowledge of Schoenberg’s works), but in Harrison’s work, the rhythmicles remain
intact, and they are not broken down into further components.267 He then builds the
composition only from these rhythmic blocks. The challenge in this method is picking
interesting rhythmicles from which to compose a work, and as a result, the work can
end up sounding static. Fifth Simfony is strictly composed in this manner, without any
deviation from the process.
Fifth Simfony is a three-movement work, and each movement (or section of a
movement) makes use only of four measure-length rhythmicles, and no other musical
material (save for a measure of tremolo, or rest). Further, each section is divided in half,
with the first half using the rhythmicles in their prime form, and in the second half, the
retrograde form. In fact, for most of the sections (except for one), the entire second half
is a rhythmic retrograde of the first half; however, instrumentation and dynamics are
changed to provide musical interest. Movement II has a slight variation on this concept
(instead of a retrograde of the B section, there’s a reprise of the retrograde of A), but
otherwise, it holds for the entire work. This has interesting effects on the form of the
piece, as the form itself is not symmetrical due to changes that Harrison makes on the
267Cage’s use of gamuts is a similar concept, where he set a selected number of sounds (chords, notes,
etc.) for a work and only used those sounds to compose with.
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Fig. 19: Lou Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement I and II
Fine
I. Vigorous, 8/8
A (17 m.) B (10 m.) C (13 m.) D (7 m.) E (10 m.) F (7 m.)
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
F P F P F P F > P < F P cresc FF
I a a snare d a b b d d b bad sistrum a a
II d temple c d a a c c a adc maraca d
III c tom cym tom b b d d a a d dbb gong bell tom c
IV bass drum bass dr a c c b b cca bass dr gong BD
PRIME FORM RETROGRADE FORM
motive a motive c
motive b motive d
DC al Fine
Trio, 6/8
G (20 m.) H (26 m.) I (19 m.)
65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125
P F P F P
I gong f h g f f tom gong gong tom f f g h f
II gong sn g h h e e tom gong gong tom e e h h g temp
III gong h f f e e h tom gong gong tom h e e f f h
IV gong g e f g g g bass gong gong bass g g g f e g
motive e motive g
motive f motive h
II. Slow and dramatic

1
A (8 m.) B1 (9 m.) B2 (7 m.) C (8 m.) D (8 m.) E ( m.) B2 (7 m.) C (8 m.)
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
P F P
I bell tom j j l l l l l l j j tom cymbal k k l l l j j tom cym
II bell tom k l j k k k k j l k tom cymbal tom l k k k j l k tom cym
III bell tom l k k j j j j k k l tom cymbal cym tmpl blk j k k l tom cym
IV i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i bass drum BD i i i i i i i i i i i
PRIME FORM RETROGRADE FORM PRIME FORM RETROGRADE FORM
motive i motive k
motive j motive l
177
Fig. 20: Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement III

III. Brisk
A (8 m.) B (12 m.) C ( 8 m.) D (9m.) E (11 m.) F (9 m.) G (7 m.)
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
FF P cresc FF P cresc FF F
I n n n o q n sn WB tom WB tom n q o n n n
II o o q q n p cm q sistrum tom TB q bell p n q q o o
III p p p n o o tb n cym tom TB n tom o o q p p p
IV q o n pp q bd p gong tom gong p BD q p p n o q
motive n motive p
motive o motive q
Trio
H (8 m.) I (8 m.) J (7 m.) K (14 m.) L (11 m.) M (7 m.) N (9 m.)
65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125
P < MF > PP F dim P F P F dim
I maraca r r snare tom snare r r WB
II cym t t t gong cym gong t t t cym
III cym s s s cym TB cym s s s TB
IV gong u u gong BD gong gong u u bell
motive r motive t
motive s motive u
retrograde form. He deliberately obscures the retrograde mark when it occurs, placing it
in the middle of a section, or, in the case of the third movement, using a non-
retrogradable rhythm as the pivot point. Harrison

