Editing Lou Harrison (section)

==Early life and career==
===Childhood===
[[File:Lou and Bill Harrison, early 1920s.jpg|thumb|Lou ''(left)'' and Bill Harrison ''(right)'', {{circa|early 1920s}}]]Harrison was born on May 14, 1917, in [[Portland, Oregon]], to parents Clarence "Pop" Harrison and former [[Alaska]] resident Calline Lillian "Cal" Harrison (née Silver).{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|pp=9–10}}<ref name=tom>Huizenga, Tom (2017). [https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2017/05/13/525919082/lou-harrison-the-maverick-composer-with-asia-in-his-ears "Lou Harrison, The 'Maverick' Composer With Asia In His Ears"]. ''[[NPR]]''. Retrieved June 29, 2022.</ref> The family was initially well-off financially from past inheritances, but fell on hard times leading up to the [[Great Depression]]. Harrison lived in the Portland area for only nine years before moving with his parents and younger brother, Bill, to a number of locations in [[Northern California]], including [[Sacramento]], [[Stockton, California|Stockton]], and finally, [[San Francisco]].{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=9}} With the city having a large population of [[Asian Americans]] at the time, Harrison was often surrounded by the influence of [[East Asia|the East]]. His mother decorated their home with [[Traditional lighting equipment of Japan#Bonbori|Japanese lanterns]], ornate [[Oriental rug|Persian rugs]], and replicas of [[History of China#Ancient China|ancient Chinese]] artifacts.<ref name=tom/><ref>[[Anthony Tommasini|Tommasini, Anthony]] (2017). [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/arts/music/lou-harrison-centennial.html "America's Quintessential Maverick Composer, at 100"] ''[[The New York Times]]''. Retrieved June 24, 2022.</ref> The diverse array of music he was exposed to there, including [[Cantonese opera]], [[Steel guitar|Hawai'ian kīkākila]], [[jazz]], [[norteño (music)|norteño]] and [[classical music]], deeply fascinated and interested him.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=11}}<ref>[[John Rockwell|Rockwell, John]] (2003). [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/arts/music-a-life-tuned-to-the-sound-of-california.html "A Life Tuned to the Sound of California"] ''[[The New York Times]]''. Retrieved June 29, 2022.</ref> He would later say he had heard far more traditional Chinese music than European music by the time he was an adult.{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=406}}

Harrison's early interest in music was supported by his parents, with Cal paying for occasional [[piano]] lessons and Pop driving the young Harrison to study traditional [[Gregorian chant]] at the [[Mission San Francisco de Asís]] for a short period.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=11}} The family's frequent moves in search of work, however, provided the [[adolescence|adolescent]] Harrison little opportunity to develop any long-term friendships. Often feeling like an outsider, he relied on his own judgment to guide his aesthetic decisions and decidedly drifted further and further away from the artistic style of [[Western world|the West]]. He instead retreated into furthering his own [[autodidact|personal education]], often spending time at the local [[library]] to read books on everything ranging from [[zoology]] to [[Confucianism]]. He recalled being able to read two books a day, and the extremely wide diaspora of interests prompted him to connect disparate influences throughout his life, including in his future compositions.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=12}} It's believed the loneliness of his youth contributed to his strong dislike of [[urban area|urban metropolises]] and so-called "city life".{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=12}}

Harrison discovered he was [[gay]] while attending [[Burlingame High School (California)|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 [[coming out|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.<ref name=tom/>{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|pp=96–97}}<ref name=ross>[[Alex Ross (music critic)|Ross, Alex]] (2017). [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/new-york-celebrates-a-composer-who-left-town "New York Celebrates a Composer Who Left Town"]. ''[[The New Yorker]]''. Retrieved June 27, 2022.</ref>

===First musical education===
[[File:Henry Cowell portrait NYPL 4002097 (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright 0.7|Harrison considered [[Henry Cowell]] ''(pictured)'' his greatest musical inspiration and one of his closest friends]] 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.{{sfnp|Sachs|2012|p=264}}<ref>Baker, Alan (2002). [http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/interview_harrison.html "An interview with Lou Harrison"]; part of the American Public Media/''American Mavericks'' website. Retrieved June 26, 2022.</ref> 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 [[aleatoricism|aleatoric]] performance in his music.{{sfnp|Sachs|2012|p=94}} In fall of the same year, Harrison approached Cowell for private [[music composition|composition]] lessons, initiating a personal and professional friendship that continued until Cowell's death from cancer in 1965.{{sfnp|Harrison|1997|p=166}}{{sfnp|Sachs|2012|p=261}}{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=383}} He was the first to publish Harrison's music, through the publishing house he founded, New Music Edition.{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=404}} During Cowell's four-year stay in [[San Quentin Prison]] on a morals charge involving homosexual acts, Harrison publicly appealed for his release, and regularly visited him for composition lessons through the prison's bars.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=13}}{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=15}}{{sfnp|Sachs|2012|p=329}}

