Lou Harrison
Encyclopedia
Lou Silver Harrison was an American
composer
. He was a student of Henry Cowell
, Arnold Schoenberg
, and K. P. H. Notoprojo
(formerly called K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat, informally called Pak Cokro).
Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the music of non-Western cultures
into his work, with a number of pieces written for Java
nese style gamelan
instruments
, including ensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and his partner William Colvig
. The majority of his works are written in just intonation
rather than the more widespread equal temperament
. Harrison is one of the most prominent composers to have worked with microtones.
in Burlingame, California
in 1934, then he moved to San Francisco. The diverse music which he was to be exposed to there, including Cantonese opera
, Native American music
, Mexican music, and jazz
as well as classical music, was to have a major influence on him. He also heard recordings of Indonesian music early in life.
Harrison took Henry Cowell
's "Music of the Peoples of the World" course, and also studied counterpoint
and composition
with him. He later went to the University of California at Los Angeles to work at the dance department as a dancer and accompanist. While there, he took lessons from Arnold Schoenberg
which led to an interest in Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique
. The pieces he was writing at this time, however, were largely percussive
works using unconventional materials, such as car brake drums, as musical instruments. These pieces were similar to those being written by John Cage
around the same time, and the two sometimes worked together.
In 1943, Harrison moved to New York City where he worked as a music critic for the Herald Tribune
. While there he met Charles Ives
, became his friend, and did a good deal in bringing Ives to the attention of the musical world, which had largely ignored him up to that point. With the assistance of his mentor Cowell, Harrison prepared and conducted the premiere of Ives's Symphony No. 3, and in return received help from Ives financially. When Ives won the Pulitzer Prize for Music
for that piece, he gave half of the money to Harrison. Harrison also edited a large number of Ives's works, receiving compensation often in excess of what he billed (Miller and Lieberman
1998).
As well as Ives, Harrison supported and promoted the music of other unconventional American composers, including Edgard Varèse
and Carl Ruggles
as well as Alan Hovhaness
. Later during his time in North Carolina, Harrison taught at Black Mountain College
. In 1947, he suffered a nervous breakdown, and moved back to California
.
Following in the path of Canadian composer Colin McPhee
, who had done extensive research in Indonesian music in the 1930s and wrote a number of compositions incorporating Balinese
and Javanese
elements, Harrison's style began to change, showing the influence of gamelan
music more clearly if only in timbre
: "It was the sound itself that attracted me. In New York, when I changed gears out of twelve tonalism, I explored this timbre. The gamelan movements in my Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra [1951] are aural imitations of the generalized sounds of gamelan" (ibid, p. 160). Virgil Thomson
(with whom Harrison also studied) gave him a copy of Harry Partch
's book on musical tuning
, Genesis of a Music, which prompted Harrison to start writing music in just intonation
. He did not abandon equal temperament
altogether, but often expressed a desire to do so. In an oft-quoted comment referring to the frequency ratios used in just intonation, he said, "I'd long thought that I would love a time when musicians were numerate as well as literate. I'd love to be a conductor and say, 'Now, cellos, you gave me 10:9 there, please give me a 9:8 instead,' I'd love to get that!"
Although much influenced by Asian music, Harrison did not visit the continent until a 1961 trip to Japan and Korea and a 1962 trip to Taiwan (ibid, p. 141). He and his partner William Colvig
later constructed a tuned percussion ensemble, using resonated aluminum keys and tubes, as well as oxygen tanks and other found percussion instruments. They called this "an American gamelan," in order to distinguish it from those in Indonesia. [They also constructed?] gamelan-type instruments tuned to just pentatonic scales from unusual materials such as tin cans and aluminium furniture tubing. He wrote "La Koro Sutro" for these instruments and chorus, as well as "Suite for Violin and American Gamelan." In addition, Harrison played and composed for the Chinese guzheng
zither, and presented (with Colvig, his student Richard Dee, and the singer Lily Chin) over 300 concerts of traditional Chinese music in the 1960s.http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/08.09.00/harrison-0032.html
He was a composer-in-residence at San Jose State University
in San Jose, California
during the 1960s. The university honored him with an all-Harrison concert in Morris Daley Auditorium in 1969, featuring dancers, singers, and musicians. The highlight of the concert was the world premiere of Harrison's depiction of the story of Orpheus
, which utilized soloists, the San Jose State University a capella choir, as well as a unique group of percussionists.