1
seems to have wanted to hide the fact
that he was using a prime-retrograde structure at all, at least on behalf of the listener, by
choosing rhythmicles that are generally similar in profile, especially when they are
played simultaneously (as they frequently are throughout the piece).
Yet, there are three types of musical structures that pop out of the otherwise
polyphonic texture: passages of unison, canon, and ostinato. The formal charts (fig. 19
and 20) highlight these three structures as they occur (unison as a vertical band,
ostinato as a horizontal band, and canon as a series of stripes offset vertically among
the parts), and viewing these shows the symmetrical structure of each movement,
178
alongside the generally non-symmetrical formal divisions of the movement (aided by
tutti dynamics in most sections of the piece).
The tracking of ostinati shows that Harrison is using them in very specific ways,
and to various ends. The opening of movement I presents a tutti ostinato, which is a
common way of opening a percussion ensemble piece in a direct manner. However,
instead of further extending the ostinato, measures 3 through 6 present each of the
rhythmicles in succession (b, a, d, c). In fact, despite Harrison’s direct repetition of each
figure, these aren’t true ostinati in that they don’t extend beyond the first two measures.
Perhaps, he’s toying with the listener’s expectations, since they will assume that the
ostinato will continue throughout the piece, but are instead presented with different
material. Harrison frequently does this, where he begins to build up a layered ostinato,
only to discontinue it, or interrupt it with other material. This happens again in movement
I, measure 18, where he begins layering each part (a technique that has been seen with
Cowell and Beyer); however, once all four parts are in, it appears that he abandons the
build up, and the moves to other material.
But on closer look at this moment (fig. 21), Harrison is actually attempting
something more sophisticated. As he discontinues the ostinato in each part, the
Fig. 21: Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement I, m. 18 - 24
179
rhythmicle rotates to a new player in an attempt to maintain the ostinato. For me, this
technique doesn’t have the intended effect, since the timbre does not also move along
with the rhythmicle, and instead of hearing four ostinati that are shifting timbrally, one
instead hears four timbres playing different rhythms. The first four measures of this
example are heard as ostinati since they are introduced into the texture in succession,
and also because the instrumentation remains constant; but the next three measures do
not have the same effect. This could have been solved if each player used the same
instrument for each rhythmicle, or if a different dynamic scheme was implemented, but
as written, it sounds like kaleidoscopic eighth notes.
The most classic use of an ostinato is found in movement II (m. 33 - 40, fig. 22),
similar in shape to Beyer’s ostinato in IV, with parts being added, then removed, in
gradual fashion. This moment occurs exactly half way through the second movement,
Fig. 22: Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement II, m. 33 - 40
and serves as the introduction to a new set of four rhythmicles. The bass drum entrance
in m. 33 occurs on a weak beat (the second eighth note); yet because nothing else is
happening, this sounds as if it is the downbeat. This is further reinforced by the music
directly preceding this section (m. 31 - 33). The rhythmicle found in m. 31 sounds very
similar to the rhythm the bass drum plays in m. 33, as both start with a dotted quarter.
Because m. 32 is empty except for a downbeat, and is the end of a phrase, the bass
180
Fig. 23: Harrison, Fifth Simfony, mvmt II, m. 31 - 33
drum entrance in m. 33 will sound as if it is played on the downbeat (figure 23). This
then shifts the cymbal entrance in m. 34 as if it were a pickup; it isn’t until the tom tom
enters that the written downbeat is emphasized (and even then, the crescendo
deemphasizes the downbeat), and the ear is drawn to the bass drum as the lowest
sound. This is all to say that this passage is metrically unstable, which is counterintuitive
considering that percussion composers usually use an ostinato to emphasize the meter,
not work against it. The passage is the only use of ostinato in the second movement,
and yet, the meter is much clearer everywhere else throughout the movement. Harrison
has cleverly found a new use for an ostinato—to create metrical dissonance—while also
providing contrast within a movement that is largely composed without the use of
ostinati.
The third movement exemplifies how Harrison contrasts canon, ostinato, and
unison textures to create contrast and form. Because he is only composing with four
rhythmicles, he has made an attempt to vary the presentation of the material in as many
ways as possible. Harrison commonly will stagger entrances (a technique also used by
Cowell and Beyer), a technique used here in the canon at m. 9, as well as the ostinato
build up in m. 21. The canon is rhythmic, but not timbral, as he changes the instruments
each measure freely (each rhythmicle is not tied to an instrument or instrument-group);
181
Fig. 24: Order of rhythmicle entrances
m. 9 - 12 o q p n
m. 21 - 24 q p n o
we hear this as a canon, mostly because the head motive (motive o) is clearly
discernible and each entrance is audible, despite the change in instrumentation. The
ostinato build up in m. 21 is similar in structure to the canon, but each part remains on
the same instrument, creating timbral conformity within each part. Harrison has kept the
order of rhythmicles intact in both places, but shifted them over one measure and
moved motive o to the end in the ostinato build up (fig. 24). Since motive o is non-
syncopated and the most clearly recognizable rhythmicle, Harrison’s decision to move it
to the final position in the ostinato build up results in a sense of arrival (also assisted by
the use of the woodblock, an extremely staccato instrument that cuts through the
texture of less articulate instruments). Each player ends the passage by playing a
tremolo, further creating tension, and ending in a unison release on beat 3 of m. 28.
Providing contrast to these two passages is the unison entrance in m. 29 of all
four parts playing piano on drums. This is a rare moment of timbral and rhythmic
homogeneity, and its placement after two build ups is a resolution of sorts. By making
this moment quiet, Harrison has thwarted the listener’s expectations, as similar unison
moments throughout Fifth Simfony are forte (for example, movement I, m. 28).
Measures 29 - 30 is a horizontal presentation the four rhythmicles, while m. 15 and 16
are a vertical presentation. Viewing the two passages in contrast shows that Harrison is
less concerned with the ostinato as a structuring device (like earlier percussion works),
182
but instead, as a result of ordering material in various configurations. In fact, in m. 15
and 16, after he presents all four rhythmicles simultaneously in ostinato, he then pulls
the passage apart, playing each rhythm by itself so the listener can hear the texture
pulled apart (mm. 17 - 20).
Fig. 25: Harrison, Fifth Simfony, movement III, m. 9 - 32
CANON OSTINATO
OSTINATO,
BUILD UP
UNISON
183
Each of these moments on their own are not particularly interesting, but when
taken together as a whole (figure 25), one can see Harrison searching for new ways to
structure percussion music beyond the ostinato that dominated percussion music
coming out of dance. Harrison was extremely involved in dance during this period, and
this musical struggle between composition and the dictates of dance can be seen in
Fifth Simfony. The ostinato appears periodically throughout the work, but never for more
than eight measures at a time. Could he have dispensed with the ostinato altogether?
Likely not, as this is a feature of his percussion writing throughout his oeuvre of
percussion pieces: he strongly identifies percussion music with the ostinato.268
However, it appears that he was well aware of the limitations the ever-present ostinato,
thus, his careful placement of ostinato passages, and understanding of their intended
musical effects. In Fifth Simfony, ostinati either propel the work forward, as in the first
and third movements, or create moments of stasis, as in the second movement. This
dual function is determined by the material preceding and following the ostinato
passages, as well as the nature of the ostinato itself (dynamics, tempo, etc.). Ultimately,
his use of the ostinato is a compositional choice, rather than a compositional necessity,
that exemplifies the potential for compositional sophistication in further experiments.
268Two further examples of works with ostinato-based percussion parts include First Concerto for Flute
and Percussion, also from 1939, as well as movement from Rhymes with Silver, a work for string trio,
piano and percussion, a later work for dance from 1996. Both pieces have movement entirely constructed
out of a single ostinato; thus, Harrison never abandoned this idea, even as his work matured.
184
III. Use of morphing or quasi-ostinati
As has been shown, the ostinato is a powerful device that came to be a defining
feature of the early percussion ensemble work. Once the West Coast composers began
to realize that they could imagine forms that extended beyond the confines of a form
dictated by a regular ostinato, they were free to discard the ostinato and explore other
musical structures. Yet, composers were still inclined to use ostinati, perhaps because
the general concept of danceability continued to remain persuasive. Further, the use of
the ostinato is part of the “sound” of the percussion ensemble, and it seems that
composers were interested in keeping this quality intact. One further reason that the
ostinato is a powerful device in percussion music is that it allowed composers to
introduce as-yet-unheard sounds into their scores by repeating them until they became
familiar and identifiable.
Yet, direct repetition of a musical figure ad nauseum became undesirable and
unsophisticated, so composers began to reconsider the possibilities of the ostinato
itself. They began to use ostinati that slowly morphed throughout the course of a work,
or write passages that sounded like they were ostinati, but upon closer examination,
were in fact not employing direct repetition. As will be seen, the use of morphing and
quasi-ostinati (both to be explained later) are the result of each composers’
compositional procedures. Two works will examine the final developmental step of the
ostinato in the early percussion ensemble repertoire: Henry Cowell’s Pulse, and John
Cage’s First Construction. Both works exemplify the height of the early percussion
ensemble works, existing as fully-realized concert works.
185
Henry Cowell’s Pulse
Written in 1939, Pulse is for six players269 and is dedicated to “John Cage and his
Percussion Group,” the first group to perform the work. This piece, along with Return,
written in the same year, were composed while Cowell was in San Quentin, and they
serve as a pair of companion pieces. Pulse received its premiere performance at the
second Mills College percussion concert on July 18, 1940 (along with works by Cage,
Roldán, Harrison, Russell, and Ardevol). The work features ten sets of three graduated
instruments (designated as high-medium-low), giving two sets to each player: Player 1
— Korean dragon’s mouths and rectangular woodblocks; Player 2—Chinese tom-toms
and different sized drums; Player 3—rice bowls and Japanese temple gongs (or bells);
Player 4—suspended cymbals and gongs; and Player 5—pipe lengths and brake
drums. This instrumentation is a mix of Asian, Western classical, and found objects that
are typical of works in this period.
Pulse is constructed out of five-bar phrases that generally group into large
groups of five (for a total of twenty-five measure sections, figure 26).270 The overall form
is A-B-A’-B’-C, with a brief transition before C (which also serves as a coda). Each
section of the piece is structured around a five-measure ostinato. Ostinato A is one-
measure rhythm that is repeated five times, but with a different pitch permutation in
each measure.
269There are actually five parts, but one assistant is required to help execute various passages for
various players.
270 Leta E. Miller notes that “[Pulse’s] form bears strong similarities to the micro-macrocosmic system
Cage would use in his own percussion pieces beginning later that same year,” a technique often referred
to as the square root formula. Miller, “Henry Cowell and John Cage,” 73.
186
Fig. 26: Henry Cowell, Pulse
SECTION A (5m x 5) SECTION B (5m x 5) SECTION A’ (5m x 4)
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
Percussion 1
dragons mouths woodblocks dragons mouths woodblocks dragons mouths wood blocks dragons mouths wood blocks dragons mouths
Percussion 2
chinese toms drums chinese toms drums chinese toms drums chinese toms drums chinese toms drums chinese toms drums chinese toms drums
Percussion 3
rice bowls
Percussion 3 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
(extra player) temple gongs
Percussion 4 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
gongs cymbals gongs cymbals gongs cymbals gongs cymbals gongs cymbals
Percussion 5 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
187
pipe brake drums pipe brake drums pipe brake drums pipe
SECTION B’ (5m x 5) [GP] TRANSITION 5m CODA/SECTION C (5m. x 5) + 4m.
75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130
Percussion 1 ostinato A
wood block + dragon mouths ostinato B
Percussion 2 coda ostinato
chinese toms drums chinese toms drums chinese toms drums drums and chinese toms
Percussion 3 theme 1
rice bowls (rice bowls) temple gongs theme 2
Percussion 3 o o o o o o o o downbeat strike
(extra player) (temple gongs) temple gongs tremolo
Percussion 4 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
gongs cymbals gongs cymbals and gongs
Percussion 5
By varying the pitch order of each measure, Cowell has introduced a second layer into
an otherwise simple ostinato that could otherwise become monotonous. However,
looking at the pitch beyond the scope of each individual measure, one sees that this is
actually a repeated five-pitch cycle that is further embedded in the ostinato (figure 27).
Fig. 27: Henry Cowell, Pulse, Ostinato A
Also, by placing the accent on the third eighth note, he is shifting the feel of the ostinato
away from the typically-stressed downbeat found in much dance-inflected music. In this
five-bar ostinato, Cowell has included three layers: A. the repeated 7/8 rhythm; B. the
accent on the third eighth note of each measure; and C. the five-pitch cycle.
Rhythmically, this is a metrically-aligned ostinato, but due to the pitch cycle and accent
placement, the metrical alignment is deemphasized, thus obfuscating the clarity of the
ostinato for the listener.
Ostinato B is derived rhythmically from the first measure of Ostinato A, but varied
in a different manner (figure 28).
Fig. 28: Henry Cowell, Pulse, Ostinato B
[2 +2 + 3] [2 + 3 +2] [2 +2 + 3 ] [2 + 3 + 2] [ 3 + 2 + 2]
Rather than varying the pitch, he stays on one pitch for the entire ostinato phrase. In
order to create interest, then, he varies the rhythm by presenting different permutations
188
of the 2+2+3 subdivision within each measure. This, along with the same accent in each
measure on the third eighth note as in Ostinato A, creates a shifting texture similar in
affect to Ostinato A, but in a different manner, as there is no change in pitch.
Taken together, Ostinati A and B have an inverse relationship to each other when
comparing pitch and rhythmic content (figure 29). This helps to create contrast at a
Fig. 29: Henry Cowell, Pulse, Comparing Ostinatos A and B

