Musical historians are obsessed with the main trends of music. Peruse a typical history of music or music appreciation text and you are left with the impression that music has evolved in almost monolithic blocks. But all through its history music has had its quirky characters, its eccentrics and its brilliant but isolated composers. The history of alternative classical music is a fascinating one, complete with odd quirks of character. Beginning with figures like Gesualdo, the brilliant Renaissance madrigal composer of noble birth who was also famous for poisoning his wife, and extending to modern figures like Moondog, the homeless poet/composer who was a fixture of New York Times Square street life, there is a rich history of music waiting to be discovered by the adventurous. And surprisingly, much of it is delightful. Perhaps the best case in point is the music of Lou Harrison.
Lou Harrison's career spanned much of the twentieth century. Born in 1917 to an adventurous and free-spirited West Coast family, Lou showed his artistic talents early. His mother Cal encouraged her children to explore the arts, and allowed the young Lou to travel with a theater company at the age of two and a half. Harrison took to music and dance with a particular gusto, learning to play various wind, string and keyboard instruments, as well as learning ballroom dancing, and even a smattering of modern dance. Lou began composing at the age of 10 and by high school was studying composition with a local figure.
[Pictured: John Cage]
After high school, Harrison moved to San Francisco with his family, where he met some of the most important musical influences. He formed a close friendship with John Cage. Both had an interest in rhythm and percussion, and they would travel to various Bay area junkyards in search of new and interesting material to create new percussion instruments. The two of them also produced concerts of new music, often with the support of the energetic and talented Henry Cowell, composer and publisher of New Music Quarterly. Through Cowell, Harrison also developed an early fascination with the music of Charles Ives and took on the task of editing many of the older man's masterpieces. Harrison's early music shows the influence of these "Ultramodernist" composers as well as Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles and many of the dissonant composers from Europe. However, even at this early period, Harrison's music was remarkably different than the music of other Modernist composers. Though often steeped in the language of dissonance and the twelve-tone system, Harrison's most difficult music is still imbued with a lyric gift that gives it attractiveness not present in much other music from the period. In addition, his experiences with non-Western music in San Francisco is already present in his approach to percussive writing. Further, he became an early pioneer in the Early Music movement, learning the recorder and developing a deep love for music of the French Baroque and Medieval music, all of which is reflected in his early music.
After a brief period in Los Angeles, where he began collaboration with the Lester Horton Dance Company, Harrison followed the company to New York, where he would remain for ten years. The New York period was perhaps Harrison's most difficult, but it was also immensely useful for his later career as a composer. He began working as assistant conductor for the New York Little Symphony. In this capacity, he was responsible for the world premiere of Ives' Third Symphony, which was subsequently awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He also continued his work editing Ives' compositions as well as composing music for many modern dance companies including Jean Erdman and Merce Cunningham. But the rough and tumble life of New York was fundamentally unsuited to Harrison's temperament. This coupled with several failed gay relationships and the horror he felt at the explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima contributed to a complete nervous breakdown in 1945. Harrison was hospitalized for nine months at Stony Lodge, a mental health facility in Long Island. Charles Ives covered the bills.
After Harrison's treatment was completed, his musical style changed. Though he never completely stopped composing Ultramodernist scores, he became more and more interested in diatonic melody, the music of other cultures, and in the recovery of ancient tuning systems such as Just and Pythagorean intonation. Though for the rest of his life he would occasionally write music in the twelve-tone style, it was always to depict the alienation and mechanization of modern life. Clearly, his greatest interests were in another vision of the world, one that he believed was more in tune with Nature and the highest aspirations of humanity.
In 1951, Harrison began a stay at the innovative Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The beauty of the rural life fed a longing in Harrison for the West Coast of his youth and in 1953 he moved back to a log cabin in Northern California where he lived until his death last year. Renewed by change in situation, this move marks the beginning of Harrison's mature style. His interest in music of Asia became even more explicit. He studied Chinese music in Taiwan, traveled to Korea to study, and most importantly, studied Indonesian gamelan with a master from Java. In the mid sixties he met William Colvig who remained his partner for the rest of his life. Colvig had a profound influence on Harrison. A musician and an engineer, Colvig developed an interest in designing and building the new instruments that Harrison envisioned for his music. The two collaborated on many sets of instruments, most importantly "Old Grandad" and "American Gamelan," made of various pieces of scrap metal, wood, glass, and even old automobile brake drums, and tuned to a pure form of Just Intonation.
