P R E F A C E

   I was aware of Lou Harrison's work long before I moved to Santa Cruz, California, in 1980. During my graduate studies at Stanford in the 1970s, Harrison's contributions to the percussion ensemble repertoire and his innovations in tuning theory were routinely mentioned in my classes; and yet I had never heard any of his music. Late in 1984, however, Philip Collins, a Santa Cruz County composer and the director of the Santa Cruz New Music Works, asked me to play the flute part in Harrison's octet Solstice, composed in 1949 to complement a dance by the New York choreographer Jean Erdman. As we began the first read-through of the opening movement, "Garden of the Sun," I found myself playing an expansive, uninhibited melody in double octaves with the cello, to the sparkling backdrop of a celesta ostinato. "Daring," I thought, "to write such music in the mid-twentieth century." Not that Solstice was simply an imitation of the past. On the contrary, it was decidedly contemporary in its harmonic language, and it was stamped with a distinctive individuality as well. Nevertheless the piece proclaimed a remarkable—and shameless—devotion to sonic beauty.
   Solstice began my love affair with the music of Lou Harrison, which was only enhanced when I met the composer—a portly, jovial man with a white beard and ponytail, who immediately won me over with his twinkling eyes, infectious laugh, and endless store of bear hugs. My proximity to Harrison's home in Aptos (only a few miles from Santa Cruz) facilitated my frequent performances of his music in the ensuing years, not only on flute but also on ocarina—a globular ceramic aerophone that he specified in several early compositions. Trusting my instincts, I agreed to play Canticle #3 (a 1941 work for ocarina, guitar, and five percussionists) before I had ever touched the instrument. I had no idea where to obtain an ocarina, much less how to finger it. Harrison solved the problem in a way I would later recognize as typical: "Come over to the house," he said, "and we'll find one for you."
   When I arrived at Harrison's rustic home in the Aptos hills the next day, his partner Bill Colvig immediately took me out the back door and through the garden to a weather-beaten wood-framed storage building with walls of faded-yellow corrugated plastic. As Bill pulled open the heavy door I saw the artifacts of the two men's lives on the bulging shelves: stacks of old phonograph records (including, I would later learn, some that were irreplaceable), several hundred volumes of National Geographic, Bill's backpacking equipment, luggage of all sorts in various stages of disrepair, large trunks filled with priceless manuscripts, discarded electronic equipment, old clothes, and shelf after shelf of instruments: drums, bells, metallophones, brakedrums, Asian instruments, homemade instruments, instruments scavenged from junkyards. On the floor in front of us lay a pair of glasses; "Oh," Bill said, bending over to pick them up, "I've been looking for those specs for two years!" He maneuvered his way to the rear of the building and located a box containing three ocarinas in diverse colors and sizes that we brought back to the house. Harrison casually invited me to take all three home to try: no paperwork, no deposit, no records. Though he barely knew me, he simply trusted me to care for his forty-year-old ocarinas and return them when I no longer needed them.
   In the years following this first visit—during which I performed Harrison's music in numerous concerts and recorded it on four compact discs—Lou and I became friends as well as fellow-musicians. I gradually came to realize the extent to which his creative life and musical language had been shaped by his many personal associations, which themselves often arose from his insatiable thirst to learn from (and integrate) diverse influences—from students or colleagues, amateurs or professionals, musicians or non-musicians. As the dancer and choreographer Mark Morris put it, "You either know Lou and have been to his house and are his best friend, or you've never heard of him."1 
   My interactions with Harrison during the past fourteen years have borne out Morris's characterization. Lou has given me books, music, and recordings, and has treated me to countless meals (despite my ardent pleas to pay, which are always met with his victorious generosity). He has attended countless rehearsals and recording sessions, sitting for long hours and offering comments with patience and respect. He has consistently shown trust in my musical judgment as well: on many occasions when I would ask which of two interpretations he preferred, he would respond, "Whichever you wish, my dear." For Harrison, the performer is a partner.
