New Musical Resources

book by Cowell

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July 1, 2026

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New Musical Resources is a book by American composer Henry Cowell, first published in 1930. It is an influential technical study of music that explores Cowell's innovative ideas about harmony and composition.1

In the book, Cowell presents his theories on "tone clusters," which are chords produced by playing several adjacent keys on a piano simultaneously. He also discusses "secondal harmonies," which are based on the interval of a second, contrasting with traditional harmonies based on thirds. Cowell's work in this book contributed to the broader experimental and nontonal trends in 20th-century music, alongside composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives.12

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Henry Cowell
…he did in his book New Musical Resources (1919; published 1930), an influential technical study of music. While studying comparative musicology in Berlin with Erich von Hornbostel, Cowell became interested in the music of other cultures; he later studied Asian and Middle Eastern music, elements of which he absorbed into…
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…he did in his book New Musical Resources (1919; published 1930), an influential technical study of music. While studying comparative musicology in Berlin with Erich von Hornbostel, Cowell became interested in the music of other cultures; he later studied Asian and Middle Eastern music, elements of which he absorbed into…
Read More