LOU HARRISON: One of America's most multi-faceted composers, Lou Harrison, who has died aged 85, was as able to write music for gamelan, or Indonesian percussion orchestra, as he was to produce 12-tone opera.
He readily embraced the experimental, West Coast culture of the 1950s and 1960s, but very much in his own way, and remained a loyal disciple of John Cage and the prodigious Henry Cowell, whose orientalism he happily acknowledged in his own works. His music became popular at a time of revived interest in the Orient, shared by such composers as Alan Hovhaness and Colin McPhee, as well as by Cowell.
Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon, and brought up mainly in California. He first encountered Cowell as a composition student at San Francisco State College in 1934, and learned to compose in microtones and for percussion instruments. He also became acquainted with the then almost unknown music of Charles Ives, and began composing experimental pieces while working as an accompanist for dance groups.
One of his first works, Canticle No 3 for flute, guitar and percussion (1941), was far eastern in concept but western in structure. That same year, he attended a number of Schoenberg's seminars in Los Angeles and developed a strong interest in 12-tone music.
After several unhappy years in New York, where he suffered a serious nervous breakdown, Harrison returned to composition in 1951, settling for two years in North Carolina. The following year, he produced his First Symphony, a largely dodecaphonic piece, and his Mass to St Anthony, a modal work of serene beauty which evoked the early Californian missions and stood in stark contrast to the gritty symphony. This fertile period also included his first opera, Rapunzel. In 1954, after a short spell in Italy, he made his permanent home in Aptos, California. His musical experiments continued, with many pieces using "tack" piano, in the manner of John Cage, where the piano hammers would be filled with nails or drawing pins to produce a keener, thinner tone.
Harrison's lifestyle was as experimental as his music: in 1956, he took several months off to learn about fighting forest fires and, the following year, he went to work in an animal hospital. He also became a fluent advocate of Esperanto; his 1959 Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra, in common with a number of later works, is subtitled in that international language.
From the 1950s onwards, both Harrison and Cowell had many works performed at the Cabrillo festival in Aptos. In 1963, he spent a year in Hawaii, and his Pacifica Rondo was a protest at the continuing atomic tests in the area. After spending 1966 in Mexico, he returned to the music faculty at San Jose State College, where he remained for many years. Of his later pieces, the most notable is the Organ Concerto With Percussion (1973), which was heard at the 1997 London Proms.
Harrison's tireless advocacy of the music of American pioneers like Ives, Carl Ruggles and Varèse in the 1940s - when they were still unknown even in America - in no way detracted from his own contribution to the pioneering tradition in his country. His many talents included instrument-making (including predictably exotic specimens), writing, painting and philosophy. In 1973, he was elected to the US national institute of arts and letters.
Last year, he completed his Nek Chand, for specially constructed, just-intoned Hawaiian slack guitar. Next month, some of his poems, gamelan scores and drawings will appear in a limited edition, Poems and Pieces.
His companion of 33 years, William Colvig, died in March 2000.
Lou Silver Harrison: born May 14th, 1917; died February 2nd, 2003