   During the 1980s and early 1990s, I played and recorded a great deal of contemporary music by Harrison and others, but my scholarly research focused on earlier eras: Renaissance chansons and madrigals, music and science in the Baroque era, and the music of C.P.E. Bach. Only later, when I began research for a book about Harrison’s life and work, did I discover Lou's own historical curiosity and learn how useful my early music back-ground would be. The book project began in December 1993 as an oral history (an idea that arose from a casual conversation with a colleague at a national meeting of the American Musicological Society). Since I had little background in the Asian musics that interested Harrison, I invited ethnomusicologist and composer Fredric Lieberman to join me as coauthor. (Fred had known Lou since 1963 and the two men had even studied with the same Chinese cheng specialist.) After a few months of intensive interviews, Fred and I realized that we needed to expand our project well beyond the confines of an oral history. We sought out others who had known Harrison over the past half century and embarked on an intensive search through supporting documents. With his typical generosity, Lou opened his personal materials to us without restriction. Letters, papers, notebooks, scores, sketch-books, tapes, records, compact discs: we were welcome to look at whatever we wished, make copies, and even take them from his home. After more than four years of work, two national grants, sixty-four interviews with Harrison and about fifty of his colleagues and friends, and countless hours of research through Harrison's papers and the holdings of various libraries, Lou Harrison: Composing a World was published by Oxford University Press in July 1998. The book includes a compact disc of rare recordings, among them Harrison's own performance of the tack-piano work Cinna, an edition of which is contained in the present MUSA volume.
   While the Oxford book contains a biography, a study of Harrison's creative development, and a complete catalog of compositions, specific works are not discussed in detail. In this sense, the MUSA edition complements the book by presenting seven works heretofore difficult to obtain, each accompanied by a detailed compositional and performance history. Together this repertoire suggests the breadth of Harrison's output: included are a political work from 1937, a percussion trio begun in 1939 and finished in 1982, an organ work illustrating his pre–1950 dissonant contrapuntal language, a melodious song inspired by Medieval European culture, the suite for tack piano in just intonation, and two chamber music compositions from the 1980s that intertwine the dominant strands of Harrison's artistic fabric. Together these works portray Harrison's stylistic syncretism, offering, within the confines of a single volume, a tour through his career. I hope that the Oxford book and the MUSA edition will work in tandem to flesh out the unique contributions of this prolific and inventive American composer and will provide others with some of the joy that Harrison and his music have brought to me over the years.
   This volume would not have been possible without the generous assistance of a great many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank Lou Harrison, who graciously gave of his time to read drafts of my introductory essay, converse with me on his compositional philosophy, and discuss minute details in each of the scores.
   Equally generous with his time has been MUSA's indefatigable executive editor, Mark Clague. Though there were moments when we both wondered if we would see the end of the project, Mark's detailed and perceptive comments and suggestions immeasurably improved the final product. MUSA's editorial assistants, Tamar Barzel and Victoria von Arx, provided invaluable help as well, carefully copyediting and proofreading the manuscript.
   Several reviewers graciously read the introductory essay and offered welcome comments and suggestions. I would particularly like to thank H. Wiley Hitchcock, Carol Oja, and MUSA Editor-in-Chief Richard Crawford. The support and advice of Fredric Lieberman and William Colvig were also invaluable.
   Harrison's able archivist, Charles Hanson, was always available to help with details, provide needed manuscripts, and make tapes of recordings in the composer's archive. The edition would have been impossible without Charles's careful cataloguing of Harrison's manuscripts, scores, and writings.
   Thanks are also due to Julie Steinberg and David Abel for their suggestions on the editing of the Varied Trio and the Grand Duo, and to percussionist William Winant for information on his work with Harrison on the Trio and on Tributes to Charon. Margaret Fisher was kind enough to provide copies of manuscript material from which she had prepared fair copies of several works for Harrison, violinist Romuald Tecco graciously sent his performance part for the Grand Duo, and graduate assistant Jonathon Grasse helped with the editing of Cinna.
   Without the aid of organist Edith Ho, we would not have been able to include Praises for Michael the Archangel, as Harrison had lost all copies of this work. After Charles Hanson noticed a handwritten remark on a conference brochure excerpt citing Ho's performance of this work, I tracked her down in Newton Center, Massachusetts. She immediately located the score in her files and sent a copy to Harrison. In addition, organist Susan Summerfield, who has worked closely with Harrison, graciously shared her suggestions for registrations.
   The librarians at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Special Collections (Paul Stubbs, Carol Champion, and Rita Bottoms) offered their typical courteous and efficient service; without their help, I could not have completed the edition. Don Harris at the UCSC photo lab provided the excellent photographic reprints of Harrison's manuscripts.
   I would particularly like to thank the members of the Committee on the Publication of American Music: Richard Crawford (Chairman), Carol Oja, Wiley Hitchcock, Marva Griffin Carter, Judith McCulloh, Paul Corneilson, Ingrid Monson, Christopher Reynolds, and Wayne Shirley.
   Finally, many thanks are due to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supports the MUSA project, and to the collaborating organizational sponsors: the American Musicological Society, the Sonneck Society, and the University of Michigan.

   1 Morris, interview with the author, Nov. 6, 1995.