Composers Datebook

Henry Cowell was one of the most prolific of all 20th century American composers. Some of his works are aggressively experimental in nature, while others tap into folk traditions and world music. The range and variety are quite remarkable. Cowell wrote so many works, in fact, that even the composer himself often had trouble keeping track of all he had written. Take this genial little Woodwind Quintet, for example. It was written in the early 1930s for the great French flute virtuoso Georges Barrère, who commissioned and premiered many new works involving his instrument. In 1934, Barrère even made a recording of this suite for New Music Quarterly, a publishing venture bankrolled by none other than the retired insurance executive and part-time composer Charles Ives. After that recording, Cowell went on producing new works, and the manuscript of his Woodwind Quintet remained with Barrère, who apparently just filed it away. The music didn’t surface again until 1947, when it was discovered among the late flutists’s collection of scores. On today’s date in 1948, Cowell’s Woodwind Suite received its first concert performance at Columbia University in New York City, and quickly established itself as one of Cowell’s most popular compositions.