A “New Deal” for American Composers: How the WPA Music Copying Project Added American Music to the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection

According to the Free Library of Philadelphia, where the collection is housed, “The Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music is the world’s largest lending library of orchestral performance material.” Ask any conductor with an interest in orchestral music: the Fleisher Collection is an indispensable resource. But it is important to note what happened with the collection because of the WPA Music Copying project. The New Grove entry on Edwin A. Fleisher draws attention to the 2000 manuscripts of American composers copied by hand through this program as well as to the 650 Latin American orchestral works collected in the 1940s by Nicolas Slonimsky.¹ How did they get there?

With the help of Arthur Cohn. That name could be familiar to many and for several possible reasons. Some may know him as the author of books including The Collector’s Twentieth Century Music in the Western Hemisphere and Twentieth Century Music in Western Europe. Others will more likely know him as author of The Literature of Chamber Music, a four-volume encyclopedic collection of annotated entries on chamber music.² For much of his adult life he made his living in the music publishing business, first as head of the Symphonic and Foreign departments at Mills Music, later as director of “serious music” at MCA. He finished his career in that same capacity for Carl Fischer, where he remained until his death at the age of eighty-eight in 1998, just after the publication of The Literature of Chamber Music. He also served as director of the Settlement School from 1952 to 1956. Less known, but perhaps known to some, was his work as a composer, which includes fifty-two works ranging from chamber pieces to full orchestral works. His work in this area was well enough recognized that he spent two summers composing at Yaddo in 1938 and 1939. And it was during this time that he also served in the little-known capacity of curator of the Fleisher Collection, a position he held from 1934 to 1951.

Harry Kownatsky worked for Arthur Cohn and later became the only noncomposer to serve as curator, which he did from 1968 until his retirement in 1973.³ Kownatsky, like Cohn a violinist, was appointed acting curator when Cohn left in 1951. Ted Ceder was curator in between (1952–67). In 2003, just before he died, Kownatsky completed an as-yet-unpublished manuscript titled “The Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music: A Brief History.”⁴ In it he describes the importance of Cohn to the Fleisher Collection stating: “his influence charted the course of the Fleisher Collection for the almost two decades of his tenure—first as head of the music copying project and then as head of the Collection when the WPA ceased to exist.”⁵ Kownatsky’s mention of the music-copying project leads us more directly to the topic at hand.

The music-copying project at the Fleisher Collection was funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of those great FDR ideas with fruits still seen all across the United States. Part of the so-called New Deal that Roosevelt proposed at his inauguration in 1933, the WPA would, from the mid-1930s until the onset of World War II, put more than eight million people to work at a cost of approximately $11 billion. One of those people was John Cage, who included the following quote in one of his Diaries: “We’re all looking forward to the return of the W.P.A. It’s the only thing we ever had any talent for.”⁶ Artists of all types were supported by this program directly. And one category that became a vital part of the work of the Fleisher Collection was assistance to composers through the copying and lending of scores and parts to orchestras for performance.

According to Kownatsky, this came about as the result of a conversation where Fleisher asked Cohn what he thought of his collection. Cohn forthrightly replied, “I don’t think it’s very good.” Fleisher responded, “What do you mean?” Cohn, who was an advocate for contemporary music his entire life, and in particular music by American composers, responded, “Well it should have American music.” Fleisher then said: “You’re absolutely right, but there is no American music to obtain other than what I’ve got. I can’t get American music if it isn’t published.” Cohn’s response determined the role the Fleisher collection would play during the Depression; he said, “Why don’t you copy it?” Kownatsky writes that “this casual conversation set in motion action leading to the most important music copying project under the government work program.”⁷ The remainder of the story unfolds in information I found at the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection in (a) the three file-cabinet drawers filled with correspondence between composers either found in the collection or solicited by it and (b) documentary information about the music copying project and the WPA’s funding of it.⁸

As mentioned earlier, after Cohn and Fleisher discussed the quality of the collection and agreed to look into the copying of living American composers’ scores, Fleisher along with the Free Library of Philadelphia “jointly made application to the Government for a Music Copying Project” in November of 1934. I quote further from an article found among the correspondence about the project, likely written by Fleisher himself:

The request was granted with little delay, and while at first only three copyists were employed, the Project has proven of such great value and importance that each year the number of employees has been increased. All applicants for the Project are given a very thorough examination both for penmanship and musicianship. Consequently, the manuscripts done by them are far above the average and in many instances almost perfect.