Harrison's mature music is characterized by a wild variety of influences. He wrote music for traditional instruments but using elements of Asian musical form. He wrote music that was almost traditionally French Baroque but using Asian scales. He wrote for combinations of Asian and western instrument, or music using western forms for Indonesian gamelan. Stylistic consistency was never an interest for Harrison. He had a passionate love for pure sound and beautiful melody. This interest initially led to his dismissal by more academic composers in the 50s and 60s, when serial music was almost synonymous with contemporary composition. However, by the 80s it was clear that Harrison's time had come. He received a series of high profile commissions, including the Piano Concerto, which was premiered by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, and Rhymes with Silver, a forty five minute ballet for Mark Morris' company. He wrote music for professional ensembles, but also enjoyed working with youth groups like the Oakland Youth Symphony. Perhaps one of the most emotional high points of his late career was the premiere of Three Songs with the Seattle Gay Men's Chorus. Harrison was an early gay pioneer, and to hear his music sung by a group of one hundred proud gay men was a moment of triumph.
At one time Harrison's music was more talked about than actually known. Recordings were hard to come by and live performances even more difficult. This was due to the unique homemade instruments often required, and to his stubborn insistence on Just Intonation in his compositions. Just Intonation is an earlier mode of tuning, one that more naturally conforms to the acoustic laws of music. (In a nutshell...in early music, most pieces remained in one key or mode, which allowed for very precise tuning of all the intervals in the scale or mode of the piece to pure ratios. All octaves were 2:1 and all fifths were 3:2. Using just the seven notes of the diatonic scale, this was fairly easy. But as music moved in the 18th century from basically modal music to modern tonal music and moved more fully into a scale of twelve notes, it was noticed that if a keyboard instrument were tuned perfectly in one key, many of the other keys would sound hopelessly out of tune. The modern solution for this problem was to tune all of the notes in slightly less than perfect intervals. Every key on a modern piano is just slightly out of tune.) Harrison's music in this older intonation creates a sound that is very sweet. Listening to it is like taking a drink of clear water from a mountain stream after years of drinking from the tap. But it requires instrumentalists to relearn their musical technique, and if it includes piano, requires a special tuning for the instrument before the performance. This made performances of Harrison's music outside of California quite difficult. However, in his later years the performances picked up and his music is very well represented now on CD. Here are some suggested works to help you to experience this wonderful composer.
La Koro Sutro - This is my personal favorite Harrison work. It is available on the New Albion label where it is paired with two other substantial works, the Varied Trio for Violin, Piano and Percussion, and the monumental Suite for Violin and American Gamelan. La Koro Sutro was composed for a weeklong seminar at San Francisco State University by the World Esperanto Convention. Harrison was an enthusiastic supporter and speaker of this language. The work is a setting of portions from the Buddhist Heart Sutra in Esperanto for choir and American Gamelan (though the composer has also written a version for string orchestra instead of Gamelan). Its several movements are characterized by expansive modal melodies and ingenious sonorities in the gamelan. Some moments have an Asian flare, but some are clearly influenced by early medieval polyphony. The music is enchanting, and the final movement, which sets the great mantra, Gate gate paragate parasam gate bodhi svaha (Beyond all, beyond everything) is one of the most moving moments in contemporary music. The Varied Trio is likewise beautiful, if not quite as large and powerful. Particularly impressive is the French Rondeau movement for Violin and Piano, which merges a baroque form with a graceful Asian melody. The Suite for Violin and American Gamelan is every bit as moving as La Koro Sutro. The work begins with a luminous song for the violin and percussion. This is music that is neither eastern nor western but a wondrous conflation of the two. The rest of the work is up to the standard of this wonderful opening movement and the final movement; a tremendous Passacaglia is overwhelming in its force and beauty. There is no better CD out there to introduce you to this marvelous composer than this one.
Piano Concerto - This is another wonderful major work by Harrison from the 80s and available on New Albion. It is taken from a live concert in Japan with Keith Jarrett as featured soloist. The work is in four expansive movements with the piano tuned in a very gentle temperament, which create pure fifths in all intervals except for two. The first movement is in a fairly traditional sonata form and features some beautiful passages for the piano and a meltingly lovely second motive. The second movement is a virtuoso work out for piano and percussion, featuring tonal clusters in the piano against exciting and wild drum rhythms. The third movement is a true wonder. Its opening in the purest C major is like hearing this key for the very first time. It is achingly lovely. The briefer final recaps some of the material from the other movements and winds them into a rousing conclusion. The companion piece on the disc is the Suite for Violin, Piano and Strings. It is a strong work, though not on the whole as impressive as the other works in this series.
In January of 2003, while traveling to a festival of his music in Ohio, Harrison had a heart attack and died. True to the pattern of his life he died as he lived, full of plans for the future and working industriously to the end.
Next month's Musical Maverick, the Grand Old Man of cantankerous American composers, Charles Ives.