Like many other 20th-century composers, Harrison found it hard to support himself with his music, and took a number of other jobs to earn a living, including record salesman, florist, animal nurse, and forestry firefighter.
Harrison was outspoken about his political views, such as his pacifism (he was an active supporter of the international language Esperanto
), and the fact that he was gay. He was also politically active and informed, including knowledge of gay history. He wrote many pieces with political texts or titles, writing, for instance, Homage to Pacifica for the opening of the Berkeley Headquarters of the Pacifica Foundation, and accepting commissions from the Portland Gay Men's Chorus (1988 and 1985) and by the Seattle Men's Chorus
to arrange (1987) his Strict Songs, originally for eight baritones, for "a chorus of 120 male singing enthusiasts. Some of them good; some not so good. But the number is so fabulous" (ibid, p. 98). Lawrence Mass (ibid, p. 190) describes:
Janice Giteck
(ibid, p. 194) describes Harrison as:
On November 2, 1990, the Brooklyn Philharmonic
premiered Harrison's fourth symphony, which he titled Last Symphony. He combined native American music, ancient music, and Asian music, tying it all together with lush orchestral writing. A special inclusion was a series of Navajo "Coyote Stories." He made a number of revisions to the symphonies before completing a final version in 1995, which was recorded by Barry Jekowsky and the California Symphony
for Argo Records
at Skywalker Ranch
in Nicasio, California
in March 1997. The CD also included Harrison's Elegy, to the Memory of Calvin Simmons (a tribute to the former conductor of the Oakland Symphony, who drowned in a boating accident in 1982), excerpts from Solstice, Concerto in Slendro, and Double Music (his collaboration with John Cage).
Harrison and Colvig built two full Javanese-style gamelan, modeled on the instrumentation of Kyai Udan Mas at U.C. Berkeley. One was named Si Betty for the art patron Betty Freeman; the other, built at Mills College, was named Si Darius/Si Madeliene. Harrison taught at Mills College
for several years, where one of his students was Jin Hi Kim
.
. He and Colvig purchased land in Joshua Tree, California
, where they designed and built the Harrison House Retreat, a straw bale house
.
Harrison died in Lafayette, Indiana
, from a heart attack
while on his way to a festival of his music at The Ohio State University.
with small nails inserted into the hammers to give the instrument a more percussive sound.
Harrison's mature musical style is based on "melodicles", short motifs which are turned backwards and upsidedown to create a musical mode
the piece is based on. His music is typically spartan in texture but lyrical, and harmony
usually simple or sometimes lacking altogether, with the focus instead being on rhythm
and melody
. Ned Rorem
describes, "Lou Harrison's compositions demonstrate a variety of means and techniques. In general he is a melodist. Rhythm has a significant place in his work, too. Harmony is unimportant, although tonality is. He is one of the first American composers to successfully create a workable marriage between Eastern and Western forms." Listeners to Harrison's music are often surprised that such a modern, innovative composer actually wrote lyrical melodies and often richly harmonized and orchestrated them, much in the tradition of the late Romantic composers.
Another component of Harrison's aesthetic is what Harry Partch would call corporeality, an emphasis on the physical and the sensual including live, human, performance and improvisation, timbre, rhythm, and the sense of space in his melodic lines, whether solo or in counterpoint, and most notably in his frequent dance collaborations.
Among Harrison's better known works are the Concerto in Slendro, Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra, Organ Concerto with Percussion (1973), which was given at the Proms in London in 1997; the Double Concerto (1981–82) for violin, cello, and Javanese gamelan; the Piano Concerto (1983–85) for piano tuned in Kirnberger #2 (a form of well temperament
) and orchestra, which was written for Keith Jarrett
; and a Concerto for Piano and Javanese Gamelan; as well as four numbered orchestral symphonies. He also wrote a large number of works in non-traditional forms. Harrison was fluent in several languages including American Sign Language
, Mandarin and Esperanto
, and several of his pieces have Esperanto titles and texts, most notably La Koro Sutro (1973).
Like Charles Ives, Harrison completed four symphonies. He typically combined a variety of the musical forms and languages that he preferred. This is quite apparent in the fourth symphony, recorded by the California Symphony for Argo Records, as well as his third symphony, which was performed and broadcast by the Dennis Russell Davies
and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. He was a student of Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, and K. P. H. Notoprojo
K. P. H. Notoprojo
K.P.H. Notoprojo, also known as Tjokrowasito, Wasitodipuro, Wasitodiningrat, among other names, was one of the most highly respected performers of Javanese gamelan. He led the Paku Alaman palace gamelan as well as the gamelan for the Radio Republik Indonesia Yogyakarta, and taught gamelan in...
