Lou Harrison

Brett Campbell, Bill Alves

Description

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.

Foreword: Hail, Lou! / Mark Morris
Preface: Lou's World
Acknowledgments

Part I: Oregon Trails
1. The Silver Court (1917-1934)

Part II: The Vast Acreage
2. A Wonderful Whirligig (1935-1936)
3. The Ultramodernist (1935-1936)
4. The Grand Manner (1936-1937)
5. Changing World (1937-1938)
6. Double Music (1938-1939)
7. Drums Along the Pacific (1939-1941)
8. Into the Labyrinth (1941-1942)
9. Western Dance (1942-1943)

Part III: A Hell of a Town
10. The Lonesome Isle (1943-1945)
11. New York Waltzes (1945-1946)
12. Praises for the Archangel (1946)
13. Day of Ascension (1946-1947)
14. Tears of the Angel (1947-1948)
15. The Perilous Chapel (1948-1949)
16. Pastorales (1949-1950)
17. The White Goddess (1951)
18. A Great Playground (1951-1952)
19. Lake Eden (1952-1953)

Part IV: Full Circle
20. A Paradise Garden of Delights (1953-1955)
21. Free Style (1955-1957)
22. Wild Rights (1957-1961)

Part V: Pacifica
23. The Human Music (1961)
24. Pacific Rounds (1962-1963)
25. The Family of the Court (1963-1966)
26. Stars Upon his Face (1967-1969)
27. Young Caesar and Old Granddad (1969-1974)
28. Elegies (1973-1975)

Part VI: The Great Melody
29. Golden Rain (1975-1977)
30. Playing Together (1977-1979)
31. Showers of Beauty (1978-1982)
32. Paradisal Music (1982-1984)
33. Stampede (1983-1987)
34. New Moon (1986-1990)
35. Book Music (1991-1995)
36. An Eden of Music and Mountains (1995-1997)
37. Asian Artistry (1997-2002)
38. White Ashes (2003)
Notes
Appendix A: Glossary of Musical Terms
Appendix B: List of Harrison's Compositions
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Music
• Composer
• American
• Musician
• Multiple signal classification
• Biography
• América
• Individual Composer

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253026439
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

