Lou Harrison

Early life and career

Harrison's early interest in music was supported by his parents, who arranged piano lessons and a short period of Gregorian chant study at the Mission San Francisco de Asís. Frequent family moves left him with few long-term friendships, and he often felt like an outsider, relying on his own judgment for aesthetic decisions.

He spent much time at local libraries reading widely, from zoology to Confucianism, and recalled reading two books a day. This broad range of interests influenced his later compositions. While attending Burlingame High School, he discovered he was gay, and by graduation in December 1934 at age 17, he had come out to his family and decided to hide neither his sexual preference nor his personality, a rare stance for the era.

New life in California

After a crisis during his New York years, Harrison rejected his earlier dissonant idiom and turned toward melodic lyricism using diatonic and pentatonic scales, setting him apart from academic styles and ultramodernist composers. The two years following his 1949 hospital leave were among his most productive, yielding impressionistic works such as the Suite for Cello and Harp, The Perilous Chapel, and Solstice. Influenced by Colin McPhee's research on Indonesian music, Harrison's style began emulating gamelan timbre, as he described being attracted to the sound itself.

In the early 1950s, he received a first edition of Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music from Thomson, prompting him to abandon equal temperament for just intonation. He sought powerful music using simple ratios and later called music 'emotional mathematics.' Harrison taught at Mills College, San Jose State University, Cabrillo College, Reed College, and Black Mountain College. In 1953 he moved to Aptos near Santa Cruz, where he lived the rest of his life, and with William Colvig purchased land in Joshua Tree to build the Harrison House Retreat, a straw bale house.

Later life

On November 2, 1990, the Brooklyn Philharmonic premiered Harrison's fourth symphony, titled 'Last Symphony,' which combined Native American, ancient, and Asian music with lush orchestral writing, including a series of 'Coyote Stories.' He revised the symphony until a final version in 1995, recorded by Barry Jekowsky and the California Symphony at Skywalker Ranch in March 1997. The CD also included his Elegy, to the Memory of Calvin Simmons, excerpts from Solstice, Concerto in Slendro, and Double Music. On February 2, 2003, while driving to a festival in Columbus, Ohio, Harrison stopped at a Denny's in Lafayette, Indiana, experienced chest pains, collapsed, and was pronounced dead within minutes, likely from a heart attack. No autopsy was performed, and he was cremated as per his wishes.

Harrison's music

Many of Harrison's early works are for percussion instruments made from found objects such as garbage cans and steel brake drums. He also wrote pieces using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, including the opera Rapunzel and his Symphony on G (Symphony No. 1). Several works feature the tack piano, a prepared piano with nails in the hammers for a percussive sound. His mature style is based on 'melodicles,' short motifs turned backward and upside down to create a musical mode.

His music is typically sparse in texture but lyrical, with simple or absent harmony, focusing on rhythm and melody. He often used 'interval control,' allowing only a small set of melodic intervals without inversion. Another component is corporeality, emphasizing physical and sensual elements such as live performance, improvisation, timbre, rhythm, and spatial sense in melodic lines, notably in dance collaborations. Harrison and Colvig built two full Javanese-style gamelan, named Si Betty and Si Darius/Si Madeliene.

He held the Darius Milhaud Chair of Musical Composition at Mills College from 1980 until 1985, teaching students including Jin Hi Kim, and also taught at San Jose State University and Cabrillo College. He was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal in 2000.