(formerly called K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat, informally called Pak Cokro).
Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the music of non-Western cultures
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
into his work, with a number of pieces written for Java
Java
Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...
nese style gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
instruments
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
, including ensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and his partner William Colvig
William Colvig
William Colvig was an electrician and amateur musician who was the partner for 33 years of composer Lou Harrison, whom he met in San Francisco, California in 1967...
. The majority of his works are written in just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
rather than the more widespread equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
. Harrison is one of the most prominent composers to have worked with microtones.
Biography
Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon, but moved with his family to a number of locations around the San Francisco Bay Area as a child. He graduated from Burlingame High SchoolBurlingame High School
Burlingame High School is a public high school in Burlingame, California. It is part of the San Mateo Union High School District .-History:...
in Burlingame, California
Burlingame, California
Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. The city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. It is renowned for its many surviving examples of Victorian architecture, its affluence, and...
in 1934, then he moved to San Francisco. The diverse music which he was to be exposed to there, including Cantonese opera
Cantonese opera
Cantonese opera is one of the major categories in Chinese opera, originating in southern China's Cantonese culture. It is popular in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia. Like all versions of Chinese opera, it is a traditional Chinese art form, involving music, singing,...
, Native American music
Native American music
American Indian music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native North Americans, specifically traditional tribal music. In addition to the traditional music of the Native American groups, there now exist pan-tribal and inter-tribal genres as well as distinct Indian subgenres of...
, Mexican music, and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
as well as classical music, was to have a major influence on him. He also heard recordings of Indonesian music early in life.
Harrison took Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...
's "Music of the Peoples of the World" course, and also studied counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
with him. He later went to the University of California at Los Angeles to work at the dance department as a dancer and accompanist. While there, he took lessons from Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
which led to an interest in Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
. The pieces he was writing at this time, however, were largely percussive
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
works using unconventional materials, such as car brake drums, as musical instruments. These pieces were similar to those being written by John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
around the same time, and the two sometimes worked together.
In 1943, Harrison moved to New York City where he worked as a music critic for the Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
. While there he met Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
, became his friend, and did a good deal in bringing Ives to the attention of the musical world, which had largely ignored him up to that point. With the assistance of his mentor Cowell, Harrison prepared and conducted the premiere of Ives's Symphony No. 3, and in return received help from Ives financially. When Ives won the Pulitzer Prize for Music
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year...
for that piece, he gave half of the money to Harrison. Harrison also edited a large number of Ives's works, receiving compensation often in excess of what he billed (Miller and Lieberman
Fredric Lieberman
Fredric Lieberman is an American ethnomusicologist, composer, music professor, and author. He is a music professor and scholar at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he is involved in the University’s Ph.D. Music program, and where, notably, he teaches and studies the Grateful Dead...
1998).
As well as Ives, Harrison supported and promoted the music of other unconventional American composers, including Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
and Carl Ruggles
Carl Ruggles
Charles "Carl" Sprague Ruggles was an American composer of the American Five group. He wrote finely crafted pieces using "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music...
as well as Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer.His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation...
. Later during his time in North Carolina, Harrison taught at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...
. In 1947, he suffered a nervous breakdown, and moved back to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
Following in the path of Canadian composer Colin McPhee
Colin McPhee
Colin McPhee was a Canadian composer and musicologist. He is primarily known for being the first Western composer to make an ethnomusicological study of Bali, and for the quality of that work...
, who had done extensive research in Indonesian music in the 1930s and wrote a number of compositions incorporating Balinese
Music of Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island that shares in the gamelan and various other Indonesian musical styles. Bali, however, has its own techniques and styles, including kecak, a form of singing that imitates the sound of monkeys...
and Javanese
Music of Java
The Music of Java embraces a wide variety of styles, both traditional and contemporary, reflecting the diversity of the island and its lengthy history...
elements, Harrison's style began to change, showing the influence of gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
music more clearly if only in timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
: "It was the sound itself that attracted me. In New York, when I changed gears out of twelve tonalism, I explored this timbre. The gamelan movements in my Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra [1951] are aural imitations of the generalized sounds of gamelan" (ibid, p. 160). Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
(with whom Harrison also studied) gave him a copy of Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...
's book on musical tuning
Musical tuning
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...