LOU HARRISON

LOU
HARRISON
American Musical Maverick
BILL ALVES and BRETT CAMPBELL
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Bill Alves and Brett Campbell
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alves, Bill, author. | Campbell, Brett, [date] author.
Title: Lou Harrison : American musical maverick / Bill Alves and Brett Campbell.
Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016056931| ISBN 9780253025616 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026156 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026439 (eb)
Subjects: LCSH: Harrison, Lou, 1917-2003. | Composers-United States-Biography.
Classification: LCC ML410.H2066 A7 2017 | DDC 780.92 [B]-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056931
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
This whole round living world of music-the Human Music-rouses and delights me, it stirs me to a transethnic, a planetary music .
-Lou Harrison
CONTENTS
Foreword: Hail, Lou! / Mark Morris
Preface: Lou s World
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Oregon Trails
1. The Silver Court (1917-1934)
Part 2: The Vast Acreage
2. A Wonderful Whirligig (1935-1936)
3. The Ultramodernist (1935-1936)
4. The Grand Manner (1936-1937)
5. Changing World (1937-1938)
6. Double Music (1938-1939)
7. Drums Along the Pacific (1939-1941)
8. Into the Labyrinth (1941-1942)
9. Western Dance (1942-1943)
Part 3: A Hell of a Town
10. The Lonesome Isle (1943-1945)
11. New York Waltzes (1945-1946)
12. Praises for the Archangel (1946)
13. Day of Ascension (1946-1947)
14. Tears of the Angel (1947-1948)
15. The Perilous Chapel (1948-1949)
16. Pastorales (1949-1950)
17. The White Goddess (1951)
18. A Great Playground (1951-1952)
19. Lake Eden (1952-1953)
Part 4: Full Circle
20. A Paradise Garden of Delights (1953-1955)
21. Free Style (1955-1957)
22. Wild Rights (1957-1961)
Part 5: Pacifica
23. The Human Music (1961)
24. Pacific Rounds (1962-1963)
25. The Family of the Court (1963-1966)
26. Stars Upon His Face (1967-1969)
27. Young Caesar and Old Granddad (1969-1974)
28. Elegies (1973-1975)
Part 6: The Great Melody
29. Golden Rain (1975-1977)
30. Playing Together (1977-1979)
31. Showers of Beauty (1978-1982)
32. Paradisal Music (1982-1984)
33. Stampede (1984-1987)
34. New Moon (1986-1990)
35. Book Music (1991-1995)
36. An Eden of Music and Mountains (1995-1997)
37. Asian Artistry (1997-2002)
38. White Ashes (2003)
Appendix A: Glossary of Musical Terms
Appendix B: List of Harrison s Compositions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD: HAIL, LOU!
Mark Morris
This book is a marvel. From knowing Mr. Harrison, from reading and through conversation with many others who knew him better than I did, I thought I d heard it all. I m happy to say that I was way off. His story and the story of his music are very satisfyingly presented here. So many fascinating details are revealed that I felt renewed respect, awe, and love for the subject: the Divine Lou Harrison. Harrison s music-or musics, considering the many diverse styles and modes and methods he employed in his compositions-promoted pleasure and peace. His devotion to beauty and consonance resulted in a deep trust relationship with his audience: hearing an engaging tune makes you feel better, and everyone wants to feel better. He was unafraid of the emotional resonance of a ravishing melody and, like his beloved Henry Cowell, was long denied respect by the Music Police. The deep, theoretical, personal immersion in music of the Rest of the World paid off by allowing him to produce an astounding variety of sonorities and compositional practices and structures, resulting in the amazing, huge embrace that his aesthetic presents to a willing listener.
You either love Lou s music or you haven t heard it yet. It sings and it dances. I first heard his call in the early 1980s from an out-of-print LP of Four Strict Songs . That recording led me to hunt for more and then more. I can t imagine how I d been ignorant of the music for so long. Since my early teenhood I d been drawn to the work of Satie, Cowell, Thomson, Nancarrow, Hovhaness, Cage, Ives, and particularly Harry Partch. My first good dance was set to Partch s Barstow . I d been to Indonesia and was smitten with all things gamelan. I d been to Korea and Japan and Thailand. I already loved the music of Asia and Polynesia. I adored Peking Opera. I d sung madrigals and Croatian music and Appalachian and shape-note hymns and the Carter Family. I sang (enthusiastically if not beautifully) baroque music and rounds and catches and lute songs with similarly interested friends. I loved American Sign Language and hula and Esperanto and popular songs of the 20s and 30s. I was a flamenco dancer, a folk dancer, a modern dancer, a ballet dancer. I was already an active, confident choreographer at fifteen. I d even read most of Partch s Genesis of a Music , at least the parts I could comprehend.
Lou s music hit me in the same way that my first trip to India hit me: it felt like Home. It was strange and satisfying and just right. In the way that Lou claimed he wished he d written Take Me Out to the Ball Game, I felt that I myself could somehow have come up with what I heard in his music. What I heard was magic, trust, power, Eros, kindness, fear, an overwhelming mystery, and vast inclusion. I try to perpetuate those qualities in my own work as a choreographer. I ve learned through conversation with friends who knew Lou (Merce Cunningham, Dennis Russell Davies, Willie Winant, Eva Soltes, John Luther Adams, Michael Tilson Thomas, Jody Diamond, Remy Charlip ) that we all knew him best and loved him most. He was impossibly kind. He was generous and bossy. He was grand and shy. Super-strong and super-gay. I found his music irresistible and inescapable. Over the years, I ve choreographed many of his pieces and presented many more in my curation of concerts, and I plan to set even more dances to his music as time goes on.
I visited Lou and Bill Colvig numerous times at their home in Aptos. They were wonderful, fascinating old friends. Yes, there was the perpetual soup pot on the stove, the Tchaikovsky and Ives rooms, the carpets, the garden with its plants from antiquity. They attended my dance company s performances in Berkeley and in New York, even if the program didn t include music that Lou had written. Lou came to my mother s birthday party in Seattle wearing galoshes instead of shoes. The two of them, so fond and funny with each other, were mildly lascivious with me and my male friends. Bill would dart past, naked, out of Lou s view. They smelled of the Forest and the Temple. In our very satisfying collaboration on the piece that became Rhymes With Silver , I was lucky to be caught up in the thrilling compositional process of a fully realized choreomusical presentation. Lou consulted Yo-Yo Ma on bowing and fingering, adjusted phrasings and lengths to suit dancing s needs, revised and improved the already gorgeous music both new and repurposed; he through-composed most of the sections but also generously dumped several kits in my lap to cope with in my own way. He always served me and paid for lunch at the Mexican caf near his house.
In 2003 I was at work choreographing a solo for myself to Serenade for Guitar . In the dance, I played finger cymbals during one part (the Usul ) and thought I should also play castanets for the last part (which sounded to me like Scarlatti). I was getting ready to call Lou for official permission to add that little bit of percussion to his music. Before I got around to making that call (don t put it off!), I learned that Lou, darling Lou, had died. I guess it was time. I took his silence as tacit approval. I strapped on my castanets and danced to his memory and to his unequaled influence on the Great Big World of Music. Hail Lou!
PREFACE: LOU S WORLD
The bus dropped me off at a stop on the side of the road, just off a major highway near Santa Cruz, California. I looked around. This appeared to be the right place, but there was no building nearby, just forested hillsides on both sides of the road. It was June 1995, and I was supposed to be meeting composer Lou Harrison at his house for the first time in half an hour, for our first formal interview in the biography I had just begun with Bill Alves. I had assumed I would take a taxi to his front door, but in our phone conversation, Harrison pointed out that it would be a lot cheaper and more fun to ride the bus from the home I was house-sitting in Walnut Creek and then hike up the hill from the back. You ll see the trail that Harrison s life partner, Bill Colvig, had blazed himself many years before, Harrison assured me.
I looked around and finally spotted what might-or might not-have been the path. Toting my tape recorder and laptop, I plunged into the forest and followed the path uphill.
Bill Alves and I decided to write the book when I was looking for a final project in my literary nonfiction master s program at the University of Oregon. In the mid-1980s, when Bill was