The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

by Alex Ross

Cowell enrolled at the University of California in 1914 and studied with Seeger for two crucial years. He also joined a mildly cultish Pismo Beach community called Temple of the People, led by the Theosophist poet John Varian, who proclaimed, “There is a new race birthing here in the West. We are the germic embryonic seed of future majesties of growth.” From Varian and other local visionaries Cowell inherited the idea that California would be the eastern frontier of a great Pacific Rim culture, an ecstatic commingling of far-flung peoples. His vision of a Pacific Rim utopia grew to embrace the entire globe. Indian music, Japanese koto and shakuhachi, Balinese gamelan, old American hymns, Gaelic airs, and Icelandic rímur all figured in his music at one time or another. He thought nothing of supplementing a string quintet with three Native American thundersticks.