, Genesis of a Music, which prompted Harrison to start writing music in just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
. He did not abandon equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
altogether, but often expressed a desire to do so. In an oft-quoted comment referring to the frequency ratios used in just intonation, he said, "I'd long thought that I would love a time when musicians were numerate as well as literate. I'd love to be a conductor and say, 'Now, cellos, you gave me 10:9 there, please give me a 9:8 instead,' I'd love to get that!"
Although much influenced by Asian music, Harrison did not visit the continent until a 1961 trip to Japan and Korea and a 1962 trip to Taiwan (ibid, p. 141). He and his partner William Colvig
William Colvig
William Colvig was an electrician and amateur musician who was the partner for 33 years of composer Lou Harrison, whom he met in San Francisco, California in 1967...
later constructed a tuned percussion ensemble, using resonated aluminum keys and tubes, as well as oxygen tanks and other found percussion instruments. They called this "an American gamelan," in order to distinguish it from those in Indonesia. [They also constructed?] gamelan-type instruments tuned to just pentatonic scales from unusual materials such as tin cans and aluminium furniture tubing. He wrote "La Koro Sutro" for these instruments and chorus, as well as "Suite for Violin and American Gamelan." In addition, Harrison played and composed for the Chinese guzheng
Guzheng
The guzheng or "gu zheng", also called zheng is a Chinese plucked zither. It has 18-23 or more strings and movable bridges....
zither, and presented (with Colvig, his student Richard Dee, and the singer Lily Chin) over 300 concerts of traditional Chinese music in the 1960s.http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/08.09.00/harrison-0032.html
He was a composer-in-residence at San Jose State University
San José State University
San Jose State University is a public university located in San Jose, California, United States...
in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
during the 1960s. The university honored him with an all-Harrison concert in Morris Daley Auditorium in 1969, featuring dancers, singers, and musicians. The highlight of the concert was the world premiere of Harrison's depiction of the story of Orpheus
Orpheus
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
, which utilized soloists, the San Jose State University a capella choir, as well as a unique group of percussionists.
Like many other 20th-century composers, Harrison found it hard to support himself with his music, and took a number of other jobs to earn a living, including record salesman, florist, animal nurse, and forestry firefighter.
Harrison was outspoken about his political views, such as his pacifism (he was an active supporter of the international language Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
), and the fact that he was gay. He was also politically active and informed, including knowledge of gay history. He wrote many pieces with political texts or titles, writing, for instance, Homage to Pacifica for the opening of the Berkeley Headquarters of the Pacifica Foundation, and accepting commissions from the Portland Gay Men's Chorus (1988 and 1985) and by the Seattle Men's Chorus
Seattle Men's Chorus
Seattle Men's Chorus founded in 1979 in Seattle, Washington, bills itself as the largest community chorus in America, and the largest gay men's chorus in the world...
to arrange (1987) his Strict Songs, originally for eight baritones, for "a chorus of 120 male singing enthusiasts. Some of them good; some not so good. But the number is so fabulous" (ibid, p. 98). Lawrence Mass (ibid, p. 190) describes:
- With Lou Harrison...being gay is something affirmative. He's proud to be a gay composer and interested in talking about what that might mean. He doesn't feel threatened that this means he won't be thought of as an American composer who is also great and timeless and universal.
Janice Giteck
Janice Giteck
-Biography:Giteck grew up in Hicksville, Long Island and moved to Arizona when she was twelve years old. She attended Mills College, completing her Master's in 1969 and studying under Darius Milhaud. She later studied under Olivier Messiaen, and following this she studied percussion with Daniel...
(ibid, p. 194) describes Harrison as:
- unabashedly androgynous in his way of approaching creativity. He has a vital connection to the feminine as well as to the masculine. The female part is apparent in the sense of beingness. But at the same time, Lou is very male, too, ferociously active and assertive, rhythmic, pulsing, and aggressive.