Ostinato A Ostinato B
Pitch varied constant
Rhythm constant varied
structural level as the rest of the piece is composed on top of the ostinati. In the A and B
sections of the piece, there are always three layers of music: 1. the ostinato, 2. a strike
on the downbeat of each measure, and 3. melodic-thematic material. As the chart of the
form (below) shows, the ostinato is played by alternating groups of instruments in each
section (for example, in section A, shown in red in figure 30, alternating between the
pipes by Player 5, and the drums by Player 2). In section B, even though the ostinato is
only played by one player, it alternates groups of instruments for each five-bar phrase
(Chinese toms and drums). The gong (or gong-like) strike on the downbeat of each
measure highlights the meter, creating a constant pulse throughout the piece (and
hence, the title of the work). This part is always played on a metallic instrument—gongs,
cup gongs, brake drums and cymbals—and could be considered part of the ostinato,
but is more similar to the colotomic parts found in Ostinato Pianissimo (and there is also
an obvious similarity to Beyer’s earlier IV, as both are in 7/8, and the metric emphasis
189
Fig. 30: Henry Cowell, Pulse, m.123-126, Section C
two-measure rhythmic cycle
occurs on the downbeat). This constant gong helps ground the work since the ostinati
are metrically ambiguous, and not audibly reliable enough to project the meter. Finally,
the thematic material is divided between two instrument groups in an antiphonal
manner, overtop the ostinato and gong.
190
Section C, which also serves as a coda, is a series of ostinati that are layered on
top of each other, creating a meta-ostinato. As each of the six parts enters into the
established texture at five-bar intervals, they remain stable in the given rhythm, and only
change through various pitch permutations. In this section, the three layers of material
found in the previous sections (ostinato/gong/melodic-thematic) are formally fused into a
single entity, so that the ostinato is now also the thematic material; the background is
now foreground. In section C, the phrasing switches to two-bar groups, while the
instrument entrances occur in five-bar intervals. Player 5’s part is clearly grouped in two-
bar rhythmic cycles (seen in red on the score below), and this dominates the texture
(along with support from Players 3 and 4); however, the pitch content changes from
cycle to cycle.271 Player 2’s part is grouped in three beat cycles, but as this part is
rhythmically independent from the remaining parts, it sounds more as filigree in the
overall texture. Same is true for the two parts in Player 1 (aided by the assistant): the
stream of eighth and sixteenth notes change pattern each measure, and don’t affect the
overall two-bar feel of the passage. In fact, Section C shares many characteristics of
Ostinato Pianissimo: several different-length cycles occurring simultaneously; the
layering of parts as they enter one at a time; and a range of rhythmic values spanning
from double-dotted half notes to sixteenth notes, a clear gamelan reference.
Yet, unlike in Ostinato Pianissimo, Cowell’s use of ostinati in Pulse is much more
abstract and sophisticated. The use of three different ostinati as unique structuring
devices for each section is a new concept in percussion music. Further, the three
ostinati are derived from each other. When looking at the first measure of each ostinato,
271In general, the pitches in Section C are non repeating for each part. Cowell is exploring various
permutations of each three-note instrument group, likely as a way of avoiding direction repetition.
191
Fig. 31: Henry Cowell, Pulse, first measure of Ostinato A, B, and C
there is a clear process of derivation: Ostinato B is rhythmically equal to Ostinato A, but
on only one pitch, and the composite of Ostinato C (from Player 5) is the retrograde of
both Ostinato A and B (figure 31). In this manner, ostinati are not merely contrasting
each other, but derived from the same initial musical material, providing compositional
coherence among the sections of the piece. The ostinati, once presented, remain intact
whenever they are used in the piece; they don’t, for example, slowly morph into each
other, or change in any other way. Yet, I believe that this is a significant development in
the use of ostinati in percussion pieces. Earlier pieces establish a single ostinato for a
piece (or multiple, yet unrelated, ostinati for different parts of the work). Not only is
Cowell using multiple ostinati that are motivically related, but they are employed in a
structural manner. Along with the change in ostinato comes a change in instrumentation,
notably, the featured introduction of rice bowls and temple gongs in the B sections,
192
creating a contrasting delicate texture to the more bombastic sound of the A sections,
using drums, woodblocks, gongs and metal.
Cowell’s ostinati in Pulse are complex, as they do not clearly project the meter,
but rather, obscure it by using various techniques including non-aligned pitch cycles,
accent patterns, and shifting metrical subdivisions. Whereas the main use of the
ostinato in dance music is to make the meter audible, Cowell has instead used the
ostinato to subvert the meter, resulting in a more interesting and less predictable
rhythmic-metric profile. A trace of the influence of modern dance is present, but Cowell
has moved beyond the strictures of dance music by burying this reference in deference
to higher compositional aims. Yet, he is still tied to the ostinato enough to keep it intact
(even if it is not audibly obvious). Ostinati are found in other percussion works of his,
including Return, written directly after Pulse, as well as the fragment “Train Finale” from
The Marriage of the Eiffel Tower. This association of percussion music with an ostinato
is very strong for Cowell, and it does not appear that he was able to conceive of a
percussion music that didn’t feature an ostinato on some level. This is echoes Strang’s
comments on percussion music ideally being both danceable and musical, and further
makes obvious the connection between percussion music and dance (as well as
Cowell’s interest in East Asian musics).
193
John Cage’s First Construction
First Construction, like many of Cage’s works, used a highly specific pre-
compositional process to generate the work, which is outlined in David Bernstein’s
analysis of the work.272 First Construction is a prime example of Cage’s use of what he
called the square-root form, wherein both macro- and micro-structures share the same
proportions (in the case of this work, 4:3:2:3:4).273 That means that there are a total of
sixteen 16-bar sections that are grouped in the proportion 4:3:2:3:4 (the first 4 serving
as exposition, and 3:2:3:4 serving as development in four sections); further, each 16-bar
section is also divided into measures in the same ratio. In the music, these micro-level
divisions are marked by timbre changes, either by player entrances and exits, or
changes in instrumentation.
When focusing on a note-by-note level, Cage no longer used the 4:3:2:3:4 ratio,
but instead developed a compositional process using sixteen rhythmic motives. In
summary, Cage composed four groups of rhythmic motives (in length anywhere from
one eighth note to six quarter notes),274 and controls how the motives can be deployed
by arranging them around circles and determining what movements are possible
between them (he could move clockwise, counterclockwise, but not across the circle)
(see figure 32). One important aspect of his process is that he allows a motive to be
repeated any number of times before moving to the next motive. As a result, Cage’s
272 See Bernstein, “Music I: to the late 1940s,” 71 - 74.

