Harrison - Suite for Violoncello and Piano (sample pages)

Lou Harrison Suite for

Violoneello and Piano

Lou Harrison's Suite for ViolonCello and Piano (1995) began as a request from a piano-playing physician who wanted a piece he could play with a cello-playing colleague. Harrison found two melodies in his notebooks from the late 1940's that he began to develop at once. As the suite was still being completed, however, the doctor who had initiated the piece died; the "Elegy" is composed in his memory.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1917, Harrison studied music on the West Coast with Henry Cowell (1934-5) and Arnold Schoenberg (1941-2). During World War II he organized recitals of his own music and others', frequently in collaboration with John Cage, while working as a florist, record clerk, poet, dancer and dance critic, music copyist, playwright and instrument builder. All the while his interest in the music of the various cultures on West Coast-including Asian, Latin American and Native Americancontinued to influence him. He developed a passion for Baroque and pre-Baroque music as well, performing on period instruments and composing new works for those instruments.

Moving to New York in 1943, he continued to compose, to write music criticism for The New York Herald Tribune, and conduct; in 1946 he led the first complete performance of an Ives symphony, the Third, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1953 Harrison moved back to the West Coast, where he has remained to this day. In the early 60s he traveled to Asia, and he has continued to incorporate elements of Asian music in his compositions ever since. In the late 60s, Harrison began building his own instruments with his partner William Colvig, which he uses alone or in combination with Eastern and Western instruments. Their American gamelan is featured in two large-scale works: Suite for Violin and La Koro Sutro (The Heart Sutra).

Harrison has received numerous awards, grants, and citations, including two Guggenheim awards, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

First printed in 2000.

in honor ofRobert Korns

Suite for Violoncello and Piano Lou Harrison

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(1995)

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ŠCopyright 2000 by Peermusic III Ltd. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Printed in U.S.A. Warning: Any reroduction or arrangement of this composition without permission of the publisher is an infringement of copyright.

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