Lou Harrison

169 Pages·2006·2.417 MB·English

by  Fredric Lieberman, Leta E. Miller

american
composers
Lou
Harrison
Leta E. Miller
Fredric Lieberman
lou harrison
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american
Composers
The short, readable books
in the American Composers
series will introduce significant
American composers to students
and general readers and provide
a convenient reference for per-
formers and scholars. Series
books will treat the broadest
range of American composers,
combining concise biographical
information with a comprehen-
sive survey of works and, where
possible, a CD.
A list of books in the series
appears at the end of this book.
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Lou
Harrison
Leta E. Miller
Fredric Lieberman
university of
illinois press
Urbana and Chicago
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© 2006 by the
Board of Trustees
of the University
of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the
United States of America
∞ This book is printed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Leta E.
on acid-free paper.
Lou Harrison / Leta E. Miller, Fredric Lieberman.
c 5 4 3 2 1
p. cm. — (American composers)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ), discography (p. ),
and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-252-03120-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-252-03120-2 (ckoth : alk. paper) 1. Harrison, Lou,
1917– 2. Composers—United States—Biography. 3. Harrison,
Lou, 1917—Criticism and interpretation. I. Lieberman,
Fredric.
II. Title. III. Series.
ml410.h2066m54 2006
780'.92—dc22 2005022116
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contents
acknowledgments  vii
1. Prelude 1
2. Portrait:
A Life in Music 9
3. Percussion Music and Instrument Building:
More than Just Noise 36
4. Passion for Asia:
Inspirations from China, Korea, and Indonesia 48
5. Purely in Tune:
Exploring Just Intonation Systems 69
6. Processes of Synthesis:
Coherence and Variety 81
7. Politics and Society:
Activist Art, Activist Arguments, Activist Acts 94
8. Peroration:
System, Syncretism, and Style 108
  notes  117
  selected works  123
(with instrumentation, approximate timings,
selected recordings, and publishers of the scores)
  for further reading  129
  suggested listening  131
  compact disc contents  133
  index  137
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acknowledgments
this retrospective assessment of Lou Harrison’s contributions to
the twentieth-century musical landscape is an outgrowth of research we
began in 1993. Our initial investigations led to several publications, most notably
Lou Harrison: Composing a World (reissued in paperback as Composing a World: Lou
Harrison, Musical Wayfarer, University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Miller’s criti-
cal edition of Harrison’s chamber music in the series Music in the United States of
America (MUSA). The present book builds on our prior research and publica-
tions, and we therefore gratefully acknowledge the help of those who contributed
information, advice, and permissions: the fifty interviewees listed in our previous
book, the publishers of Harrison’s scores and recordings, and those who assisted
with the MUSA edition (including composer and Harrison student Philip Col-
lins, organist Susan Summerfield, violinist Romuald Tecco, the members of the
Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, and many others).
For the compact disc included in the present book, we owe special thanks
to performers, publishers, and scholarly societies. Permission fees were gener-
ously supported by subventions from the Society for American Music and the
Gustave Reese Publication Endowment Fund of the American Musicological
Society. Several people recorded music especially for this CD or helped facilitate
our access to out-of-print or unpublished recordings: we would especially like to
thank pianists Michael Boriskin, Belle Bulwinkle, and Danny Driver; gamelan
director Jody Diamond; radio interviewer Roger Emanuels; executor of the John
Cage Estate Laura Kuhn; and conductor Gerhard Samuel. For help with record-
ing and editing, we owe special thanks to engineer William Coulter and to Peter
Elsea, director of the UCSC Electronic Music Studio.
A grant from the Arts Research Institute of the University of California, Santa
Cruz, helped with production costs for the book. Finally, none of our research
would have been possible without the invaluable assistance of Harrison’s archivist vii
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Acknowledgments
viii Charles Hanson; the support of the library staffs at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and the New York Public Library; and the always generous coop-
eration of Lou Harrison and his partner William Colvig during the last years of
their lives. We dedicate this book to their memory.
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lou harrison
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