The Tides of Manaunaun

The Building of Banba, for which The Tides of Manaunaun was composed, was based on Irish mythological poems by the theosophist John Osborne Varian.

[citation needed] The production was staged in the summer of 1917 at a convention of the theosophical community of Halcyon in coastal San Luis Obispo County, California; Varian was a leader of the group, to which he had introduced the 20-year-old Cowell.

The work is the most famous and widely played of Cowell's tone cluster pieces, which he performed during tours of North America and Europe from the early 1920s through the mid-1930s.

As Cowell describes on the final, narrative track of the Folkways album on which his last piano recordings appear, In Irish mythology, Manaunaun was the god of motion and of the waves of the sea.

The Harp of Life (1924), Cowell said, "is another in the suite based on the early Irish mythological opera," as, he explained, were The Voice of Lir (1920) and The Trumpet of Angus Óg (1918–24).

Cowell also wrote songs of a similarly mythological character, including Angus Óg (The Spirit of Youth) (1917) and Manaunaun's Birthday (1924).