Henry Cowell: Persian Set

Henry Cowell: Persian Set

In 1956, American music pioneer Henry Cowell was sent by a cultural division of the U.S. Government on a musical tour of the world--not to spread his personal work, but to gather in the music of other countries to share back home. The first sojourn was to Iran... formerly Persia. With the musical knowledge he gained, he chose (besides recording music for Folkways records, later) to write a short composition that would condense many of the musical practices he encountered. The resulting piece was a reading not of specific Persian melodies, but of ambiguous Middle Eastern motifs, where the chatter of percussion meshed with violins and oboes took the slithery place of an oud (wooden instrument of the lute family). Persian Set, this merging of both Persian and Western instrumentation, became one of the most important hybrids of the American 20th-century canon. His other "sets" (on this CD), though composed earlier, use a similar method: the "American Melting Pot" series incorporates German, African, French, Slavic, and other motifs, and "Old American Country Set" has elements of the reels and hornpipes recalled from his childhood in the Midwest. --Robin Edgerton

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