273In fact, Cage clearly outlines the form of the piece in his performance note in the score of First
Construction: “The rhythmic structure is 4-3-2-3-4 (16x16) with coda of 9 measures (2-3-4)—an exposition
(1-1-1-1) followed by development (3-2-3-4) and extension (2-3-4).” John Cage, performance notes to
First Construction (in Metal): percussion sextet with assistant (New York: C. F. Peters, 1962).
274Three of the motives have variations, grouped together by number of icti in the measure. Cage treats
these motive variations as one single motive in his plan. See Bernstein, “Music I: to the late 1940s,” 72.
194
Fig. 32: John Cage, First Construction, rhythmic motives and circular motivic movement
(as listed by David Bernstein)
1 5 9 13
3 A 4 7 B 8 11 C 12 15 D 16
2 6 10 14
compositional process has a built in function that generates ostinati, as he frequently
repeats motives before moving to the subsequent motive. Bernstein notes that from
time to time, Cage breaks his rules for musical reasons, but that in general, he follow his
guidelines, and it is possible to trace his process in the score. The process is strict, but
flexible enough to allow him expressive use of his materials. Contrasted with Harrison’s
use of rhythmicles, Cage’s motives are more dynamic, mostly because they are different
lengths, thus allowing more variation in the arrangement of motives. He also uses four
times as many motives, allowing much more variety overall, and unlike Harrison, is
willing to break his own rules if it results in better musical results. As a result, even
though both Cage and Harrison are composing with small motives, they manner in
195
which they combine them, and the nature of the motives themselves results in widely
different types of works.
In order to further understand how Cage is using motives to construct sections,
and specifically focus on how he uses ostinati, I shall focus on m. 17 - 48, which
corresponds to the middle two groups of sixteen bars in the opening exposition (m. 1 -
64). There are several examples of ostinati that behave in new ways than previous
composers had conceived, specifically as they slowly morph, or are passed around the
ensemble from player to player. For example, beginning in m. 17, player 4 (figure 33)
Fig. 33: John Cage, First Construction, m. 17, Player 4
5 7 5
5 7 7
has a three-beat ostinato that is actually constructed out of two separate motives (5 and
7 on Bernstein’s chart). This is a sophisticated use of his system: as there are no
motives in 3/4, he needed to construct one out of his materials by combining two cells.
Thus, this ostinato is essentially a compound structure, built out of an alternation
between two motives (even though it sounds as one motive that is repeated, not two). In
counterpoint with this is Player 5’s rhythm (figure 35), which begins in unison with
Player 4, then moves out of phase, realigns rhythmically but in hocket, moves out of
phase again, then realigns in unison. The beginning of Player 5’s part in m. 17 sounds
as if it will also be an ostinato, but instead plays against the expectation, creating
rhythmic dissonance.
196
3
Fig. 34: Cage, First Construction, m. 21 - 28
2
3
197
Fig. 35: John Cage, First Construction, m. 17, Player 4 and 5
5 5
7 7 5 7 5 7 5 7
17
unison out of phase out of phase unison

