I like to think that Henry Cowell (henceforth "HC" herein) would have been pleased
with this catalog if only because it resembles something that intrigued him as a com-
poser: a mosaic. Perhaps a jigsaw puzzle would be a better analogy-he liked them
too. Many dozens of kind persons have contributed to this puzzle: a piece here, a
piece there, from as far away as Tokyo and Tel Aviv. An officer of the Vienna
Philharmonic made repeated searches regarding the announced 1953 Israel tour of
the Philharmonic's Kammerorchester. An official of the Guatemalan government
filled in a blank relating to the premiere of HC's Chiaroscuro. A member of the
Icelandic Embassy in Washington patiently explained away a seeming contradic-
tion about the edifice that was inaugurated with the aid of HC's 16th Symphony.
Musicians and librarians of course supplied many of the missing puzzle pieces. Some
of them are my old friends, some are new friends. I devoutly wish I could give public
thanks here to each of them individually; but I decline to emulate a recent author
whose acknowledgements filled many pages with names, just names, organized by
country, city, and institution. To try to establish a hierarchy based on the size or
relative importance of the pieces supplied would be preposterous. So I shall now
turn on a stream of consciousness for a paragraph or so and let the names fall where
they may; but these few receive my thanks to the many as well as to themselves.
Doris Hays I think of first because she and I both come from East Tennessee; she
also was the first pianist to perform HC's piano concerto complete in the United
States, a full half a century after he finished it. Sigurd Rascher has, as I have, a
daughter named Karen; his Karen has joined with him in playing HC's saxophone
pieces "hundreds of times" around the world. My old friend from six decades ago,
the late Thor Johnson, by sheer serendipity solved a Cowell problem for me, all
unknowingly, in 1953. Ruth Watanabe and Charles Lindahl lent a big helping hand
with programs and performance records at Eastman. Martha Manion preceded me
in HC publications with a wonderful guidebook to the literature about him that
saved me much work. David Tudor was kind to me with regard to HC on one of
the meanest mornings of my life. Sergeant Major Robert D. Moon together with
his band librarian at West Point pulled the Enigma Variations out of their caps
and sent me a copy of HC's holograph for the Library of Congress. The dancers