The Latest Addition to the Updated and Expanded Articles on AAA Commissioned Works That Originally Appeared in the AAA Festival Journal from 1997 to 2019 is:

Works by three composers: Henry Cowell, Otto Luening, and Paul Pisk updated and expanded from the 2002 Edition.
http://www.ameraccord.com/aaacommissions14.php

This installment discusses three strongly contrasting works by three similarly diverse and highly acclaimed composers of the twentieth century:
• the eccentric, experimental Henry Cowell, creator of the “tone cluster” and the first to create works for the piano that involved playing “inside” the instrument (plucking and strumming the strings and other such unusual actions);
• Otto Luening, a normally conservative composer who in his mid-career at Columbia University (where, in fact, he was one of Elsie Bennett’s professors), was nevertheless among the first generation of composers to experiment with electronic music;
• and the less well-known, but highly respected Viennese and later naturalized American composer and musicologist Paul Pisk, once a student of Arnold Schoenberg, but highly diverse in his compositional language throughout his career.

All three compositions were commissioned by Elsie Bennett in 1960.

Cowell contributed the second accordion concerto, Concerto Brevis, to the AAA commissioned repertoire, the first being Paul Creston’s concerto, commissioned in 1958. The Concerto Brevis is in five movements, and highly modal and melodic in structure, though employing gently dissonant tone clusters in a few places.

Luening wrote a humorous, fast-fingered novelty he entitled Iridescent Rondo. It is full of amusing musical impishness and is in no way like his contributions to electronic music.

Pisk’s curiously titled Salute to Juan (referring to San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico) is imbued with Latin rhythms, again uncharacteristic of this Teutonic composer. He later wrote a full and non-ethnic work for two accordions and orchestra that is more representative of his contemporary style. It is examined in the updated, expanded version of the 2005 AAA Festival Journal article and may be read and sound sampled at http://www.ameraccord.com/aaacommissions8.php.

The Cowell and Luening works may be heard on the AAA CCC home page (http://www.ameraccord.com/aaacommissions.php). Enjoy!