Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:15:43.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unheard Complexities in Lou Harrison's Main Bersama-sama and Bubaran Robert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2013

RACHEL CHACKO
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Central among Lou Harrison's pioneering East-West fusions, the works for gamelan and Western instruments are frequently cited either as exemplars of the composer's Californian, postmodern musical sensibility or as noteworthy instances of cultural hybridity. Close examination of Main Bersama-sama (1978) and Bubaran Robert (1976, rev. 1981), however, shows that these pieces can and should be understood for what they tell us about Harrison's deep engagement with melody. A self-proclaimed “melode,” Harrison has mistakenly been regarded as a West Coast musical dabbler, writing tuneful pieces that lack the complexity that characterizes the work of his East Coast contemporaries. Yet analysis of the pitch structure of Main Bersama-sama and Bubaran Robert reveals intricate compositional “games” similar to the pre-compositional strategies of composers more typically associated with algorithmic compositional methods. Because these intricacies lie beneath the melodic surface of the music they have largely been unheard and unappreciated in Harrison's work. The melodic nature of these games not only challenges the widely accepted depiction of Harrison as a mere “tunesmith,” but also shows that Harrison explored the ability of melody (as opposed to large-scale tonal or harmonic schemes) to create form and serve a central generative function in his music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 265 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alves, Bill. “Kembangan in the Music of Lou Harrison.” Perspectives of New Music 39/2 (Summer 2001): 29–56.Google Scholar
Born, Georgina, and Hesmondhalgh, David, eds. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Brinner, Benjamin. Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Brinner, Benjamin. Music in Central Java: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Diamond, Jody. “‘In the Beginning Was the Melody’: The Gamelan Music of Lou Harrison.” In A Lou Harrison Reader, ed. Garland, Peter, 100–3. Santa Fe, NM: Soundings Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Everett, Yayoi Uno. “Intercultural Synthesis in Postwar Western Art Music: Historical Contexts, Perspectives, and Taxonomy.” In Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, ed. Everett, Yayoi Uno and Lau, Frederick, 1–21. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Everett, Yayoi Uno, and Lau, Frederick, eds. Locating East Asia in Western Art Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Gagne, Cole. Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Garland, Peter, ed. A Lou Harrison Reader. Santa Fe, NM: Soundings Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Bubaran Robert.” In Music for Gamelan with Western Instruments. N.p.: American Gamelan Institute, 1992.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Carl Ruggles.” The Score and I.M.A. Magazine 12 (June 1955): 15–26.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Creative Ideas in Classical Korean Music.” Korea Journal 2/11 (1962): 34–36.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. Joys and Perplexities: Selected Poems of Lou Harrison. Winston-Salem, NC: Jargon Society, 1992.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Learning from Henry.” In The Whole World of Music: A Henry Cowell Symposium, ed. Nicholls, David, 161–68. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Main Bersama-sama.” In Music for Gamelan with Western Instruments. N.p.: American Gamelan Institute, 1992.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Music for Kyai Hudan Mas.” Soundings 10 (1976): n.p.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. Music Primer: Various Items About Music to 1970. New York: C. F. Peters, 1971.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou. “Schoenberg in Several Ways.” National Centre for the Performing Arts (Bombay) Quarterly Journal 4 (1975): 9–34.Google Scholar
Harrison, Lou, and Neilson, Trish, eds. Gending-Gending California, 1981.Google Scholar
Kostelanetz, Richard. “A Conversation, in Eleven-Minus-One Parts, with Lou Harrison about Music/Theatre.” Musical Quarterly 76/3 (Fall 1992): 383–409.Google Scholar
Leyland, Winston. “Winston Leyland Interviews Lou Harrison.” In A Lou Harrison Reader, ed. Garland, Peter, 70–84. Santa Fe, NM: Soundings Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Lindsay, Jennifer. Javanese Gamelan: Traditional Orchestra of Indonesia, 2nd ed.New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E. “Lou Harrison and the Aesthetics of Revision, Alteration, and Self-Borrowing.” Twentieth-Century Music 2/1 (March 2005): 79–107.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E.Lou Harrison: Selected Keyboard and Chamber Music, 1937–1994. Music in the United States of America 8. Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1998.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E., and Lieberman, Fredric. Composing a World: Lou Harrison, Musical Wayfarer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E., and Lieberman, Fredric. Lou Harrison. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Miller, Leta E., and Lieberman, Fredric. “Lou Harrison and the American Gamelan.” American Music 17/2 (Summer 1999): 146–78.Google Scholar
Neff, Severine. “An Unlikely Synergy: Lou Harrison and Arnold Schoenberg.” Journal of the Society for American Music 3/2 (May 2009): 155–93.Google Scholar
Perlis, Vivian. Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History. New York: Da Capo Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Perlman, Marc. Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Rathbun, Virginia Madison. “Lou Harrison and His Music.” M.A. thesis, San Jose State University, 1976.Google Scholar
Ravenscroft, Brenda. “Re-Construction: Cage and Schoenberg.” Tempo: A Quarterly Review of Modern Music 60/235 (January 2006): 2–14.Google Scholar
Ravenscroft, Brenda. “Working Out the ‘Is-Tos and As-Tos’: Lou Harrison's Fugue for Percussion.” Perspectives of New Music 38/1 (2000): 25–43.Google Scholar
Spiller, Henry. Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia. 2nd ed.New York: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Spiller, Henry. Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004.Google Scholar
Spiller, Henry. “Lou Harrison's Music for Western Instruments and Gamelan: Even More Western Than It Sounds.” Asian Music 40/1 (Winter/Spring 2009): 31–52.Google Scholar
Tenzer, Michael, ed. Analytical Studies in World Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Tenzer, Michael, andRoeder, John, eds. Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Von Gunden, Heidi. The Music of Lou Harrison. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Yates, Peter. Introductory Essay to Some Twentieth Century American Composers: A Selective Bibliography, by John Edmunds and Gordon Boelzner, Vol. 1, 9–22. New York: The New York Public Library, 1959.Google Scholar