The Music of Lou Harrison

Evan Ziporyn; Heidi von Gunden

doi:10.2307/834268

Lou Harrison: Composing a World

Notes ◽

10.2307/900503 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 155

Author(s):

David Nicholls ◽

Leta E. Miller ◽

Fredric Lieberman

Keyword(s):

Lou Harrison

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Lou Harrison and the American Gamelan

American Music ◽

10.2307/3052712 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 146 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Leta E. Miller ◽

Fredric Lieberman

Keyword(s):

Lou Harrison

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Beat and Square Cold War Encounters

Extreme Exoticism ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190072704.003.0009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 317-371

Author(s):

W. Anthony Sheppard

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

American Composers ◽

Henry Cowell ◽

Duke Ellington ◽

Japanese Music ◽

Primary Focus ◽

The Cold War ◽

Lou Harrison ◽

Toru Takemitsu

This chapter is focused on the transnational influences of Japanese music during the Cold War and on music’s role in U.S. cultural diplomacy efforts aimed at Japan. This includes examples of numerous American jazz musicians (David Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Herbie Mann) who were sent to Japan and who created musical “impressions” of their experience. A primary focus in on the 1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter organized by Nicolas Nabokov and attended by multiple American composers (Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Colin McPhee) and scholars (Robert Garfias). The chapter then details the broad influence of gagaku on European (Messiaen, Stockhausen, Xenakis) and American composers, focusing particularly on Alan Hovhaness. Experimental composers, such as Richard Teitelbaum, inspired by John Cage’s engagement with Zen also turned toward Japan. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of the role of Japanese music and Japanese composers (particularly Toru Takemitsu) in the career of Roger Reynolds.

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Lou Harrison (review)

Notes ◽

10.1353/not.2007.0053 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 63 (4) ◽

pp. 854-856

Author(s):

Virginia Anderson

Keyword(s):

Lou Harrison

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Reminiscence, Reflections, and Resonance: The Just Intonation Resophonic Guitar and Lou Harrison's Scenes from Nek Chand

Journal of the Society for American Music ◽

10.1017/s1752196312000041 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 211-237 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

GIACOMO FIORE

Keyword(s):

San Francisco ◽

Contemporary Music ◽

Oral Histories ◽

Just Intonation ◽

Archival Research ◽

Music Festival ◽

Terry Riley ◽

Lou Harrison

AbstractUpon accepting a commission for a solo guitar piece from the 2002 Open Minds Music Festival in San Francisco, Lou Harrison decided to write Scenes from Nek Chand for a unique instrument: a resonator guitar refretted in just intonation. Harrison's last completed work draws inspiration from the sound of Hawaiian music that the composer remembered hearing in his youth, as well as from the artwork populating Nek Chand's Rock Garden of Chandigarh, India.Based on archival research, oral histories, and the author's insights as a performer of contemporary music, this article examines the piece's inception, outlining the organological evolution of resophonic guitars and their relationship to Hawaiian music. It addresses the practical and aesthetic implications of the composer's choice of tuning, and examines the work of additional artists, such as Terry Riley and Larry Polansky, who have contributed to the growing repertoire for the just intonation resophonic guitar.

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Lou Harrison and the Aesthetics of Revision, Alteration, and Self-Borrowing

twentieth century music ◽

10.1017/s1478572205000204 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 79-107 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

LETA E. MILLER

Keyword(s):

The Self ◽

Personal Style ◽

Recycled Materials ◽

Lou Harrison

Lou Harrison seems always to have been re-examining his older works, revising or updating them, reworking them into movements of longer compositions, or creating alternative versions. This article examines Harrison’s revisions, alterations, and self-borrowings in terms of both technique and aesthetic objectives. Harrison’s first reworking of a set of short pieces into an extended composition, the Suite for Symphonic Strings of 1960, resulted in a poly-stylistic work he found so attractive that he not only used the self-borrowing technique in later works (such as the Third Symphony) but also incorporated similar contrasts in most of his long works, whether or not they were based on recycled materials. Thus the process of revision and self-borrowing in itself helped Harrison develop a distinctive personal style – one marked by its own eclecticism.

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