BIOGRAPHY

John Rowland Cowell was born in Springhouse, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. He was the last of seven children in a family of three girls and four boys spread out over 23 years. His father was an optometrist and optician by trade, but also a theologian, philosopher, book lover and music lover, particularly organ and sacred music. His mother was a great homemaker and a lover of organ music, having studied the organ seriously in her youth. When Cowell imitated one of his sister's piano practices at age three and a half, his mother decided to start teaching him right then. He could read music before he began attending school. Even at that age, he had no doubt that music would be his life, especially church music. With a good professional piano teacher from age six, he progressed like a prodigy.

At age 13, his mother promised him that she would get him the "best organ teacher in Philadelphia.” Cowell began studying with Dr. William T. Timmings, a product of the Royal College of Organists in England, and organist-choirmaster in a large, elegant Episcopal church seven bicycling miles away. The pipe organ and the music of J. S. Bach became the love affair of Cowell’s life. His teacher extended privileges to him, giving him almost unlimited access to the church and grand organ, so that he bicycled seven miles every morning to get in nearly two hours of solitary practice before bicycling a different seven miles to high school. Often he bicycled back to the church after school. He continued his organ studies throughout high school. His emphasis gradually shifted from organ to piano, but he held down the position of organist in a huge Methodist church in Philadelphia with a thrilling four-manual pipe organ.

After high school he auditioned for the greatest living piano teacher of the time, Olga Samaroff Stokowski of The Juilliard School and the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. He won a full scholarship to The Juilliard School in New York, which included studying piano with Stokowski and studying composition with the noted composer Paul Nordoff.

In June of 1942, he graduated summa cum laude from Juilliard and received his induction notice into the U.S. Army in World War II, simultaneously. His draft board let him have a three-month deferral in order to accept a summer scholarship to the Berkshire Music Festival, commonly know as Tanglewood, as a student of Aaron Copland. He was already an active and serious composer thanks to an encouraging start by Dr. Timmings, followed by four years study with Paul Nordoff, to whom Cowell says he owes more than anyone for innovative instruction.

After summer study at Tanglewood, it was off to the army for the duration of the war. He continued his organ service playing in army chapels and even on portable foot pump organs in the field. His continuous service as a church organist was virtually unbroken from his first position at age 14 in 1934 to June 2000.

After earning his commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, in September 1943 he married his best friend from high school, Eleanor Gellert, who was then a Lieutenant J.G. in the "Waves" (Navy) at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. After the war, he was immediately accepted at the Yale School of Music as a composition student of the great German composer and refugee, Paul Hindemith, with whom he studied for two and a half years. According to Cowell, it was a very great learning experience. While at Yale in New Haven, Cowell’s son, John Jr., was born, and Cowell he held the position of organist-choirmaster in an Episcopal church during that time.

After receiving his master's degree at Yale, Cowell was appointed to the music faculty of the College of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. Part of the reason for selecting the position in Tacoma was its close proximity to Seattle, where his wife Eleanor's parents now lived, and two brothers and a sister, as well. Cowell and his wife, each with a big-city background of Philadelphia and New York, were instantly smitten with the Washington countryside; they couldn’t get enough of the lakes, beaches, mountains, trails, wilderness, camping, boating and hiking. Not long after their daughter was born, they acquired a few precious waterfront acres of forest and cove on Filucy Bay. As their children grew, they all delighted at pretending they were frontier people discovering and living off the land and waters.

For a number of years in the 1950s, Cowell was the conductor and “resident composer” for the Seattle Ballet Academy, run by a leading dancer of the Diaghilev Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Calling on the memory of Diaghilev’s collaboration with the likes of Stravinsky, Ravel and all the luminaries of those great times in the 1920s, Cowell took up his choreographic ideas, story atmosphere lines and motivations to the dances, plus endearing quirks of individual dancers. These compositions provided a means of escaping the dreary dead-end quality of much of contemporary composition at the time, which had tended to become fixed upon ingenious complexities dominated by mathematical systems–i.e., music to attract foundation grants–by utilizing a vivid musical style with great freshness and inner validity. During those years he played and composed constantly at every possible outlet.