While still studying at age 19, he became an interim [[professor]] of music at [[Mills College]] in [[Oakland, California|Oakland]] from 1936 to 1939. In 1941, he transferred to the [[University of California, Los Angeles]] to work in the dance department; teaching students [[Laban movement analysis]] and playing piano [[accompaniment]].{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=388}} While there, he took theory lessons from [[Arnold Schoenberg]], leading him to further his interest in the infamous [[twelve-tone technique]].<ref name=swed>[[Mark Swed|Swed, Mark]] (2020). [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-12-02/how-to-listen-lou-harrison-composer-gamelan "Lou Harrison's generosity endures when we most need it"] ''[[Los Angeles Times]]''. Retrieved June 27, 2022.</ref><ref name="Miller">Miller, Leta (2007). [http://www.dramonline.org/albums/lou-harrison-in-retrospect/notes "Lou Harrison – In Retrospect"]. ''New World Records''. Retrieved June 25, 2022.</ref> He would later say, "... it was no jump at all to learn to write twelve-tone music; Henry's the one who taught me."{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=13}} The pieces he was writing at this time, however, were largely [[percussion instrument|percussive]] works using unconventional materials, such as discarded [[drum brake|car brake drums]] and [[waste container|garbage cans]], as musical instruments.<ref>Mirapaul, Matthew (1997). [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/mirapaul/051597mirapaul.html "For Composer Lou Harrison, Penmanship Counts"]. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved June 29, 2022.</ref> Few of his surviving pieces – including one of the earliest known examples, Prelude for Grandpiano (1937) – follow the [[serialism|serialist]] twelve-tone idiom.<ref name=tom/>{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=14}} He began using [[tone cluster]]s in his piano works, à la Cowell, but differed from his technique by calling for an "octave bar" – a flat wooden bar approximately an octave long, with a slightly concave rubber bottom.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=16}} This allowed the clusters to be much louder than they otherwise would be, and gave the piano more of an unpitched, [[gong]]-like sound. His experimental and free-wheeling style flourished during this period, with pieces like the Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (1940) and ''Labyrinth'' (1941).<ref>Fairchild, Frederick (1999). [https://www.pas.org/about/hall-of-fame/lou-harrison "Lou Harrison"], [[Percussive Arts Society]]. Retrieved June 27, 2022.</ref> This ultramodern and avant-garde music captured the attention of [[John Cage]], another one of Cowell's students.{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=388}}{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=5}} Harrison and Cage would collaborate in the years following, and engage in several romantic liaisons.<ref name=swed/>{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=16}}

===New York years===
Harrison was recommended several times to study musical composition in Paris – or Europe more broadly – but resolved several times against it, due to his staunch position of promoting and elevating the status of his fellow American composers.{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=384}} In 1943, Harrison moved to New York City and worked as a music critic for the ''[[New York Herald Tribune|Herald Tribune]]'' at the behest of fellow composer and tutor [[Virgil Thomson]].{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=388}}<ref name="Miller"/>{{sfnp|Sachs|2012|p=397}} While there, he met and befriended many modernist composers of the East Coast, including [[Carl Ruggles]], [[Alan Hovhaness]], and most consequentially, [[Charles Ives]]. Harrison would later dedicate himself to bringing Ives to the attention of the musical world – whose works had largely been scoffed at or ignored up to that point.{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=387}} With the assistance of his mentor Cowell, he [[Music engraving|engraved]] and conducted the premiere of Ives's [[Symphony No. 3 (Ives)|Symphony No. 3]] (1910);{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=388}} receiving financial help from Ives in return. When Ives won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Music]] for that piece, he gave half of the money rewarded to Harrison. Harrison also edited a large number of Ives's works, receiving compensation often in excess of what he billed.

As fruitful as his creative endeavors were becoming, Harrison was fraught with loneliness and [[anxiety]] while in the city. A romantic relationship with a dancer in Los Angeles had to be terminated due to the move, a move which he had already begun to regret as he missed the [[West Coast of the United States|West Coast]] more and more.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=20}} By 1945, he had developed several painful [[ulcer]]s, which he could not seem to cure as his nervous condition worsened. Despite attempting to complete new music for publishing, many of them (including one from the commission of Ives) were violently torn up and blackened out by Harrison from an extreme lack of confidence as he began to internalize the negative opinions of his compositions and public image.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=21}}

In May 1947, extreme stress from [[homesickness]], a vigorous work schedule and [[homophobia|homophobic]] colleagues culminated in a severe [[nervous breakdown]].<ref name=tom/>{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=390}} Cage came to Harrison's aid, assisting him and bringing him to a [[psychiatric clinic]] in nearby [[Ossining (town), New York|Ossining]]. Harrison remained in the clinic for several weeks before transferring to the [[New York Presbyterian Hospital]].{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=385}} He wrote frequently to Cowell and his wife Sidney in the first few months, expressing his deep regret and [[Depression (mood)|depression]] for what he felt to be a wasted career and adulthood.{{sfnp|Sachs|2012|p=397}} His recovery entailed nine months of extensive treatment and several more years of regular checkups, at the request of Harrison. Many of his colleagues predicted the breakdown would herald the end of his career, but Harrison continued to compose in spite of the [[Psychological stress|stress]] plaguing him. While staying in the hospital, he composed several works, including much of his Symphony on G (1952), and regularly [[painting|painted]].{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=21}}{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=390}}

He decided, however, to return to California as soon as possible.{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=385}} In a 1948 letter addressed to his mother, Harrison wrote from the hospital, "I long to live simply and well and that just isn't possible here."<ref name=ross/>