hocketing
6 7 6 8
5 8 5
The next chunk of the phrase, m. 21 - 28 (which represents the 3:2:3 portion of
the phrase, figure 34), shows how Cage is able to articulate the form using changing
ostinati in each new subsection, and the complex ways in which ostinati (and non-
ostinati) relate to each other. Measures 21 - 23 are a three bar phrase with ostinati in
Parts 2, 3 and 6. Parts 2 and 6 are related via inversion ([3, 2, 2, 2, 2] in Player 2, [2, 2,
2, 2, 3] in Player 6), which has the result of a rhythmic canon by one eighth note. Player
3 plays motive 4 (which serves as the main theme for the entire work), and then builds
an ostinato out of motive 3. Motive 4 is too long for be an effective ostinato, so instead
Cage repeats the final sub-motive, which is actually motive 3; motive 3 is imbedded
within motive 4. This is a sleek transition into an ostinato that in unexpected, which then
ends in unison with the other two parts on beat 4 of m. 23.
The change in texture in m. 24 and 25 is accompanied with an ostinato in Part 4
(off beat eighth notes), along with non-repeating rhythms in Part 5. The transition into m.
26 is an example of invertible counterpoint, along with the entrance of the remaining
players (except for Part 1), and measure 27 also uses invertible counterpoint between
players 2 and 3. These two moments are attempts to trade the ostinati between parts,
much in the way that Harrison attempted to do the same thing in Fifth Simfony. This
198
technique is more successful in First Construction than Fifth Simfony, partially because
Cage staggers the motive swaps, making it much easier to follow each line between
players, and also because the motives are short and closely related. The three ostinati
used in m. 26 are very similar, Player 3 a composite of Players’ 5 and 2 parts (figure
36).
Fig. 36: John Cage, First Construction, m. 26 ostinati
Another interesting passage is found in Player 6’s part, measures 26 to 28 (figure
37), where we find a complexly constructed passage that sounds like an ostinato, but is
in fact not one. Both the melodic contour and the similarities of the rhythmic motives
used in this passage create a sense of ostinato, without any actual repetition being
Fig. 37: Cage, First Construction, Player 6, m. 26 - 28
ACTUAL
2 4 1
IMPLIED
199
used. Cage uses three motives—2, 4 and 1—which share several rhythmic qualities.
Motives 1 and 2 are essentially embedded within motive 4 (although 2 is slightly
modified, ending with an eighth note instead of a quarter, but ). What makes this
passage sound ostinato-like is the placement of the high gong at regular intervals of
every three quarter notes, preceded and followed by the lower gong; he omits what
would have been the third high gong at the end of m. 27, but otherwise, the pattern
holds steady. The changes from the implied ostinato, then, are either omissions, or
syncopations, especially the dotted quarter in m. 27, which sounds like an early
syncopation against the entrance of the implied ostinato. Considering that this is only
one part among five (and played at ppp), the part functions as an ostinato, or what could
be called a quasi-ostinato.
A quasi-ostinato allows for minor variations which are more interesting to listen to
than direct repetitions, but maintains the structural function that an ostinato provides.
Other composers had attempted to find ways to vary their ostinati, such as Cowell in
Ostinato Pianissimo, where he changes the accent patterns of each section; however,
no one had yet gone to the point of moving actual notes around, which would, in theory,
dissolve the structure of the ostinato entirely. Cage understands the power of the
ostinato, yet is looking for more sophisticated structures, especially since the music
does not need to be as metrically clear as it would have had to have been for dancers (if
the piece had been used for dance). But since this is fully a concert work, Cage’s use of
minor variation piques the listeners’ interest while still providing metric orientation.
There are some moments in the work that don’t follow the precompositional
motivic plan, mostly passages of long tremolos played on thundersheets, water gongs,
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Fig. 38: John Cage, First Construction, Player 1 (glockenspiel), m. 33-37