On November 2, 1990, the Brooklyn Philharmonic
Brooklyn Philharmonic
The Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, commonly known as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is an American orchestra based in the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City...
premiered Harrison's fourth symphony, which he titled Last Symphony. He combined native American music, ancient music, and Asian music, tying it all together with lush orchestral writing. A special inclusion was a series of Navajo "Coyote Stories." He made a number of revisions to the symphonies before completing a final version in 1995, which was recorded by Barry Jekowsky and the California Symphony
California Symphony
The California Symphony is an American orchestra based in Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is notable for being the only American orchestra that performs at least one work by an American composer on every one of its programs.The orchestra was...
for Argo Records
Argo Records
Argo Records was started in December of 1955 to accommodate some of the rapidly growing recording activity at Chess Records. Originally the label was called Marterry, but bandleader Ralph Marterie objected, and within a couple of months the imprint was renamed Argo.Initially, Argo offered a...
at Skywalker Ranch
Skywalker Ranch
Skywalker Ranch is the name of the workplace of film director and producer George Lucas. It is located in a secluded, but open area near Nicasio, California, in Marin County. The ranch is located on Lucas Valley Road, although Lucas is not related to the road's namesake, who was a...
in Nicasio, California
Nicasio, California
Nicasio is a census-designated place in Marin County, California. It is located west-southwest of Novato, at an elevation of 194 feet . The population was 96 at the 2010 census....
in March 1997. The CD also included Harrison's Elegy, to the Memory of Calvin Simmons (a tribute to the former conductor of the Oakland Symphony, who drowned in a boating accident in 1982), excerpts from Solstice, Concerto in Slendro, and Double Music (his collaboration with John Cage).
Harrison and Colvig built two full Javanese-style gamelan, modeled on the instrumentation of Kyai Udan Mas at U.C. Berkeley. One was named Si Betty for the art patron Betty Freeman; the other, built at Mills College, was named Si Darius/Si Madeliene. Harrison taught at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
for several years, where one of his students was Jin Hi Kim
Jin Hi Kim
Kim Jin-Hi is a geomungo player and composer.She is known for introducing the geomungo to the wider world through her contemporary chamber and orchestral compositions and large-scale multimedia pieces, as well as her extensive work in avant-garde and cross-cultural free...
.
Personal life
Harrison lived for many years with Bill Colvig in Aptos, CaliforniaAptos, California
Aptos is a census-designated place in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. The population was 6,220 at the 2010 census.Aptos is an unincorporated area of Santa Cruz county, consisting of several small communities...
. He and Colvig purchased land in Joshua Tree, California
Joshua Tree, California
Joshua Tree is a census-designated place in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 7,414 at the 2010 census, up from 4,207 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Joshua Tree is located in the Mojave Desert at ....
, where they designed and built the Harrison House Retreat, a straw bale house
Straw-bale construction
Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses bales of straw as structural elements, building insulation, or both...
.
Harrison died in Lafayette, Indiana
Lafayette, Indiana
Lafayette is a city in and the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, northwest of Indianapolis. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 67,140. West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home to Purdue University, which has a large impact on...
, from a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
while on his way to a festival of his music at The Ohio State University.
Harrison's music
Many of Harrison's early works are for percussion instruments, often made out of what would usually be regarded as junk or found objects such as garbage cans and steel brake drums. He also wrote a number of pieces using Schoenberg's twelve tone technique, including the opera Rapunzel and his Symphony on G (Symphony No. 1) (1952). Several works feature the tack piano, a kind of prepared pianoPrepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....
with small nails inserted into the hammers to give the instrument a more percussive sound.
Harrison's mature musical style is based on "melodicles", short motifs which are turned backwards and upsidedown to create a musical mode
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
the piece is based on. His music is typically spartan in texture but lyrical, and harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
usually simple or sometimes lacking altogether, with the focus instead being on rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
and melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
. Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...
describes, "Lou Harrison's compositions demonstrate a variety of means and techniques. In general he is a melodist. Rhythm has a significant place in his work, too. Harmony is unimportant, although tonality is. He is one of the first American composers to successfully create a workable marriage between Eastern and Western forms." Listeners to Harrison's music are often surprised that such a modern, innovative composer actually wrote lyrical melodies and often richly harmonized and orchestrated them, much in the tradition of the late Romantic composers.
Another component of Harrison's aesthetic is what Harry Partch would call corporeality, an emphasis on the physical and the sensual including live, human, performance and improvisation, timbre, rhythm, and the sense of space in his melodic lines, whether solo or in counterpoint, and most notably in his frequent dance collaborations.
Among Harrison's better known works are the Concerto in Slendro, Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra, Organ Concerto with Percussion (1973), which was given at the Proms in London in 1997; the Double Concerto (1981–82) for violin, cello, and Javanese gamelan; the Piano Concerto (1983–85) for piano tuned in Kirnberger #2 (a form of well temperament
Well temperament
Well temperament is a type of tempered tuning described in 20th-century music theory. The term is modelled on the German word wohltemperiert which appears in the title of J.S. Bach's famous composition, The Well-Tempered Clavier...
