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Incidental Music to Corneille's Cinna (1955-1957)
| composer |
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) |
| performers |
Linda Burman-Hall, tack piano |
| publisher |
HBP (BMI)
|
| label |
New Albion Records 117http://www.newalbion.com
|
| duration |
12:03 |
Linda Burman-Hall:
"Cinna consists of a suite of incidental music ... to accompany a rod-puppet production of the classic French play, which did not materialize once the music was written. Corneille's play Cinna (1642) is a grand political intrigue in which loyalty conflicts with revenge. Harrison's decision to create a custom just intonation scheme for the work -- which assures a spectrum of finely-nuanced melodic semitone relationships and larger intervals of either 'pure' or 'poisonous' affect -- is partcularly appropriate to a theater world obsessed with power inequities and strategic alliances, a world in which affinity is tempered by antipathy. Instead of the 'totalitarian tonal regime' imposed by equal temperament (which often masquerades as democracy), just pitch relationships such as those of Cinna give rise to a complex and changeable tonal theater, a stratified society of sound in which pitches become actors, creating interval relationships and motives of character. While imaginatively invoking ancient Rome with fluid rhythms and 'exotic' melodic writing, Cinna draws subtlety on the flows and textures of prélude non mesuré as developed by the French clavecinistes contemporary with Corneille. Cinna, for tack piano, is pitched at A = 415 at the request of the composer, bringing it closer to the sound world of Corneille while reducing the risk of broken strings. The composer's original 1957 recording of Cinna in the specified just seven-limit tuning is available on the CD accompanying the book, Lou Harrison: Composing A World, by Leta Miller and Fred Lieberman (Oxford University Press, 1998)."
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) is known for an eclectic body of work which features diverse systems of intonation, traditional Asian instruments, and a combination of Eastern and Western musical styles.
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Harrison initially studied in San Francisco in 1935 with Henry Cowell, who introduced him to the music of Charles Ives as well as Native American and early Californian culture. As a dance accompanist for Mills College in Oakland, Harrison met John Cage, with whom he arranged percussion concerts in 1941; a year later he studied with Arnold Schoenberg at the University of California, Los Angeles. Harrison lived in New York City from 1943 to 1951, where he wrote for a number of periodicals and conducted the premiere of Ives' Third Symphony (1904-1911), for which Ives received the Pulitzer Prize (but gave the prize money to Harrison and composer John Becker).
Towards the end of his stay in New York, Harrison began to work with just intonation, inspired by the publication of Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music in 1949. He held residencies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina (1951-1952) before permanently settling in Aptos, California. In the 1960's Harrison received grants allowing him to travel to Korea and Taiwan, where he studied Korean court music with Lee Hye-Ku and Chinese classical music with Liang Tsai-Ping.
At various points in his career, Harrison made a living as a florist, record clerk, poet, dancer, critic, music copyist, calligraphist, painter, playwright, teacher, and instrument builder. He held academic positions at the University of Hawaii, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and other schools until finally joining the faculty of Mills College in 1980. With partner William Colvig he built many non-Western and folk instruments, including two gamelans in just intonation which remain in use at San Jose State University and Mills College. Harrison's music has been recorded on many labels including Albany, Bridge, CRI, Crystal, Koch International Classics, Mode, Music & Arts, New Albion, New World, and Phoenix.
related websites
http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/harrisonbio.html
Although perhaps best known as a performer of historic keyboard works, Linda Burman-Hall regularly performs a wide range of music from works of the medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen to premieres of experimental and computer music. She has performed and recorded with a variety of early music artists and ensembles including her own group Lux Musica. In contemporary music, Burman-Hall has performed with Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, and Meredith Monk; recorded works by composers including David Cope, Lou Harrison, David Jones, and Gordon Mumma; and commissioned, premiered, recorded, transcribed, and edited new music by contemporary Indonesian composers. She is also active as a musicologist, with parallel career activities in early music performance and Indonesian music research. Burman-Hall studied with Gustav Leonhardt and at the University of California, Los Angeles and Princeton University in New Jersey. She is currently on faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the founder and artistic director of the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival. Her solo and ensemble recordings can be found on the Centaur, Helicon, Kleos, Musical Heritage Society, New Albion, and Wildboar labels.
related websites
http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/Burman-Hall
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