The Music Of Lou Harrison

Lou Harrison, who celebrated his 80th birthday in 1997, has often been cited as one of the America's most original and influential composers. In addition to his prolific musical output, Harrison is also a skilled painter, calligrapher, essayist, critic, poet, and instrument-builder. During his long and varied career, he has explored dance, Asian music, tuning systems, and universal languages, and has actively championed political causes ranging from pacifism to gay rights. As an articulate and outspoken observer of the contemporary musical scene, he is frequently quoted in the media; yet until now no comprehensive study of his life and works has been published. The present book, supported by extensive archival research and nearly 70 interviews, examines the ideas that have shaped Harrison's creative output, as seen through the eyes of the composer and his associates. A detailed biographical section is followed by individual chapters focusing on Music and Dance, Intonation and Tuning, Instruments, Asian influences, Gamelan, Music and Politics, Music Criticism, and Compositional Processes. In a separate chapter, the authors describe the historical background of the San Francisco gay community, Harrison's literary and musical statements on gay rights, and possible "gay markers" on his musical style. An annotated works-list details over 300 compositions, and a full-length CD illustrates the text in sound, including several unique and previously unrecorded works. This engaging study of Harrison's life and works will be indispensable to students and scholars of American music and to performing artists and programmers.

Lou Harrison is a well-known American composer whose many interests include world music, just intonation, gamelan construction, theory, and poetry. A precocious musician, Harrison was an innovator during the 1930s and 1940s with his compositions for dance and percussion and his study of Charles Ives's music. Instead of working with circuits and soldering tools, he and Bill Colvig used thin wall electrical conduit and aluminum furniture tubing to make their gamelan instruments. The book is written for readers of varying musical backgrounds. It includes a chronology, catalog, discography, and extensive bibliography. Those interested in studying and performing Harrison's music will find the book helpful in explaining his use of just intonation. Many examples document the musical analyses.

Music's inclusivity--its potential to unite cultures, disciplines, and individuals--defined the life and career of Lou Harrison (1917-2003). Beyond studying with leading composers of the avant-garde such as Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, conducting Charles Ives's Pulitzer Prize-winning Third Symphony, and staging high-profile percussion concerts with John Cage, Harrison has achieved fame for his distinctive blending of cultures--from the Chinese opera, Indonesian gamelan, and the music of Native Americans to modernist dissonant counterpoint. Miller and Lieberman also pull readers into Harrison's rich world of cross-fertilization through an exploration of his outspoken stance on pacifism, gay rights, ecology, and respect for minorities--all of which directly impacted his musical works. Though Harrison was sometimes accused by contemporaries of "cultural appropriation," Miller and Lieberman's brisk study makes it clear why he is now lauded as an imaginative pioneer for his integration of Asian and Western musics, as well as for his work in the development of the percussion ensemble, his use of found and invented instruments, and his explorations of alternative tuning systems. Harrison's compositions are examined in detail through reference to an accompanying CD of representative recordings.

Since its original publication, Composing a World by Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman has become the definitive work on the prolific California composer Lou Harrison, often cited as one of America's most original and influential figures. Composing a World presents a compelling and deeply human portrait of an exceptionally beloved pioneer in American music.This paperback edition is an updated version of the highly acclaimed Lou Harrison: Composing a World. The product of extensive research, as well as seventy-five interviews with the composer and those associated with him over half a century, this new edition features an updated works catalog reflecting compositions completed after 1997, adds a brief description of the circumstances of Harrison's death, and corrects a few minor errors. It also includes an annotated works-list detailing more than 300 compositions and a CD featuring over 74 minutes of illustrative Harrison compositions, including several unique and previously unrecorded works.Extending beyond simple biography, Composing a World includes chapters on music and dance, intonation and tuning, instrument building, music criticism, political activism, homosexuality, and Harrison's Asian influences, among other topics. This indispensable study of Harrison's life and works--currently out of print--will be welcomed back by performing artists, students, and scholars of American music."

A biography on the legendary gay American composer of contemporary classical music. American composer Lou Harrison (1917–2003) is perhaps best known for challenging the traditional musical establishment along with his contemporaries and close colleagues: composers John Cage, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein; Living Theater founder, Judith Malina; and choreographer, Merce Cunningham. Today, musicians from Bang on a Can to Björk are indebted to the cultural hybrids Harrison pioneered half a century ago. His explorations of new tonalities at a time when the rest of the avant-garde considered such interests heretical set the stage for minimalism and musical post-modernism. His propulsive rhythms and ground-breaking use of percussion have inspired choreographers from Merce Cunningham to Mark Morris, and he is considered the godfather of the so-called “world music” phenomenon that has invigorated Western music with global sounds over the past two decades. In this biography, authors Bill Alves and Brett Campbell trace Harrison’s life and career from the diverse streets of San Francisco, where he studied with music experimentalist Henry Cowell and Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, and where he discovered his love for all things non-traditional (Beat poetry, parties, and men); to the competitive performance industry in New York, where he subsequently launched his career as a composer, conducted Charles Ives’s Third Symphony at Carnegie Hall (winning the elder composer a Pulitzer Prize), and experienced a devastating mental breakdown; to the experimental arts institution of Black Mountain College where he was involved in the first “happenings” with Cage, Cunningham, and others; and finally, back to California, where he would become a strong voice in human rights and environmental campaigns and compose some of the most eclectic pieces of his career. “Lou Harrison’s avuncular personality and tuneful music coaxed affectionate regard from all who knew him, and that affection is evident on every page of Alves and Campbell’s new biography. Eminently readable, it puts Harrison at the center of American music: he knew everyone important and was in touch with everybody, from mentors like Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives and Harry Partch and Virgil Thomson to peers like John Cage to students like Janice Giteck and Paul Dresher. He was larger than life in person, and now he is larger than life in history as well.” —Kyle Gann, author of Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays After a Sonata

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”