rhythmic
pitch change diminution
redistribution
a b c d e
and other sustained sounds. Also, the orchestra bells, at times, have unique rhythmic
material that is not included in the original plan of sixteen motives. One example that
behaves in a unique fashion is in Player 1 at m. 33 (figure 38). This is an example of a
morphing ostinato: the ostinato slow changes until it is no longer noticeable as the
original. In this example, the original three-beat cell (a) is presented, repeated once at
(b); then, the rhythm is repeated (c), but with a pitch change (C to D-flat). The next
iteration (d) has the original pitch content of (a), but the rhythms have been redistributed
within the three-beat cell as two dotted quarters. Finally, cell (e) is shortened with
another pitch change (B-flat to B-natural), which is itself turned into another ostinato of
quarter-note septuplets. So, in the space of three measures, the original ostinato cell
has morphed into a different repeated pattern.
Is this even still an ostinato? Rhythmically, the three-beat phrases in m. 33-35
could sound like a quasi-ostinato even though the pitch and rhythmic content changes
slightly, much like the previous example of the quasi-ostinato at measure 26 - 28.
However, the transformation into the quarter-note septuplets is unexpected, and really
seems like something else entirely. The septuplets are clearly not part of the first chunk
of the passage, thus it possible to argue that these are two separate, but related,
ostinati. Functionally, the septuplets emerge out of the tutti ensemble dynamic (which is
p to ppp) as the dominate voice in m. 36, so in order to make a convincing crescendo
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from ppp to mf, the glockenspiel has to play a higher frequency of notes (it wouldn’t be
possible to crescendo with only one or two notes if the ostinato from (a) was continued).
Perhaps this is part of why Cage morphs this ostinato over two bars: as a way to
transition through to the crescendo. The septuplets are essentially a controlled tremolo
that create rhythmic dissonance against the established eighth-note rhythms of the
remaining parts. This passage is intriguing because it literally shows Cage establishing
a rhythmic groove-like pattern, and then moving into other rhythmic material; this
corresponds to his general movement away from ostinato-based writing as he considers
other modes of writing, a process which would slowly happen over several years as he
grew out of the early percussion works into more chance-based and Zen-tinged
composition. Yet at this point in First Construction, the ostinato still serves as a starting
point, providing a way to organize rhythms into a formal structure from which derivations
can be made, and Cage has not yet fully embraced a freer conception of rhythm, but is
flirting with what that could potentially become.
Zooming out even further, the transition from order to disorder that is shown in
this example can be mapped onto the larger structure of First Construction, as later
sections become dominated by noisy tremolos on thundersheets, cymbals, gongs and
string piano. Cage gradually abandons the use of his motivic arrays, and instead
employs a less rigorous manner of composition (although he is still maintaining the
overall structure of the 4:3:2:3:4) The final large section of the work (m. 193-252,
corresponding to the final part of the 4:3:2:3:4 schema, along with an added nine-
measure coda) almost entirely obliterates the rhythmic writing that typifies the opening
sections of the piece. Rhythmic figures are presented in various parts, but eventually
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they succumb and are swallowed by the encroaching density of a metallic wash of
sound. The transition from rhythmic order to chaos is a defining characteristic of First
Construction, and essentially, the five-measure glockenspiel passage encapsulates the
entire form of the work: pattern established, changed, then abandoned.
Thus, one can see that Cage is moving away from the ostinato as primarily a
structural device, instead emphasizing its expressive musical properties. First
Construction has many instances of ostinati throughout, and while they often conform to
the micro-macro structure that he has constructed, the ostinati themselves in no way
dictate the form. The ostinati are a by-product of Cage’s compositional strategies in how
he deploys his motivic material; Harrison’s use of ostinati in Fifth Simfony are arrived at
in a similar fashion, as he looks for various configurations of his rhythmicles. This is
different, however, from a work like Cowell’s Pulse, where each section of the work is
delineated by a specific ostinato. Cage, I would argue, is less concerned about the
danceability of his score, instead being concerned with matters of composition and
exploration of percussive timbre. This is a somewhat ironic stance, as so much of
Cage’s output is associated strongly with modern dance, but then, of course, Cage
redefined the relationship between music and dance as independent from each other,
thus Strang’s definition of danceability was no longer applicable. It was many years
before Cage arrived at this revelation, and First Construction exists in a period before
his experiments in dance music with Cunningham. Nonetheless, it is possible to view a
brief moment like the glockenspiel passage above as a preview of what is to come as
Cage’s work eventually moves away from metrically-aligned and ostinato-based
rhythms.
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***
The glockenspiel passage in First Construction also symbolizes the transition
that occurred in percussion music as it began in the dance studio and gradually
morphed and matured into a concert music practice. By tracking the use of the ostinato,
one can see how percussion music began as a functional, non-expressive medium that
became more complex as it became a medium for artistic expression. A first-level work,
like the drum accompaniment by Charles Weidman for his dance class, is a simplistic
pattern that repeats with no variation as long as it is needed for the dance exercise that
it is designed to accompany. Doris Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms then shows how
percussion music could be applied to dance performance as a second-level work,
relying on the inherent rhythms of the body in dance to generate musical material. In a
third-level work, like Gerald Strang’s Percussion Music, percussion music begins to
separate from the dance as the compositional side of the work becomes more
autonomous. Strang suggests that percussion music be both compositionally coherent,
while maintaining a relationship to the dancing body. Finally, fourth-level works,
including early concert pieces by Cage, Harrison, Cowell, and Beyer sever the direct
relationship to dance, but maintain an indirect connection via usage of the ostinato. In
all levels of works, the ostinato is found to be the primary device that connects
percussion music to dance by providing synchronized regularity. In some works, the
ostinato exists as a structural device around which the form is built, but as works
become more concertized, the ostinato remains, but is less structurally crucial, instead
appearing as one of many musical devices that the composer has at his or her disposal.
Several phases of fourth-level works demonstrate the gradual emancipation of the
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ostinato, including works based entirely on one ostinato throughout the entire work;
works using ostinati only at certain points; or works using morphing or quasi-ostinati.
One factor that underlaid this development was the gradual realization that
percussion is a dynamic field that can absorb many different compositional practices
and influences. What began as an extension of dance studio accompaniment soon grew
into a field with more points of entry. As composers developed new systems of
composition, they found they could apply them to the percussion ensemble, which in
turn generated new conceptions of what percussion music could potentially be. Within
the period under examination, a comparison of works in the beginning, such as
Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms versus the end, such as Cage’s First Construction, shows
a marked difference in the scope of what percussion can achieve musically. It is
important to frame this entire discussion remembering that one of the most refined
percussion works was also the earliest, that being Ionsation, a work that all of the
composers would have been familiar with. This serves as a reminder that the West
Coast composers were not entirely responsible for the early percussion ensemble: they
had a model with which to work. However, as Varèse was coming from a European
tradition of composition, the American composers could not simply imitate his style, but
needed to develop a unique approach, one that fused ultramodernism (which is itself a
fusion of European and American ideas) with the artistic practices of the modern dance
community. The selection of works under investigation have provided glimpses of the
series of experiments and gradual maturation that was the early percussion ensemble.  
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Table 1: Stages of Development in the Dance-Music Continuum
Repertoire
Description
example
• music completely dependent on movement Charles

• quality of musical value is dependent on how well the music supports the Weidman,
dance dance
1
• only exists to support dance exercises in the studio (utilitarian-functional) accompaniment
• not created for performance
• music performed extemporaneously, rarely notated or recorded
• music mostly dependent on movement Doris