) and orchestra, which was written for Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music.Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music; as...
; and a Concerto for Piano and Javanese Gamelan; as well as four numbered orchestral symphonies. He also wrote a large number of works in non-traditional forms. Harrison was fluent in several languages including American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
, Mandarin and Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, and several of his pieces have Esperanto titles and texts, most notably La Koro Sutro (1973).
Like Charles Ives, Harrison completed four symphonies. He typically combined a variety of the musical forms and languages that he preferred. This is quite apparent in the fourth symphony, recorded by the California Symphony for Argo Records, as well as his third symphony, which was performed and broadcast by the Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
Films
- 1986 – Lou Harrison : "cherish, conserve, consider, create." Directed by Eric Marin.
- 1995 – Musical Outsiders: An American Legacy – Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Terry Riley. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
- 2010 - Lou Harrison: A World of Music. Directed by Eva Soltes.
Chamber Works
- Ariadne, flute & percussion
- At the Tomb of Charles Ives, chamber orchestra
- Concerto for Flute & Percussion
- Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra, percussion ensemble, organ and ensemble
- Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra, Asian instrument and ensemble
- New First Suite for Strings, string orchestra
- Pacifika Rondo, chamber orchestra
- Por Gitaro, guitar solo
- Praise for the Beauty of Hummingbirds, mixed quintet
- Rhymes with Silver, violoncello and ensemble, mixed quintet
- Serenade for Guitar with optional Percussion, mixed duo, guitar solo
- Seven Pastorales, chamber orchestra
- Solstice, octet (flute, oboe, trumpet, 2 cellos, string bass, celesta, tack piano)
- Songs in the Forest, mixed quartet
- String Quartet Set
- Suite for Cello and Harp
- Suite for Violin with American Gamelan
- Suite for Violin with String Orchestra
- Suite for Violoncello and Piano
- Suites for Cello and String Orchestra
- The Perilous Chapel, mixed quartet
- Varied Trio, Rice Bowls, Violin, Vibraphone, Piano
Orchestral Works
- A Parade
- Elegiac Symphony
- Music for Violin with Various Instruments, European, Asian, and African, string solo and orchestra
- Symphony No. 4
- Symphony On G
Vocal Works
- Air from Rapunzel, high voice and ensemble
- Alma Redemptoris Mater, low voice and ensemble
- La Koro Sutro, mixed chorus and gamelan, mixed chorus and ensemble
- Mass to Saint Anthony, mixed chorus and ensemble
- Strict Songs, baritone solo, chorus and chamber orchestra
- Three Songs, men's chorus and ensemble
Archives
- Lou Harrison Archive at the University of California, Santa CruzUniversity of California, Santa CruzThe University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
- SJSU School of Music & Dance: Lou Harrison
Obituaries and remembrances
- Obituary from the Musical Times
- Remembrance by Don Gillespie, from NewMusicBox
- I remember Lou, from Other Minds
Interviews
- Duffie, Bruce. “Composer Lou Harrison: A Conversation With Bruce Duffie.” April 1987.
- Golden, Barbara. “Conversation with Lou Harrison.” eContact! 12.2 — Interviews (2) (April 2010). Montréal: CECCanadian Electroacoustic CommunityFounded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
. - Clark, Philip. "Chimes of Freedom" The Wire, August 2002, pp 28–32
Other links
- Lou Harrison: Middle Period Works
- New Albion Artists: Lou Harrison
- Peermusic Classical: Lou Harrison Composer's Publisher and Bio
- Lou Harrison artist page from Frog Peak Music site
- Other Minds: Lou Harrison
- Lou Harrison Documentary Project
- Lou Harrison: an interview by Dr Geoff Smith
- Rapunzel by William Morris, inspiration for Lou Harrison's opera
Listening
- Art of the States: Lou Harrison seven works by the composer
- Lou Harrison tribute from Other Minds Festival 9, 2003
- Epitonic.com: Lou Harrison including tracks from Rhymes With Silver and La Koro Sutro
- Del Sol Quartet:Tear with Harrison's Song of Palestine from String Quartet Set by Del Sol QuartetDel Sol QuartetThe Del Sol Quartet is a string quartet based in San Francisco, California. Del Sol is known for actively working with living composers from a wide range of cultural perspectives, and recording and performing exclusively 20th and 21st century music...