Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Enjoyable and informative
This is a good book about Lou Harrison that at least touches on almost all aspects of his life and work. I can't say it is a must have but it was enjoyable. ... Read more

Product Description
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' 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Poetry, Drawings, and Original Fonts!
This book is very much in print, and can be ordered from Frog Peak Music at www.frogpeak.org.

It is a moving and impressive collections of poetry in many forms by the great American composer Lou Harrison, who passed away in 2003. In addition to the poems -- many written for famous friends or during trips to other parts of the world -- are Harrison's drawing and sketches. The book is printed in the Pluma font, one of several that Harrison designed during his lifetime. ... Read more

Product Description
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 indispensible to students and scholars of American music and to performing artists and programmers.Amazon.com Review
"West Coast" composer Lou Harrison (born 1917) is another in along line of individualist Americans including (primarily) CharlesIves, but also pioneers such as Henry Cowell and Harry Partch. Born inOregon, Harrison came East after studying with Cowell and was brieflyone of Virgil Thomson's stringers on the New YorkHerald-Tribune, while also editing some of Ives's music. Hereturned to the West Coast in the early 1950s, where he settled into alife of teaching and composing.

Harrison's love affair with the various musics of Asia began at thistime and coincided with his affinity for dance rhythms in hismusic. With his longtime companion Bill Colvig, Harrison invented manysounding instruments (influenced by those in the Indonesian gamelan),which he employed in his symphonies and othercompositions. Harrison's development of a tuning method (which hecalls "just tone" in contradistinction to "mean tone" or "equaltemperament") has become central to his compositional practice andreceives in-depth discussion.

Miller and Lieberman (a musicologist/performer and anethnomusicologist/composer, respectively) began this book as an oralhistory, but it evolved into a thoroughgoing study of the music aswell as of the man. After a brief biography, there are a variety ofdiscrete chapters (e.g., on dance, tuning, homosexuality, politics)with a plethora of music examples. Harrison's lifelong interest intypefaces is also addressed, with examples given. The book includes acatalog of his works and a CD of excerpts from his compositions.

In the last 10 years or so, Harrison has enjoyed many moreperformances of his music, and his position as one of the leadingAmerican composers of his generation has been solidified. Thisaffectionate volume--if more for the specialist than for the casuallistener--is an appropriate tribute. --Patrick J. Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Publish or Perish? The Latter, Please.
Heartening to see how the authors's cronies have rallied to the defense of this tiresome and mindless random heaping up of information. Nevertheless:

If it were truly a "scholarly" work, I think the author's would have something reasonably intelligent to say about Harrison's acoustical "theories", which were, in fact, to cut to the chase, wack.

If more of the information heaped up were firsthand, this might at least be of some service to real Harrison scholars (if Harrison scholars we must endure). Instead we have, for example, a passage about Harrison's long-term stay at a mental institution lifted directly from John Cage's "Silence". Better to skip this and read the Cage.

Lou Harrison Alive
With the death this year of composer Lou Harrison, the West coast lost one of the most inventive and seminal figures who have ever graced its soil. Happily, Harrison's music remains, but, while enormously sensuous and attractive, it is also an enormously complex music--borrowing from the finest of avant-garde American traditions as well as from the East. Harrison has rarely been written about with such sensitivity and understanding as one finds in "Lou Harrison: Composing a World" by his friends Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman. The book also contains a wonderful CD-- itself worth the price of the book--which is a kind of chronicle of Harrison's development. "Lou Harrison: Composing a World" is a marvelous introduction to a great American composer whose work is only now beginning to be understood in its true range. The book is simultaneously excellent biography, fine musical criticism (both authors are musicians), and intelligent, shameless promotion for a great artist whose work deserves no less.

Lou Harrison's stature continue to expand
After the release of this volume in Autumn, 1998, I wrote a review that ran in Coast Weekly (see archives, 10/29/98, coastweekly.com) in which I expressed not only admiration toward authors Miller and Lieberman but amazement over the countless other details of Lou's life that I had not previously known. Amazement, because I knew the man for forty years, starting in 1963 when I was a student at San Diego State University and he was touring a program of Chinese music with Richard Dee, a long-time associate. Lou once descibed himself to me as a "glandular optimist," and so he was, in every creative and thoughtful way. His artistic example will continue to influence the music, and other arts in which he excelled, far into the future.

A hard act to follow!
In this book, Leta Miller and Fredric Lieberman have given the music-historical community a much-needed (and to be sure, a greatly appreciated) account of a composer who is essential to American art music of this century.Combining biography, aesthetic studies, music analysis and even newly recorded material in a thoughtful and clear manner, Miller and Lieberman have set a standard that later scholars will no doubt find a challenge to equal.Both worked closely with Harrison, yet their work is not a passive recounting of his words; both are trained scholars of contemporary music, yet their prose avoids all needless jargon for the sake of true communication.It is a book of tremendous importance, and has been and continues to be rightly admired by enthusiasts of American and/or contemporary art music.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

hackwork
There are other sources of information about Lou Harrison, such as "The Music of Lou Harrsion" by Heidi Von Gunden and "The Lou Harrison Reader". There are much better biographies of much better and more significant twentieth-century composers, such as "Gyorgy Ligeti" by Richard Toop. There are much better biographies of colorful American figures associated with twentieth-century music, such as "Woody Guthrie: A Life" by Joe Klein. In short, I don't think we ought to put up with this piece of clumsy mannered hackwork. (By the way, the chapter on Lou Harrison's sexuality is ridiculous and unnecessary: Take him at his word.) ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