He goes on to say that at the time the article was written “almost one hundred musicians are engaged on this project, of which number eighty are copyists, the others are book binders, blue printers, typists, messengers etc.” The WPA only paid salaries so the contributions of the Free Library were space, light, and heat, meaning Fleisher had to personally pay for “all the necessary materials such as paper, ink, etc.”⁹

At the time this article was written (likely sometime in 1939) the collection’s employees had already copied over 700 orchestral works by American composers and another 100 by composers outside the United States. Another 214 were in process at the time Fleisher put this article together.

There were, of course, other music-copying projects going on at the same time elsewhere in the United States but, as Fleisher points out—and this is certainly due to the influence of Arthur Cohn—the Fleisher project was the “only one specializing in the copying of orchestral works by contemporary American composers.”¹⁰ In fact, a letter from Claire Reis, founder of the League of Composers, asks the Fleisher Collection if they would be willing to copy works from commissions to composers by the League of Composers because the New York branch was apparently unwilling. Fleisher’s answer was the same as it always was until the WPA money ran out in 1943: yes.¹¹

While Fleisher was the financial source behind the project, Arthur Cohn was without question the artistic source, and his decisions, although always approved by Fleisher, were key to what eventually was both solicited and chosen for the library.

There is apparently no original list of composers whose music was solicited by the Fleisher Collection. There was, however, a form letter sent to the many, many composers solicited, and each of these is found in the correspondence files. The letter begins as follows: “As one of the leading contemporary American composers, the Free Library of Philadelphia is very anxious to have your works represented in its Collection of orchestral music.” Arthur Cohn’s personal contacts were numerous and he solicited scores from those composers as well as any they might recommend. Howard Hanson was one of those contacts. And many of the composers invited had an Eastman/Rochester connection. Arthur Cohn and Edwin Fleisher both attended on different occasions the American Composers’ Concerts, which Hanson had been organizing since 1925. Cohn attended and reviewed the tenth and eleventh of these for the League of Composers journal Modern Music.¹² Often composers from these festivals would be asked to submit pieces to the collection. In fact, of all the composers mentioned in the eleventh festival review—Charles Naginski, Burrill Phillips, Bernard Rogers, Edmund Haines, William Bergsma, William Denny, and Bernhard Kaun—only Denny is not represented in the Fleisher Collection. And the composers discussed in the tenth season review are also either all found in the collection or were at least invited to submit something to the collection. Contacts like Hanson and festivals of this kind (the Yaddo concerts, for example, were also attended and reviewed by Cohn) were certainly among the ways Cohn and Fleisher found composers.¹³

Another of those contacts was Henry Cowell. Cowell, who had no entries in the original 1933 Fleisher catalogue, had twenty-four in the 1945 edition. The only other American composer who comes close to such a number is Aaron Copland who, according to Kile Smith, sent his scores directly to Fleisher.¹⁴ It is therefore likely that Cowell did too and, in fact, both of them were among the first to be solicited by Arthur Cohn and the Fleisher Collection after the decision was made by Cohn and Mr. Fleisher to seek out orchestral music by American composers.¹⁵ Copland and Cowell ran in both different and similar circles in those days and there’s no doubt that many composers contacted by Fleisher could have been recommendations from either of these two men.

