This release is a further step forward for Lou Harrison, emerging from relative obscurity in time for his seventy-fifth birthday next year. In the 1940s he was a colleague of Cage, Partch and Henry Cowell and shared some of their concerns—the percussion music of Cage; the interest in tuning systems found in Partch; the striving for a world music characteristic of Cowell. Harrison edited several Ives scores and brought the Third Symphony to performance in 1947: he much admires Percy Grainger. His very catholicity can seem a stumbling block but Virgil Thomson recognized that he was ''simply speaking in many personae and many languages. The message is pure Harrison.''
The most substantial work here is the earliest—Canticle No. 3, which shares the world of Cage's Construction in Metal and is just as good. Car brake-drums are employed in both, but here the ocarina weaves an eerie modal melody emphasizing the lyricism which is the core of Harrison.
Harrison ought to be of particular interest to guitarists, but John Schneider here plays a well-tempered guitar invented by Tom Stone with a system of interchangeable fingerboards designed to facilitate the use of various tuning systems. Like Partch's use of his own unique instruments, this may discourage wider performance of Harrison's guitar works, some of which require percussion too. The Serenado por Gitaro (the title is in Esperanto, the international language which Harrison speaks and supports) was one of the earliest pieces to be written for an instrument with moveable frets and employs just intonation. Otherwise, with a few compromises perhaps, this and other pieces here could become popular in the repertoire although, as in early music, the precision of purer tuning systems has real attractions.
Harrison impresses with his humility. As in the East, he is not concerned to develop a personal style. This results in a low density type of composing, a kind of environment for meditation which makes friends at once. This CD of 50 minutes duration feels a bit short, though. (For further information about Harrison it is worth trying to obtain A Lou Harrison Reader, Soundings Press, PO Box 8319, Santa Fe, NM 87504-8319, USA, which contains interviews, biographical material and a few scores.)'