Cowell (1897-1965) was a unique musical figure, if not quite a great composer. Reared in near-poverty among freethinking San Francisco bohemians, he made up in industriousness and novelty what he lacked in stylistic individuality. Cowell’s exploits at the piano—slamming out tone clusters with his forearms, strumming the instrument’s strings—won the admiration of Berg and Bartók and the devotion of his protégés John Cage and Lou Harrison. He was also a generous colleague, working tirelessly to advance new music, despite the complications presented by the grand ambitions of Copland or the mendacity of Varèse. (Even four years in San Quentin, after he pleaded guilty to a morals charge, could not crush his spirit.) Sachs’s deep knowledge of Cowell’s music, and his sensitive insight into the composer’s odd but enduring marriage, enlivens a portrait of a man who, as much as Charles Ives or Louis Armstrong, made modern American music a reality. 

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