Fall 1999 Volume XXIX, No. 1

Copland's Hope for American Music by Howard Pollack spectral frequencies by Martha Mockus Demythologizing the Blues by David Evans New Music Notes by Carol J. Oja Behind the Beat with Mark Tucker ISAM Matters Reviews Rethinking Race in 19th-Century Blackface Minstrelsy by Maya Gibson Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian by Laurie Blunsom ISAM Home

New Music Notes Twentieth-Century Originals by Carol J. Oja Not so long ago, it was downright frustrating to locate sound or print sources related to West Coast experimenters. But those days are quickly being eclipsed by a fairly stunning ease of access. At least that is the case for Lou Harrison and Harry Partch, two of the region’s more intriguingly idiosyncratic figures, who over the past few years have inspired a cascade of publications and CDs. Lou Harrison: Composing a World, by Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman (Oxford University Press, 1998; $35), heads the list, with a warm, engagingly shaped portrait of the composer from Portland. The first third of the book takes a traditional approach by scanning Harrison’s life as revealed in his published writings, personal correspondence, and interviews with friends and colleagues. After childhood and early adult years in Oregon and California, Harrison moved in 1943 to New York, where he soon was writing criticism for the New York Herald Tribune. By 1951, finding himself at odds with the stresses of city life, he took a faculty position at Black Mountain College in North Carolina; two years later he moved back to California, where he has been based ever since. The bulk of the book, however, abandons a chronological narrative in favor of exploring specific aspects of the composer’s life and work. Harrison’s collaboration with dancers is discussed, as are his passion for tuning and temperament, his longtime involvement with instrument building (especially in collaboration with his partner William Colvig), his intense study of various Asian traditions, and his devotion to the gamelan, which has resulted in building several ensembles of his own. There are also chapters about his compositional process, his stint as a music critic, and his personal politics and sexuality. One theme that pops up repeatedly is how a composer known for such tuneful music managed to find a place for himself in Cold War America. Today, as Harrison’s music gains ever-wider exposure and is increasingly hailed as a forerunner to minimalist and multiculturalist tendencies of the late twentieth century, it is easy to forget that his work was not always accepted so heartily. “It was like a breath of fresh air, particularly in an atmosphere heavily loaded with serialism,” mused composer Robert Hughes in describing Harrison’s works from the late 1950s in an interview with Miller and Lieberman. “When you flipped from Hugo Weisgall to Lou Harrison,” he continued, “there was a culture shock that was absolutely marvelous. It was something new.” Harrison had his own bout with serialism, which largely ended in 1953 when he moved back to California; yet he has returned to the method occasionally, and an intellectual rigor has continued to characterize his music. Alongside these aesthetic issues, Harrison also became an activist for political and humanitarian causes, whether anti-nuclear, pro-environmental, or defending the rights of animals. His commitment to pacifism shines through in works such as Pacifika Rondo, which celebrates the diverse cultures of the Pacific Rim and culminates with a movement titled “A Hatred of the Filthy Bomb” (written with serial techniques). As Miller and Lieberman report, Harrison uses the designations “B.B.” (“before bomb”) and “A.B.” (“after bomb”) for the chronology of his life. Yet for Harrison, social or political protests are often gently articulated. An abiding optimist, he “believe[s] that the world’s seemingly intractable problems are solvable,” as Miller and Lieberman put it. Often his art becomes a polemical force by simply setting a beatific example. “We should bring forward the good things of our separate musical cultures,” stated Harrison at a Tokyo conference in 1961, “for the delight and help of humanity, to celebrate that man really can ennoble life, can enjoy, and value life. If the world wounds you, then strike back at the world. Don’t strike at your art, embrace that as a treasure.” Like Virgil Thomson, his friend and mentor at the Herald Tribune, Harrison is a thoroughly quotable composer with an abundant gift for language. Miller and Lieberman devote a chapter to his writing for the Herald Tribune, which opens access to a legendary but little-explored part of his career, and they provide an appendix listing his reviews for the paper. Anyone seeking a tonic in a chaotic world should return to Lou Harrison’s Music Primer (C. F. Peters, 1971), where the composer delivers memorable maxims (“Cherish, conserve, consider, create”) together with information about his compositional procedures. Besides illuminating the many byways of Harrison’s experience, Miller and Lieberman manage one of the greatest feats of all—that is, to achieve a tone that consistently conveys the composer’s affirmative outlook on life. Their book concludes with a list of Harrison’s works and—most appealingly—a CD of previously unissued or out-of-print performances of his music. Highlights include Harrison’s own performance of Cinna (Suite for Tack Piano), which includes a discussion by him of the tuning system on which the work is based; his performance on the Korean p’iri in Hyi Mun, a transcription of a fifteenth-century Korean work; another on the cheng in The Garden at One and a Quarter Moons; a robust reading of “A Hatred of the Filthy Bomb,” conducted by his