The Curious Afterlife of Dissonant Counterpoint: Jeanette B. Holland's Class Notes From Henry Cowell's 1951 Advanced Music Theory Course

Among the materials in the Henry Cowell Papers at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts are Jeanette B. Holland's notes from Cowell's "Advanced Music Theory" course offered spring term 1951 at the New School for Social Research.¹ The archival source comprises thirty-three photocopied handwritten pages. Holland also added page numbers in green ink at the top of each photocopied page.² The document remains significant for many reasons, but in light of this study three stand out. First, the information that she recorded illuminates in part the content of Cowell's theory course: musical exercises that use quartal harmony, dissonant harmony, dissonant counterpoint, and polychordal harmony along with instructions for creating the exercises, information about these techniques, and references to representative composers and musical works, among other things. Second, the new source contains guidelines for dissonant counterpoint and exercises that use the method, all of which date from about thirty-five years after Cowell participated in its early development at the University of California, Berkeley from 1914 to 1917.³ Finally, Holland's notes demonstrate a much later and more institutionalized dissemination of dissonant counterpoint than previously thought by scholars. Rather than Cowell limiting the teaching of the method to private lessons during the 1920s and 1930s, he included it in his New School course for advanced studies in music theory during the 1940s and 1950s. This recently discovered archival source, which has not yet been discussed in scholarly literature, provides a view into Cowell's music theory classroom and broadens our understanding of dissonant counterpoint during the 1950s, decades after it had supposedly ended.

Among other institutions of higher education, Henry Cowell taught courses at the New School for Social Research from 1928 until 1963 or 1964, with the exception of his imprisonment at San Quentin from 1936 to 1940; the class topics included music appreciation, world music, music theory, and composition.⁴ In the New School Bulletin, a catalog of course offerings, dissonant counterpoint is mentioned in the descriptions for two of Cowell's courses: "Advanced Music Theory" (1949-52) and "Materials of Modern Music" (1952-57).⁵ The course description for "Advanced Music Theory" reads:

A comparison of contemporary systems of musical composition—as evolved by Schoenberg, Hindemith, Schillinger, Piston and others—by means of elementary exercises in the use of dissonant counterpoint, the 12-tone row, atonality, polytonality; chords built on 2nds (tone clusters), on alternate 4ths; cross-rhythms and other modern materials.⁶

The course was first offered in spring 1949 and subsequently in fall and spring semesters through 1952. The New School Bulletin for fall 1952 described Cowell's similar course, "Materials of Modern Music," as follows:

How to compose and analyze in various systems of handling 20th century musical materials: dissonant counterpoint, the twelve-tone row, neo-modal writing, the application of mathematics and physics. A comparison of modern techniques as advanced by Piston, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Schillinger, etc.⁷

This class was offered from fall 1952 through spring 1957. (Frank Wigglesworth, one of Cowell's composition students, is listed as the instructor of this course for spring 1956, fall 1956, and spring 1957.)⁸ Among the students in Cowell's 1951 "Advanced Music Theory" course was musicologist Jeanette B. Holland.

Jeanette (Hanna) Babette Holland née Liebrecht was born in Mannheim, Germany, on September 3, 1901.⁹ Following her graduation from the Madchenrealgymnasium [sic] Lieselotteschule in Mannheim, she attended the University of Heidelberg from October 1920 to May 1925. Holland focused her studies on political science and also took courses in Harmonielehre from Professor Pappen and musicology from Professor Heinrich Besseler. She married Otto Holland in May 1923, and they had three children: Heinrich (b. 1927), Hans (b. 1929), and Anne (b. 1935). A family of Jewish descent, the Hollands emigrated from Nazi Germany to the Dominican Republic in May 1939 and finally to the United States in December 1940. From 1950 to 1959 Holland undertook graduate studies in musicology at New York University...