In 1935 the WPA Project began and both Copland and Cowell were contacted. Copland’s letter was sent June 29, 1935. It included the usual “leading composer” statement and then, in common with most of the other letters, became individualized at the end, asking for specific scores, in Copland’s case, his “Two Pieces for String Orchestra” and his “Cortege Macabre” from Grohg, an early ballet from which the “Cortege” was excerpted and performed separately. In addition, the letter states, “The Fleisher Collection already owns all your other published works.”¹⁶

Cowell’s letter is from June 12, 1935. The scores Fleisher asks for are “Four Continuations for String Orchestra,” “Vestiges for Full Orchestra,” “Polyphonica” for chamber orchestra, “Three Irish Dances” for small orchestra, and “Suite for Chamber Orchestra.”¹⁷ These all eventually (except for “Continuations,” which doesn’t seem to exist) found their way into the collection.

With Cowell and Copland, one might assume that Cohn would know what to ask for and that is why the requests are so specific. But then why is it that almost all of the “leading American composers” have similarly specific requests at the end of each letter? Where did they get the titles of pieces? And how did Fleisher get their addresses in order to make contact? The answer to this question will show how, in combination with word of mouth and personal contacts, the Fleisher Collection was able to gather together 510 works by “some 211 composers” at the time Arthur Cohn wrote his March 30, 1938, report on the Music Copying Project, No. 14564.¹⁸ And the composer Colin McPhee, when responding to a request for scores through the typical “leading American composer” form letter, dated January 28, 1936, provided in his letter back the key that in turn provided that answer.

On February 15, 1940, Franklin Price, librarian of the Free Library and typically the “official” correspondent for all these letters, sent a telegram to the League of Composers asking for Colin McPhee’s current address. The League wrote back with that address.¹⁹ This might mean that the League of Composers kept addresses of composers that Fleisher occasionally requested of them. But since the correspondence refers to McPhee not only as a composer but also as a “writer for your magazine,” it could also have been this latter capacity that led Price to write the League. And since the Fleisher also used ASCAP as a source for addresses (see letter from Alexander Laszlo, May 2, 1946, as an example), this didn’t really go far enough to provide anything definitive.²⁰ It was an earlier McPhee letter that did that, the already mentioned response to the Fleisher form letter dated January 18, 1936, where McPhee writes: “I would be very pleased to send you the scores of several works of mine. The ones which you suggest, however, are not available. It was over six years ago when they were listed in Claire Reis’s catalogue.”²¹ What was this “catalogue”?

Those more expert in music of this era might have already known but I didn’t. So I went to the Philadelphia Free Library’s music section just down the hall from Fleisher and had them look up Reis’s name. The results of this search included three editions, one from 1930, one from 1932, and one from 1947 (after the completion of the WPA project, which ended in 1943), titled respectively: “American Composers,” First Edition, September 1930; “American Composers of Today,” Second Edition, September 1932; and “Composers in America,” 1947.²² When I looked at the listing for Colin McPhee I noticed that in 1930 and in 1932, the pieces listed “Sarabande,” “Symphony in One Movement,” and “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra,” found on page 31 of the 1930 edition, were actually the same pieces found in both editions. McPhee refers to the 1930 edition in his letter. But, as I continued looking at the 1932 edition, it became increasingly clear that this was likely the source the Fleisher Collection used for much of its initial solicitation of American composers.

My next test, to see if I was on to something or not, was to look at the 1932 edition and determine if there was a match between it and the composers invited. That list was too large so I enlisted a smaller sample, the one Cohn used in both his 1936 and the aforementioned 1938 WPA reports. Since they are for the most part the same I’ll use the 1936 report since it is closer to the beginning of the project in 1935. Arthur Cohn writes:

Several objectives have been pursued in the selection of works to be copied. One has been the copying of works that have received one or more performances by leading orchestras throughout the world, and thus preserve such works for study by students and music lovers and perusal by conductors. Another has been the choosing of works never performed, but still of high value. . . . The tendency of composers as regards their esthetic principles of composition has been taken into consideration, and thus the representation of each particular tendency of composition within the contemporary field has been fulfilled.²³