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Chapters: André Éric Létourneau, Lou Harrison, Vincent McDermott, K. P. H. Notoprojo, Philip Corner, Dennis Murphy, Gugum Gumbira, Michael Tenzer, Sumarsam, Jody Diamond, Paul Dresher, Evan Ziporyn, Dave Smith, Barbara Benary, William Colvig, I Nyoman Windha,. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 67. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: André Éric Létourneau (born September 25, 1967) is a French Canadian media and transmedia artist, author, musician, composer and curator based primarily in Montreal, Canada. He uses several pseudonyms, most notably François Quoirez and algojo)(algojo. His work has been associated with the development of action art, radio drama, performance art, process art, photography, sound poetry and experimental music. Since the 1980s, Létourneau has presented intermedia works in international performance art festivals, galleries and museums such as the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre (1992), the The James H.W. Thompson Foundation in Bangkok (one of Thailand's National Museums directed under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, 2006) and at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum (as part of Les Escales Improbables in Montréal, 2007). In 2006, he was one of the artists selected to represent Canada at the XVth Biennale de Paris under a pseudonym. Létourneau produced several radio art projects and music compositions for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC, Canada's national public radio and television broadcaster). In 1999, he was commissioned by the CBC to create an Hörspiel broadcast from 10 to 12 PM on the night of December 31 for the passage to the new millennium. Another Hörspeil, "Standard III" (2002), was commissionned by the CBC and broadcast on the night of Easter Sunday in 2003 under a program developed and curated by Mario Ga...http://booksllc.net/?id=12546680 ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Jaron Lanier, Lou Harrison, Andreas Vollenweider, Guzheng, Liu Fang, Liang Tsai-Ping, Mike Hovancsek, Wang Fei, Bradley Fish, Zi Lan Liao, Mei Han, Weishan Liu, Lunlun Zou, Randy Raine-Reusch, List of Guzheng Players, Wu Fei, Wang Changyuan. Excerpt:Andreas Vollenweider Andreas Vollenweider (born October 4, 1953) is a Swiss musician . His music has been categorized as World Music , Jazz , New Age and even Classical ; two of his albums were number 1 on the Billboard charts simultaneously in the categories Classical, Jazz, Pop and Crossover for more than 11 weeks. His music could be described as very dynamic and colorful. His primary instrument is an electrically modified harp of his own design, but he also plays a wide variety of instruments from around the world, including the Chinese guzheng . His albums feature many musicians performing his compositions with him, ranging from simple solos to suites for orchestra and soloists. His music is mostly instrumental but he has occasionally forayed into vocal music as well. His past collaborators include Bobby McFerrin , Carly Simon , Djivan Gasparyan , Eliza Gilkyson , Luciano Pavarotti , Ladysmith Black Mambazo , Carlos Núñez , Ray Anderson , and Milton Nascimento . Politically, Andreas Vollenweider is an outspoken pacifist and follower of the principles of non-violent conflict management of Mahatma Gandhi . On his website he features quotes from Gandhi (among others), and in an effort to spread awareness of the American war in Iraq, he has also posted a ticker reflecting the current number of casualties in the conflict, both American and Iraqi. Biography Early Life and Career Vollenweider was born on October 4, 1953 in Zürich as the son of Hans Vollenweider, a composer and organist. Acquainted with many instruments and an autodida... ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! LouSilver Harrison was an American composer. He wasa student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K.P. H. Notoprojo (formerly called K.R.T.Wasitodiningrat, informally called Pak Cokro).Harrison is particularly noted for incorporatingelements of the music of non-Western cultures intohis work, with a number of pieces written forJavanese style gamelan instruments, includingensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and hispartner William Colvig. The majority of his worksare written in just intonation rather than the morewidespread equal temperament. Harrison is one of themost prominent composers to have worked withmicrotones ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Thomson Gale on June 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1601 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Lou Harrison.(Book review)
Author: Virginia Anderson
Publication: Notes (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 63Issue: 4Page: 854(3)

Article Type: Book review

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Chapters: Lou Harrison. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 56. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo (formerly called K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat, informally called Pak Cokro). Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the music of non-Western cultures into his work, with a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, including ensembles constructed and tuned by Harrison and his partner William Colvig. The majority of his works are written in just intonation rather than the more widespread equal temperament. Harrison is one of the most prominent composers to have worked with microtones. Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon, but moved with his family to a number of locations around the San Francisco Bay Area as a child. He graduated from Burlingame High School in Burlingame, California in 1934, then he moved to San Francisco. The diverse music which he was to be exposed to there, including Cantonese opera, Native American music, Mexican music, and jazz as well as classical music, was to have a major influence on him. He also heard recordings of Indonesian music early in life. Harrison took Henry Cowell's "Music of the Peoples of the World" course, and also studied counterpoint and composition with him. He later went to the University of California at Los Angeles to work at the dance department as a dancer and accompanist. While there, he took lessons from Arnold Schoenberg which led to an interest in Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. The pieces he was writing at this time, however, were largely percussive works using unconventional materials, such as car brake drums, as musical instruments. These piece...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=180728 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on March 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1512 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Lou Harrison.(Brief Article)(Review) (book review)
Author: David Nicholls
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2000
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 56Issue: 3Page: 774

Article Type: Brief Article, Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more