student Robert Hughes; and an excerpt from his Three Songs, as performed by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, with which Harrison has had a strong working relationship. Another recent publication is Lou Harrison's Selected Keyboard and Chamber Music (1937-1994), edited by Leta E. Miller (A-R Editions, 1998; $95), which appears as Volume 8 of the American Musicological Society’s “Music of the United States of America.” Included are edited scores for seven Harrison works representing different points in his career: France 1917-Spain 1937 (for percussion and string quartet), Tributes to Charon (percussion trio), Praises for Michael the Archangel (organ solo), Vestiunt Silve (soprano, flute/piccolo, two violas, harp), Incidental Music for Corneille’s ‘Cinna’ (Suite for Tack Piano), Varied Trio (violin, piano, percussion), and Grand Duo (violin and piano). Miller’s extensive introduction discusses the works in detail, expanding on coverage in her book. Among recent Harrison recordings, take special note of a Koch release (3-7465-2 H1) that includes a group of his piano and chamber works, including his Suite for Violin with String Orchestra (an arrangement of his Suite for Violin and American Gamelan), Suite for Cello and Piano (1995), and Suite for Cello and Harp (1949). Michael Boriskin performs two groups of early Harrison piano works—what Boriskin calls the “Equal Tempered Harrison.” Especially beguiling among them are the lithe and lilting Three Waltzes (1944-51). Meanwhile, a Harry Partch growth industry has suddenly sprung up, making a profuse array of his writings and music readily available. One of the most beautiful books on music to be published in recent years is Enclosure 3: Harry Partch by Philip Blackburn (American Composers Forum, 1997; $75). A 500-page “scrapbook” of photos and facsimiles (letters, programs, clippings), gorgeously printed on glossy paper, it provides primary source material for researchers and pleasurable reading for just about anyone else. It looks hip enough to draw in a twenty-year-old just as quickly as a more grizzled Partch fan. According to a note in the back of the volume, Blackburn took over the project from his composition teacher Kenneth Gaburo. He has not just published a single book but launched an ambitious series, every component of which is as visually striking as the last. Enclosures 1 and 4 are both videotapes with archival Partch footage. Included in Enclosure 1 are four films by Madeline Tourtelot, who collaborated with Partch on a series of projects: Rotate the Body in All Its Parts (1961, a performance by gymnasts at the University of Illinois to Partch’s Revelation in the Courthouse Park); Music Studio—Harry Partch (1958, an absorbing first-hand view of Partch’s Chicago residence, together with demonstrations by him of many of his instruments); U. S. Highball (1958/1968, a film realization of Partch’s story of riding the rails); and Windsong (1958, a dramatization of the legend of Daphne and Apollo, with Partch’s music as soundtrack). Enclosure 4 opens with Tourtelot’s 1971 film of Delusion of the Fury, with Danlee Mitchell as music director; although of considerable historic interest, it is lugubrious to the contemporary eye. The film also includes an engaging television documentary about Partch, released in San Diego in 1968. In it, Partch is interviewed amidst his instruments, which are spread out on a lawn at the University of California at San Diego; performances are also featured of Daphne of the Dunes and two duets from And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma. Enclosures 2, 5 and 6 are all CDs, which essentially supplement four Partch reissues released by CRI in 1997. Since two of these are multiple-disc sets, adding up to eight discs among the three releases, the contents are too considerable to detail here. Archival recordings made by Partch are included, as are more recent performances of some of his works. Enclosure 2: Historic Speech-Music Recordings from the Harry Partch Archives includes such rarities as “A Wagnerian Wrestling Match,” delivered by Partch on KPFA-Berkeley in 1954, and a performance of O Frabjous Day! as recorded the same year by Danlee Mitchell “on a Silver-tone toy tape recorder from Sears Roebuck.” Enclosure 5: Harry Partch yields a 1971 performance of Ulysses Departs from the Edge of the World, as well as a 1980 performance of Bewitched; both involve the Partch disciple Danlee Mitchell. This CD set adds even more curiosities, especially a performance of Johann Krieger’s “Menuet” from Partita in G, as interpreted on Harmonic Canon and Kithara by Partch and Ben Johnston in 1950. Enclosure 6, the latest release, features Delusion of the Fury as recorded at UCLA in 1969; this production, too, was directed by Mitchell and supervised by Partch. For a complete inventory of the marvelously varied materials on these CDs, log onto www.composersforum.org (click the link for “innova Compact Discs”). To order copies, write to the Minnesota Composers Forum, 332 Minnesota Street, #E-145, St. Paul, MN 55101-1300; compfrm@maroon.tc.umn.edu. Speaking of websites, Partch is more extensively represented than just about any concert composer from the American past. At www.corporeal.com, a site maintained by Jonathan Szanto, Partch aficionados can find “Corporeal Meadows,” an attractive, frequently updated source of information about the composer, including “The Meadows Guide to Partch Recordings, Videos, and Books.” For back issues of The British Harry Partch Society Newsletter, visit partch.edition.net, and for a list of holdings in the Partch Collection at San Jose State University, try www.music.sjsu.edu/Partch/harry_partch.html. All these locations turn up if you type “Harry Partch” into www.yahoo.com.