In other words, Cohn made no value judgments, instead simply looking at what was out there, trying to classify it into usable library categories, and then coming up with the following labels: “classic,” “romantic,” “modern,” “nationalistic,” “ultra-modern,” and for obvious reasons, “Philadelphia composers.” He also includes composers he believes most famously represent those labels. In Claire Reis’s International Society for Contemporary Music publication, especially the 1932 second edition, almost all of those composers’ names are found in the book. And further, in the pieces they list, the correspondence between the book and what Fleisher asks for is so close that I am certain, at least for the initial mailings in 1935, Claire Reis’s book American Composers, in its 1932 second edition, was the primary source used to initially solicit composers for the WPA Music Copying Project at the Philadelphia Free Library.

To demonstrate that, let’s look at one of Cohn’s categories, “classic,” to see if the composers he selects as representative are found in the Reis book. The composers are Franz Bornschein, Rossiter Cole, Felix Borowski, F. S. Converse, Cecil Burleigh, Wesley LaViolette, and Albert Elkus.²⁴ In the 1932 edition of American Composers every one of these composers is listed. In fact, there are only a few exceptions—David Diamond, Ferde Grofé, Paul White, besides the local Philadelphians (although George F. Boyle is listed in American Composers)—who are not both in the index and on Cohn’s list. And remember, this catalog was printed in 1932, thus informing the first choices of composers solicited, that date being 1935. The composers not on Cohn’s list, in any event, all definitely found their way into the collection. According to Gary Galván’s database (see the appendix in his essay in the previous issue of American Music), forty out of the forty-six composers invited in 1935, the first year of the WPA Music Copying Project, can be found in the 1932 American Composers book.²⁵ Since there are 135 composers listed in the index, which then have detailed information in the pages following, I think it is likely this was the primary source for initial solicitation with “word of mouth” and personal recommendations easily filling out the remaining invitations to submit works for the purposes of copying and including them in the Fleisher Collection.

If what I’ve already suggested doesn’t yet convince, let me add one other bit of evidence—this concerning how Fleisher knew what to ask for when including specific pieces at the bottom of the “leading American composer” form letter. Let’s compare the “leading composer” letter to Edward Burlingame Hill, then a composition professor at Harvard (Leonard Bernstein and Elliott Carter being two of his most famous students there), with his “American Composers” biography. Fleisher asks for his “Stevensoniana Suite No. 1,” “Symphony No. 1 in B-flat,” “Symphony No. 2 in C Major,” and his “Concertino for Piano and Orchestra.”²⁶ In the American Composers entry one notices immediately that the works asked for not only correspond to what is found there but in a very particular way: Fleisher only asks for the unpublished manuscripts.²⁷ And what about pieces that may have been written between 1932 and 1935? In the Grove entry for Burlingame Hill, two additional pieces are listed, his “Sinfonietta for String Orchestra” from 1932, and his Violin Concerto from 1933–34.²⁸ It seems unlikely that these pieces would have been omitted had Fleisher known about them. Instead it is highly likely that Reis’s book was the source for what Fleisher asks Burlingame Hill to send.

The ultramodernists—whom Elliott Carter, in his essay “Expressionism in American Music,” indirectly addressed as “adherents of other aesthetics” who “were more and more forgotten”—are now the objects of study to a far greater extent than most of the composers Cohn mentioned in his two WPA reports, including some of the most famous composers of the day.²⁹ Whether it be Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Adolph Weiss, John J. Becker, Roger Sessions (some may be surprised to find him here), or all other composers Cohn listed as leaders in the “ultramodern” style, there’s little debate now that these were among the significant composers of their generation. However, I was and remain curious about the composers we no longer attend to, including most of the composers Cohn mentioned in the other categories included in the collection, regarded in their day as this country’s “leading composers.”