While in Seattle Cowell became organist-choirmaster at Seattle's Church of the Epiphany. After only two years at Epiphany, Cowell simplified his life by taking the position of organist-choirmaster at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Tacoma. He and his family moved back to Tacoma near the college campus and the church, where he served seven glorious years doing a lot of composing.

During this time, Cowell received a boon to his career development at just the right time. That boon was in the person of the great French conductor-composer Manuel Rosenthal, who was taking a year off from the French National Orchestra in Paris to be Composer-in-Residence and Professor at the College of Puget Sound by a quirk of relationships that had led him there. Rosenthal served as conductor of the Seattle Symphony from 1948-51. He was a unique prodigy of Maurice Ravel, and a stellar exponent of orchestral writing. The orchestration assignments Rosenthal gave to Cowell opened up the whole world of the orchestration to him. Manuel and his brilliant wife Claudine, a singer, and Cowell and his wife Eleanor spent countless musical evenings together pouring through music of all kinds. When Cowell left Hindemith, Hindemith had told him, "Now I will be a kind of poison in your system you will have to go work out through new experiences." According to Cowell, the very French approach of Rosenthal was exactly the right antidote to the extremely Teutonic tutelage of Hindemith. Cowell had already had a heady dose of Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, which also served as an antidote, but not as effective a one as Rosenthal. Cowell and Rosenthal remained the warmest of friends until Rosenthal’s death in Paris in 2003.

In 1959, with the encouragement of the Rosenthals back in Paris, Cowell undertook to become an international performing and composing figure. Some wonderful successes followed over the ensuing three years. Also, during the span of the years 1956-1965, due to successes in New York and then Europe, he was guest soloist approximately 28 times with the Seattle Symphony, which premiered works of Cowell (Milton Katims, conductor).

While living in Paris, Cowell was advised by the best mentors to return to the U.S. to get a doctorate, since the best base for a serious musician was a professorship at a university. He returned to Seattle and went to work on a doctorate at the University of Washington in the place where he could earn a living and support his family. While earning that doctorate, he was organist-choirmaster at St. Stephen's Episcopal in Seattle, with an adult choir, a boys choir and a girls choir. At the same time, he was Dean of Music at Cornish School of Music and Allied Arts in Seattle. Cowell was up every morning at 4:00 a.m. to do his studies until 8:00 a.m., then off to classes, earning a living and making music until late in the evening.

When he received his Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Washington in June 1966, he had a good position in hand, albeit far from Seattle. He became Professor and Chairman of the Music Department at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He remained there until his official retirement in 1985. Throughout those years he was organist-choirmaster at St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Fayetteville. Those were his most ambitious and fulfilling years in church music, with the availability of faculty and gifted students to sing and play all needed instruments for performance of authentic historic works and his own compositions. He also did even more serious performing.

Summers throughout those 20 years during his tenure in northwest Arkansas found the Cowells in Switzerland teaching at Hindemith's last place of residence on Lake Geneva for Syracuse University's summer graduate study for American students. This brought Cowell back to playing a great deal of Hindemith, for which he became something of an expert. He also represented Arkansas in the 1976 Parade of States at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with compositions for orchestra, chorus and as piano soloist.

When the opportunity to take retirement came in 1985, Cowell honored the promise he had made to Eleanor 20 years ago to return to Seattle. They returned to the scene of their love affair of more than 40 years with the natural wonders of Washington State, including a great liking for the dark and moist weather, which brings out the hauntingly beautiful deep greens of the forests and water, with a special love also for the vitality and joy of living (joi de vivre) of its people.

For the next three years, Cowell did substitute organ performance and professional musical organization work. During this interim in his professional life, he took the American Guild of Organists rigorous accreditation examination that tests playing, theoretical and historical knowledge at the highest level and passed it with flying colors. Finally, a year-and-a-half stint at First Lutheran of nearby Bothell led to an eleven-year position at University Lutheran in Seattle near the University of Washington campus. On June 4, 2000, Cowell retired from that position; although it was a fine position in a wonderfully rich musical and liturgical setting, it was time to move on.

Cowell spent the last years of his life in Seattle, overlooking Puget Sound, with a panoramic view of the complete Olympic mountains, islands, boats, and busy ferries landing below. He enjoyed teaching a delightful assortment of students of all ages and continued to perform until the end of his life.

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Webwork by  Elena Greco