- Likes the "gamelan" which produces soothing music. He has used the gamelan in several of his classical music compositions.
- Survived by his companion, Todd Burlingame.
- Died while travelling to a festival of his music at Ohio State University.
- Inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1985.
- His music is typically spartan in texture but lyrical, and harmony usually simple or sometimes lacking altogether, with the focus instead being on rhythm and melody. Ned Rorem describes, "Lou Harrison's compositions demonstrate a variety of means and techniques. In general he is a melodist. Rhythm has a significant place in his work, too. Harmony is unimportant, although tonality is. He is one of the first American composers to successfully create a workable marriage between Eastern and Western forms.".
- Many of Harrison's early works are for percussion instruments, often made out of what would usually be regarded as junk or found objects such as garbage cans and steel brake drums.
- He was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments.
- Among Harrison's better known works are the Concerto in Slendro, Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra, Organ Concerto with Percussion (1973), which was given at the Proms in London in 1997; the Double Concert' (1981-82) for violin, cello, and Javanese gamelan; the Piano Concerto (1983-85) for piano tuned in Kirnberger #2 (a form of well temperament) and orchestra, which was written for Keith Jarrett; and a Concerto for Piano and Javanese Gamelan; as well as four numbered orchestral symphonies.
- He also wrote a large number of works in non-traditional forms. Harrison was fluent in several languages including American Sign Language, Mandarin and Esperanto, and several of his pieces have Esperanto titles and texts, most notably La Koro Sutro (1973).
- Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his former teacher and contemporary, Henry Cowell, but later moved toward incorporating elements of non-Western cultures into his work. Notable examples include a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, inspired after studying with noted gamelan musician Kanjeng Notoprojo in Indonesia.
- The majority of Harrison's works and custom instruments are written for just intonation rather than the more widespread equal temperament, making him one of the most prominent composers to have experimented with microtones.
- Harrison would create his own musical ensembles and instruments with his partner, William Colvig, who are now both considered founders of the American gamelan movement and world music; along with composers Harry Partch and Claude Vivier, and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee.
- Several works feature the tack piano, a kind of prepared piano with small nails inserted into the hammers to give the instrument a more percussive sound. Harrison's mature musical style is based on "melodicles", short motifs which are turned backwards and upside down to create a musical mode the piece is based on.
- After graduating high school in 1934, Harrison enrolled in San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). It was there where he took Henry Cowell's "Music of the Peoples of the World" course being offered by the UC Berkeley Extension. Harrison quickly became one of Cowell's most enthusiastic students, and he subsequently appointed him as class assistant. After attending a Palo Alto performance of one of Cowell's pieces for piano and improvised percussion in June 1935, Harrison would proclaim it to be one of the most extraordinary works he had ever heard. He would later incorporate similar elements of found percussion and aleatoric performance in his music.
- Like Charles Ives, Harrison completed four symphonies. He typically combined a variety of the musical forms and languages that he preferred. This is quite apparent in the fourth symphony, recorded by the California Symphony for Argo Records, as well as his third symphony, which was performed and broadcast by Dennis Russell Davies and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Russell Davies also recorded the third symphony with the Cabrillo Music Festival orchestra.
- He also wrote a number of pieces using Schoenberg's twelve tone technique, including the opera Rapunzel and his Symphony on G (Symphony No. 1) (1952).
- On November 2, 1990, the Brooklyn Philharmonic premiered Harrison's fourth symphony, which he titled "Last Symphony". He combined Native American music, ancient music, and Asian music, tying it all together with lush orchestral writing. A special inclusion was a series of Navajo "Coyote Stories". He made a number of revisions to the symphonies before completing a final version in 1995, which was recorded by Barry Jekowsky and the California Symphony for Argo Records at Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, California, in March 1997. The CD also included Harrison's Elegy, to the Memory of Calvin Simmons (a tribute to the former conductor of the Oakland Symphony, who drowned in a boating accident in 1982), excerpts from Solstice, Concerto in Slendro, and Double Music (his collaboration with John Cage).
- He was also one of the first composers to have written in the international language Esperanto, and among the first to incorporate strong themes of homosexuality in his music.
- Like many other 20th-century composers, Harrison found it hard to support himself with his music, and took a number of other jobs to earn a living, including record salesman, florist, animal nurse, and forestry firefighter.
- Harrison discovered he was gay while attending Burlingame High School and realizing his attraction toward a male classmate. By the time he graduated in December 1934 at the age of 17, he had come out to his family, and decided thereafter to make no attempt at hiding his sexual preference and personality; nearly unheard of for gay men of the time.
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