It’s too bad that American composers then and now didn’t and don’t take a lesson from Arthur Cohn whose “all of the above” mentality made room in the Fleisher Collection for every type of composer writing music in America, be that Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America. All of it. To be honest, most of it is not good. And there’s a reason why most of these composers are no longer played. But you have to wonder how in the world one can sort that all out unless you make room by including as much as possible and letting posterity (and those who study it) decide.

For the purposes of my research, the main concern was to find out who had been solicited, when, and how decisions were made to determine that. The rest of the story, beyond the confines of this specific research question, remains to be told. I’d like now to consider my second research question: how did the percussion ensemble scores that introduced an entire new genre into the world of European classical music become part of the Fleisher library?

In 1979, as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I heard a piece of music that changed my life. The piece was called Three Dance Movements (1933) and the composer was William Russell. I was at the time training to become an orchestral musician and it is certain that my exposure to the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection would have, in due time, been as a result of my involvement in orchestral music. But fate would go elsewhere for me. I did not ultimately pursue a career as an orchestral musician and instead became deeply involved with the history of percussion music, particular the early percussion music of the twentieth-century American avant-garde (or, as it was then called, “ultra-modern” music). And the beginning of that was this fabulous little percussion work by William Russell, one of several similar compositions found in the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection. I fell in love with the audacious wildness of the piece. It begins with a waltz in 7/4, then a march in 3/4, and ends with a fox trot in 5/4 that includes the breaking of a bottle near the end.

I was fascinated by this and similar percussion music (which I heard in a percussion literature course taught by then-professor of percussion Thomas Siwe). And what these compositions had in common was their all being found in the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection at the Philadelphia Free Library. I became so enthusiastic that I decided to research the collection’s percussion holdings and wrote the collection in the fall of 1979. The response, on November 28, was from the composer Romulus Franceschini, who wrote: “We no longer have reliable information concerning the acquisition of these works.” ³⁰ It took me more than twenty-five years (August 2005 to be exact) to prove Mr. Franceschini wrong about that! What follows is the story of how those pieces got there.

Henry Cowell was, as John Cage once called him, the “open sesame” of music and certainly when it came to the “ultra-moderns,” particularly those who wrote percussion music at the time Cohn was seeking out scores for the collection. And since the question concerns how percussion music got into an orchestral library—one so strict that it didn’t even include the addition of the chorus until 1980—it is likely that Cowell would have been the contact with Cohn in this regard.

The problem was that Cowell was soon in a lot of trouble, due to being accused of a “morals charge” that would put him in San Quentin until 1940. The person who served as his administrative assistant during this difficult time was the composer Johanna Beyer. And Beyer was one of the composers found in a collection of percussion music published by Cowell’s New Music Edition as part of its “Orchestra Series” in 1936.³¹ The Fleisher Collection already had a copy of that as I discovered in the closest thing to a “smoking gun” memo you’ll find in this essay. The memo, written by librarian Franklin Price on November 3, 1939, details how percussion music written in the 1930s and early 1940s became part of the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music.

Price first writes that he called Mr. Fleisher that day to report the library’s having received from Johanna Beyer a score for percussion orchestra. This would have been her percussion suite from 1933 since they had already obtained IV for percussion when the New Music edition arrived. The other piece, Percussion op. 14, as we shall see, came to the collection later. These were the only three pieces listed at the time of the 1945 catalog’s publication. Price goes on to say that he and Arthur Cohn discussed the matter and that Cohn told Price that “during a conversation with Miss Beyer she told him that she had in her possession or could obtain the manuscript scores for some 15 works of this character.” He mentions the New Music Orchestra Series percussion works that were already in the collection, thus presumably establishing a precedent, and that Mr. Cohn suggested Mr. Fleisher be asked the following questions:

Shall the library procure from Miss Beyer or from other sources music of this type?

Mr. Fleisher’s answer was in the affirmative.

Shall material for percussion orchestra be placed in a new classification, i.e. Percussion Orchestra?

