Editing Lou Harrison (section)

===New compositional style===
The crisis during his New York years prompted Harrison to heavily reevaluate his compositional language and style. He ultimately rejected the dissonant idiom he had previously cultivated, and turned toward a more sophisticated melodic lyricism in [[diatonicism|diatonic]] and [[pentatonic]] [[scale (music)|scales]]. This put him sharply at odds with the then-current academic styles, and set him apart from the ultramodernist composers he had studied and associated with. The two years following his leave from the hospital in 1949 became one of the most productive periods of Harrison's entire career, yielding [[impressionism (music)|impressionistic]] works such as the Suite for Cello and Harp, and ''The Perilous Chapel and Solstice''.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=21}} Following in the path of Canadian-American composer and friend [[Colin McPhee]], who had done extensive research in Indonesian music in the 1930s and wrote a number of compositions incorporating [[music of Bali|Balinese]] and [[music of Java|Javanese]] elements, Harrison's style began emulating the influence of gamelan music more clearly, if only in [[timbre]]: "It was the sound itself that attracted me. In New York, when I changed gears out of twelve tonalism, I explored this timbre. The gamelan movements in my Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra [1951] are aural imitations of the generalized sounds of gamelan".{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|1998|p=160}}{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=393}}

In the early 1950s, Harrison was given a first edition copy of [[Harry Partch]]'s book on [[musical tuning]], ''[[Genesis of a Music]]'' (1949) from Thomson.{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|2006|p=22}} This prompted him to abandon equal temperament and begin writing music in [[just intonation]].{{sfnp|Miller|Lieberman|1998|p=391}} He strived to achieve powerful music using simple ratios, and would later consider music itself to be "emotional mathematics".{{sfnp|Kostelanetz|1992|p=403}} In an oft-quoted comment referring to the frequency ratios used in just intonation, he said, "I'd long thought that I would love a time when musicians were numerate as well as literate. I'd love to be a conductor and say, 'Now, cellos, you gave me 10:9 there, please give me a 9:8 instead,' I'd love to get that!"