• quality of musical value is dependent on how well the music supports the Humphrey’s
dance Dance Rhythms
2
• used as accompaniment in dance performance
• music may or may not be notated, created alongside choreography in the
dance studio
• music adheres to pre-existing choreography, or is written to expressly provide Gerald Strang’s

accompaniment to dance Percussion
• choreography may dictate form, style, or other aspects of musical Music
composition, but the composition can stand on its own separately from the
dance
3 • composer claims authorship of musical component of larger work
• may be performed with (concert dance) or without (concert music)
choreography
• music exists as a fully realized score, although it can still contain
improvisatory or non-specific elements
• most commissioned dance works fit in this category
• music is completely independent from dance (there is no dance component), various works
yet is influenced by dance-music in form or content by Cage,
• music uses ostinato as a structural device Cowell, Beyer,
• music is created for concert music performance, although it can later be used and Harrison
4
for new choreography
• composer claims sole authorship of work
• influence of dance may or may not be deliberate on behalf of the composer,
but is clearly traceable in the musical score via the usage of ostinati
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CONCLUSION
Cage, Cowell, and Harrison composed some of the major early works for
percussion ensemble as part of the West Coast group during the 1930s and early
1940s. They were also all queer men who’s sexuality influenced the music they wrote in
various ways. They developed a unique queer sensibility that resulted from the
circumstances of their biographies, influenced by historical, social, cultural, sexual, and
artistic factors. San Francisco was a central site for the percussion ensemble, one that
also became an intersection of East Asian cultures, along with a relatively open
tolerance for queer sexuality. Throughout their lives, Cage, Cowell, and Harrison
experienced their own queer sexualities in a variety of manners, especially as their
personal lives blurred into their professional and artistic lives. All three men were
involved with the modern dance community as musicians, composers, and dancers;
dance was a safe queer space, as well as an experimental laboratory that fostered new
work. Collaboration within the dance community, as well as among the composers
themselves, provided new models of artistic creation that often mirrored queer
relationships. Also, underlining queer music and dance was a general fascination with
and eroticization of the Orient, which had a strong influence on music and dance works,
intellectual thought, and overall aesthetics. Taken together, the influences of modern
dance, Asian culture, and collaboration helped form the queer sensibility of the West
Coast percussion ensemble that further permeated their works.
This queer sensibility can be found in the percussion music of Cage, Cowell, and
Harrison in a variety of manners. Any musical reference to modern dance and Asian
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culture bears the traces of the queer social and sexual pathways that led to the
composers; similarly, collaborative methods reveal the queer power dynamics that
underlaid these queer networks. Such queer signifiers in music (and dance) were often
unnoticed by most audience members, and were taken at face value; yet, for queer and
queer-aware audiences, these signifiers had a double meaning that communicated
queerness. In order to locate the queerness in musical works, it is necessary to seek
out their tangible and concrete traces in musical works.
This is easiest to see in when one examines how the West Coast percussion
ensemble developed directly out of modern dance. After the initial ultramodern
percussion works by Varèse, Roldán, and Russell, percussion entered an incubatory
phase in the dance studio. Modern dance, as influenced by Mary Wigman, used
percussion as a way to develop musical accompaniment that allowed the dance to be
the primary motivating factor, as opposed to the traditional arrangement of music
leading the dance. Here, music largely followed the dance, with percussion providing a
simple rhythmic framework that didn’t overpower the dance, but enhanced and
articulated it. This was achieved through the use of the ostinato, a musical device that
formed the basis of many musical accompaniments in the dance studio. Gradually, as
percussion works for dance became more complex, composers began to treat the
percussion ensemble to various compositional procedures that became increasingly
sophisticated; yet, the ostinato remained imbedded in percussion works, even as the
percussion ensemble gradually separated from modern dance into a concert genre.
Early concert masterpieces, such as Double Music and First Construction, retained
fragments of the ostinato, which were often buried in a texture, or simply implied. These
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bits of ostinati in percussion works are a musical trace of the modern dance world that
fostered the percussion ensemble in its earliest days.
It is also these bits of ostinati that resonate with queerness. The ostinato itself is
not a queer device, but considering that the ostinato was employed in service of dance,
a realm which has been established as a queer space, it then takes on queer
associations when understood in a queer context. This is in no way to be understood as
a direct relationship, but rather an oblique one; the West Coast composers were not
intentionally composing queer works, and likely would not have considered their music
to have any queer associations. But when one is able to pull back and view the
composers’ biographies, combined with the cultural conditions that their works existed
in, and further combined with an understanding of how sexuality moved through their
surroundings and into their works, one can begin to understand how queer sexuality
was injected into the percussion ensemble. Dance is the most direct and
comprehensible queer influence on the percussion ensemble; similar examinations into
the tangible influences of Asian culture and collaboration would each require a different
path of inquiry into how these areas imprinted themselves on the percussion ensemble.
I do not wish to overstate my case: I do not find that queer sexuality is the major
influencer in the West Coast percussion ensemble; and in no way was that the goal of
my essay. Rather, queerness, in tandem with other categories, shades the repertoire of
the West Coast percussion ensemble in a multitude of subtle ways, discernible only
once one chooses to focus in on them. Take, for example, the common presence of the
gong in the West Coast repertoire, which was discussed in relation to Asian influences.
There are several reasons why a composer would choose to use a gong at any
209
moment, including as a reference to gamelan; to accent a particular moment; because it
was available, and hence, usable; or because, frankly, the composer likes the sound.
Did the composer use the gong because of its queer associations? No, he did not; nor
was he aware of the gong as a queer reference, despite the various queer pathways
that brought the composer in contact with the gong. Yes, it is possible that the composer
came into contact with that gong in non-queer ways; but any path can have several
meanings, one of which may be queer. The gong is both a gong, and a queer signifier.
There was a time when queer musicology was fighting for recognition of queer
lives; at one point in time, no one discussed, for example, the queerness of Tchaikovsky,
Schubert, or Britten. Luckily, those days have largely past, and any remotely-informed
person will not only acknowledge these men as gay, but working their queerness into an
understanding of their biographies, and in return, their music. This is not a controversial
position to take, and fight for mere recognition is over. Choosing, however, how much
credence to give a musical analysis that accepts sexuality as a motivating factor within
the musical score is a more specious posture for some, and understandably so: musical
analysis is concerned with printed notes and sonic phenomena, whereas sexuality
involves the body, identity, and culture. Music and sexuality can approach each other,
but between them exists a parallax gap.275 Mediating music and sexuality requires that
music be understood in broad terms, as it is easier to map sexuality onto larger musical
developments; yet, because musical analysis is specific, it is more much challenging to
prove direct relationships. It is only possible to suggest relationships, backed up with
275“Parallax gap” is defined by Žižek as “the confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between
which no neutral common ground is possible.” Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax Gap (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2006), 4.
210
specific evidence found in the score, along with attendant environmental factors. Yet to
deny that culture has no effect on music at all is equally ignorant, as all music exists
within a specific culture; and because sexuality is influenced by and is part of culture,
one must accept that sexuality can inflect the music that any individual produces, along
with the cultural context within which that music is created.
At the very least, the West Coast percussion ensemble was created largely by
queer men, and as such, deserves, first, broad queer recognition; and second, a
consideration as to what its queer roots might be. What has now become a somewhat
ubiquitous genre in professional and academic musical settings, the percussion
ensemble was at one point a fringe project involving queer men, women, dancers, and
artists. Sexuality aside, the individuals who fostered the percussion ensemble were
outsiders, wholly devoted to artistic expressions that celebrated their outsider status. In
this sense, percussion was a queer enterprise, not only because of its experimental
nature, but because it, as an entity, avoids any clear cut definition: any object can be
treated in a percussive manner, including other musical instruments,276 and the body
itself.277 Percussion is only limited by the imagination of the creator (composer or
276See Guero (1969) by Helmut Lachenmann for piano solo; Etudes Boreales (1978) for percussionist
playing piano by Cage; and Ko-Tha (1967) by Giacinto Scelsi are three examples of works for non-
percussion instruments treated in percussive manners.
277 See ?Corporel (1985) by Vinko Globokar
211
performer), and any attempt to define or limit its scope (to “heteronormalize” it),278 will
be met with a desire to further expand what percussion is capable of, just as “queer” is a
constantly changing category that will always exist in relation to “heteronormativity.” The
field of percussion is well suited to queer critique; acknowledging a queer percussion
history is only one possible project within this field.
As a final statement about the relationship between art and sexuality, Michael
Bronski suggests how we can consider the ways in which they are related:
Our culture makes strong distinctions between politics and culture: how we live our lives
vs. what we enjoy. This has occurred partly because we have allowed sexuality to be
compartmentalized and privatized. We have denied the fact that our most fundamental
experience of pleasure is essentially sexual in nature. The pleasure of a concert, a
painting, a play, a movie, all relate in some way to our sexuality. Things we feel, see,
hear, and touch enter our consciousness through the physical sense but they become
part of our lives and beings through what they mean to us. Our experience of the material
world in all of its forms and manifestations is profoundly sensual.279
Considering the West Coast percussion ensemble as a “sensual” enterprise further
places Cage, Cowell, and Harrison’s compositions within a queer framework that
celebrates their lives as queer composers that engaged not only the ears, but the body,
eyes, and minds of those they encountered.
278There have been many projects that attempt to standardize percussion set ups as a way to ease
logistics, including the recent 12-person percussion ensemble, Ensemble XII, that frequently works with a
largely fixed set of instruments, and the fixed multiple percussion set ups of percussion Samuel Z.
Solomon. While the idea of limiting instrumentation is appealing to the performer, this is antithetical to the
essence of what percussion is, and could potentially be; percussion as a category is constantly
expanding, and will continue to do so. The same idea exists for manuals that seek to standardize
percussion notation, including Contemporary Percussion by Reginald Smith Brindle, and How to Write for
Percussion by Samuel Z. Solomon. While these handbooks are invaluable aids to any performer or
composer of percussion music, the attempt to create a rigid notational framework for percussion is
unnecessary, and has unintended consequences as it squelches creativity by presenting a falsely
comprehensive system.
279 Bronski, Culture Clash, 213.
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Vitae