Mr. Fleisher also approved of this action being taken.

In conclusion, Price writes: “Accordingly the Library is writing today to Miss Beyer requesting the works in question and since the majority of them are comparatively short it is hoped that these may be secured promptly and completely copied in time to be included in the supplement.”³²

“The supplement” in this case was the 1945 edition and, indeed, the heading “Percussion Orchestra” finds its way into the supplement. With close to thirty entries, composers included Milhaud (his battery concerto of 1930), Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, as well as works by composers now closely associated with the early beginnings of the percussion ensemble. Johanna Beyer, John J. Becker, José Ardévol, William Russell, Harold Davidson, and Gerald Strang are lesser-known but important figures; the better known composers Cage and Lou Harrison, Cowell and Edgard Varèse complete the holdings.

Annotations accompanied each entry and the person who provided most of the annotations for the percussion orchestra works was also the one who provided most of the scores. In fact, he is the one Beyer turned to, the one who “could obtain the manuscript scores for some 15 works of this character.” That person was John Cage, who before becoming John Cage the prepared piano composer, before becoming John Cage the chance composer, the indeterminate composer and so on, was known as John Cage the percussion composer. (And for percussionists he also carries the distinction of having created the first percussion ensemble in the United States.) In that capacity he premiered numerous works, including Amadeo Roldán’s Rítmicas 5 and 6, the first pieces ever written for percussion ensemble (at the Cornish School, December 9, 1939). That program included music by William Russell, Fugue and the previously mentioned Three Dance Movements; Pulse; and Return by Henry Cowell, and Cage’s First Construction.

What happened next: Johanna Beyer contacted John Cage, and he in turn contacted Arthur Cohn. The first letter was written one day before the concert just mentioned, December 8, 1939.³³ In it, Cage tells Cohn that Beyer has contacted him about Cohn’s interest in percussion music. He mentions a tour during January (Cage’s ensemble traveled to several locations including Reed College in Portland). Cage’s next letter is after the tour (February 26) where he tells Cohn that he has a pause between concerts (the next one will be at Mills College on July 18) and could send some scores during the spring.³⁴ The next letter, on March 12, 1940, is when he sends fifteen pieces to Cohn.³⁵ These include Cage’s Imaginary Landscape (No. 1), two pieces by José Ardévol (Suite and Study in the Form of a Prelude and Fugue); four pieces by Johanna Beyer (March, Percussion op. 14, Waltz, and Three Movements for Percussion, the latter of which was dedicated to John Cage—it is also the only one of these pieces that Cage’s ensemble performed); three pieces by Henry Cowell, Pulse, Return, and Ostinato Pianissimo (all but this last one performed by Cage); Lou Harrison’s Bomba, Roldán’s Rítmicas 5 and 6, William Russell’s Fugue (published by New Music) and his March Suite. Except for the Fugue, all of the manuscripts sent were original scores. On April 10 Cage sent Harrison’s First Concerto for flute with percussion and his own First Construction in Metal. He announces in the letter that he has resigned from Cornish, “owing,” as he writes, “to the new direction of the school, there is no longer encouragement for experimental work.” He then tells Cohn of his desire to “find a position which will enable me to work in the field of electronic music” and mentions this to Cohn in the hopes that maybe Philadelphia might be a possibility.³⁶

The last letter Cage writes to Cohn concerning the copying of these percussion pieces by Fleisher is on October 3, 1940, with Cage back in Los Angeles. He informs Cohn that the other pieces he has requested, Harrison’s Fifth Simfony and Canticle (later Canticle no. 1), William Russell’s Studies in Cuban Rhythms, and Cage’s Second Construction have all been sent to Henry Cowell “for consideration for publication in the New Music Editions.”³⁷

Cowell was by that time out of prison and working with Percy Grainger in White Plains, New York. Cage gives Cohn Cowell’s address (i.e., Grainger’s, where he was staying at the time) and Cohn must have made successful contact because all these scores found their way into the 1945 supplement. He closes the letter saying he won’t be sending any further scores because

I am very busy trying to establish a center of experimental music, the purpose of which will be to continue the performances and composition of percussion music and to augment this work with the development of electrical instruments and music. This means the immediate use of my large collection of percussion instruments (now over 150) plus the use of Cowell’s Rhythmicon, Theremin instruments, and the amplification of sounds otherwise not loud enough for orchestral purposes.

