Henry Cowell - The Snows of Fuji-yama (audio + sheet music)

Henry Cowell's piano miniatures are well known, many of them bearing titles with reference to legends or mythical figures or places. These frequently utilize “extended techniques,“ such as stroking the strings on the inside of the piano, as in The Aeolian Harp and The Banshee, or striking clusters of notes with the hand or forearm, as in The Tides of Manaunaun. Snows of Fuji-Yama (1924), one of his lesser-known works, was composed in this same spirit. As the composer explains, the piece takes its title from an old legend regarding the famous mountain, in which the snows that cap the peaks are found to be not snow at all, but rather lotus blossoms. Each blossom, the story goes, represents the soul of a different maiden. This is a short piece, with a unique sound. Its vaguely exotic melody is rather straightforward, with simple figures in the lower ranges answered by more lyrical lines in the upper register. What gives the piece its character, however, is the clever way in which Cowell infl