William Solomon, percussion

Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance (2005)

Master of Musical Arts in Percussion Performance (2007)

Doctor of Musical Arts in Percussion Performance, Minor in Music Theory (2016)

Address: 161 W 95th St. #3R, New York, NY 10025

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

To Andrew, thank you for your constant love and support,

Figures and table vii

Chapter 1: Establishing Context 17

San Francisco’s Queer and Asian Communities 17

West Coast Group: Relationships and Sexualities 22

Early Percussion Ensemble: Ultramodernism and Modern Dance 43

Chapter 2: Queer Influences 71

The Queer Influence of Dance 73

Chapter 3: Analysis: Double Music 102

Part II - Repertoire and Analysis of the West Coast Percussion Ensemble:

Chapter 4: Doris Humphrey’s Dance Rhythms, and Second-level Works 123

Chapter 6: Percussion in Dance Class, and First-level Works 157

I. Works with ostinato throughout 165

III. Use of morphing or quasi-ostinati 185

1. John Cage and Lou Harrison, Double Music, player 3, m. 57 - 71 106

1. Stages of Development in the Dance-Music Continuum 206

collective interest in the treatment of the percussion ensemble as a discrete musical

entity and performance medium. Because of a unique combination of factors, including

strong Asian-Pacific Rim influences, a bourgeoning modern dance community, and a

ensemble found a fertile ground in which to incubate and mature.

While there had been previous individual compositions featuring percussion

instruments, notably George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique (1924), Amadeo Roldán’s

performances, publishing scores, distributing recordings, and publicizing their activities

in support these works.

Modern period, composers generally employed percussion in orchestral and operatic

we would generally consider as today’s batterie in the modern orchestra. Orchestral

as well as to provide color and rhythmic accentuation. The treatment of percussion

began to change quickly in the twentieth century as musical modernism developed a

(1931).4 The performance demands on percussionists increased, requiring more

and mallets, as well as confronting increasingly complicated rhythms and non-standard

became quickly foregrounded in the 1920s and 1930s as modernism became a

dominant force in concert music.

two, and as a result, separate musical production apparatuses developed

simultaneously in the two locales (performers, venues, recordings, publishing, etc.).

that is telling of each groups’ artistic goals.5

composers, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Virgil

of gay lives, achievements, and presence so long and fiercely silenced?”7

overlapping influence. The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists,

central role of queer collaboration in twentieth-century American concert music.”

producing American cultural identity, and doing so in a time of intense homophobia.”8

study was a transformative influence for me as a gay musician. My deeper

understanding of influences of sexuality on American modernism has led me to turn my

7 Hubbs, Queer Composition of America’s Sound, 131.

generally sexually involved with other cisgendered men, most of my language is

centered around terminology relating to gay men.

(heteronormative meaning straight, or traditionally heterosexual) sexuality to be

identities and activities that don’t conform to heteronormative constraints. Second, it

themselves in terms of sexual identity at various points of their lives. Personal

In contemporary society, identification as a lesbian/gay/bisexual/queer/trans person

personal identity, especially considering the increasingly homophobic atmosphere in

suggesting that both men entered periods of questioning, closeted, or bisexual

placed their artistic status above their sexual status.

knowledge of the biographies of the composers, an understanding of queer sexualities

I shall lay out a few general propositions from which to proceed:

1. Sexuality influences various aspects of one’s life, including artistic, professional,

2. Sexual desires that manifest themselves in art can be either conscious or

Address: 161 W 95th St. #3R, New York, NY 10025 