He then makes his final pitch to Fleisher: “It occurs to me that this work might be carried on in connection with the orchestras already established by Mr. Edwin Fleischer [sic]. I would appreciate your bringing this idea to his attention and making inquiries as to whether the work could be supported in Philadelphia.” Whether Cohn discussed this with Fleisher is not found in the correspondence. In any case, Cage was unsuccessful, not just in Philadelphia but everywhere he asked. He soon moved to Chicago for a brief period and not long after to New York where he lived for the rest of his life.

In 1990 I organized a “new music day” for the Percussive Arts Society in Philadelphia, which in part featured the same early percussion music found in the Fleisher Collection, performing that music in the city that still has many of the original scores. The person who sent them there, John Cage, was the honored guest. One of the concerts was a performance of music by William Russell, including pieces of his found in the Fleisher Collection. Here’s what John Cage wrote about that music in a mesostic using William Russell as the “spine word” down the middle³⁸:

     The music We         lIked the most   More than anything eLse     The music we Loved    Was always anythIng   no matter how shortAnything you’d written    what gave us the Most        pleasuRe was       when yoU’ld        write Something new and now late in my life there’S    a long voodoo ballEt ogou badagri   what an amazing de Light      I can hardLy wait

Cage wrote that two years before he died, still as excited about the percussion music of William Russell as I was at age twenty-two. And this music, the music John Cage (at the invitation of Johanna Beyer) brought to the Fleisher Collection, thanks to the efforts of Edwin A. Fleisher and Arthur Cohn, remains as lively now as it surely must have been when Cage was performing it in the late 1930s.

As I was preparing an earlier version of this essay, I called my former teacher Tom Siwe to ask him a question about the dates of the Roldán premieres. During that animated conversation (both of us still full of enthusiasm for this music and its history) he reminded me that he had received a postcard from Sidney Cowell once, after his having asked her about Johanna Beyer. In that postcard she recounted the following story: “A famous conductor once lectured me severely for my presumption in sending my compositions around with those of Henry Cowell and as I am not a composer I didn’t know what he was talking about and he explained later that he must have thought I was Miss Beyer.”³⁹

I couldn’t help thinking that maybe these fantastic pieces, these chestnuts of an incredible era of experimentation and youthful exuberance in an otherwise difficult time, could have found their way into the Fleisher Collection because of a surreptitious Beyer addition to a shipment of Cowell scores to Philadelphia. And the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection is where one can still find those pieces, pieces that in these conservative times might provide a little “wildness” to return to one of my previous remarks. And as Thoreau once said, “in wildness is the preservation of the world.”⁴⁰

At least that might have been my sentiment as an idealistic twenty-two-year-old when I first discovered Fleisher. Then I really did think this music and my participation in it could not only preserve the world but change it. That certainly hasn’t proven true these last thirty years. But I do know that my involvement with this music has changed me, that this music’s youthful exuberance, if not capable of “preserving the world,” is at least capable—to the willing—of somehow preserving us.

I like the title of that great book Leta Miller and Frederic Lieberman wrote about Lou Harrison, Composing a World.⁴¹ For anyone interested in “American music” in its largest sense—that is, one that doesn’t relegate classical music as being irrelevant to its definition—the Fleisher Collection has a lot to offer. Cohn and his colleagues really did compose a world when they built their collection of American music. They included everybody and everything they could get their hands on—including, not surprisingly, a lot of music by Lou Harrison and his compositional world.