00:00:46.830 - 00:01:06.820

Lou Harrison: Spring in [unidentified] with Dr. Li Hie Gu from the Chinese, a Song Dynasty song preserved in Korea. Gauze windows glimmer and the yellow nightingale twitters. In the fireplace, some fire still lingers. Silk curtain and

00:01:06.820 - 00:01:29.020

tapestry hold me warm from spring's cold. Late last night it rained. Leaning on the screen I see light-winged seeds afloat in air, the mountains curving away like eyebrows, draw me no more. Flowers in hand and drying tears, I asked the wild

00:01:29.020 - 00:01:49.100

returning geese, have you seen my love? Morton Marcus: His name is Lou Harrison and he is one of the treasures of this area, a great American composer, a man who is also made up and said type, a man who now shows us that he is

00:01:49.100 - 00:02:53.900

a master poet. He is the guest on the Poetry Show tonight. And here we are with Lou Harrison. Lou Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon in 1917. He studied with Henry Cowell in San Francisco in the 30s. During the war, he joined John Cage in

00:02:53.900 - 00:03:08.570

organizing recitals of percussion music. And then in 1943, he went to the East Coast, New York, where he wrote for View Modern Music and the New York Herald Tribune, and edited the New Music Edition for a short while. In 1947, he

00:03:09.200 - 00:03:25.070

conducted the first complete performance of Charles Ives Symphony Number Three. And any of these things I mentioned are just the stuff of legend. I have been listening to Lou Harrison's music for years and the word that comes to me again and again

00:03:25.070 - 00:03:44.300

is the word delight and joy. And it is what he has given my life and what I think he thinks artists should give to this world, to give us a direction to show that this world is really a flower unfolding around us, if I may get poetic. Lou, thank you

00:03:44.300 - 00:03:53.920

so much for coming. Lou Harrison: Well, thank you for inviting me, Mort. It's a great honor, great pleasure. Morton Marcus: Well, we have to stop this, this mutual

00:03:53.920 - 00:04:11.230

admiration. Lou, there are some very interesting things I'd like to talk to you here. I also just want to start off with a little anecdote. When I came down here in 1968, they asked me to give a poetry reading in the old Catalyst. And I said "Well, what

00:04:11.230 - 00:04:24.880

kind of a, you know, an audience do you have there, what kind of people come in?" They said, "Well, we're having Lou Harrison come in and talk." And I said, "Oh, okay, well, I'll probably hop down and see." And these things would be given every two

00:04:24.880 - 00:04:40.210

weeks and I think there were only three of them that spring. And I came down and you gave a lecture with Bill on Chinese classical music on the instruments you had made, and I think I was in a trance for three days. I said holy

00:04:40.240 - 00:04:58.570

mackerel, this is unbelievable. And I I would just tell everybody, you know, Lou Harrison, who's elegiac symphony I had loved, is now so much more than just an American composer, he embraces the world. And what you have come to represent to me

00:04:58.570 - 00:05:13.390

-- and I've been at lectures you haven't even known I've attended -- you've come to represent to me the real spirit of humanism, the way I understand it, which is you just literally embrace the world. And the sense of beauty and sound, beauty and

00:05:13.390 - 00:05:24.100

sight, and obviously beauty and language, seems to be the center of your unfolding flower, if I might put it that way. Lou Harrison: Well, thank you, how very kind of you. Morton Marcus: Now, let's get on to others.

00:05:25.150 - 00:05:36.700

Lou Harrison: All right, yes. Morton Marcus: You make a very interesting statement here in- well, first of all -- and I know that you said this in an interview with Richard Kostelanetz -- how did you come

00:05:36.700 - 00:05:50.430

to write poetry? One of those mundane questions to start off. Lou Harrison: Well, actually, I haven't a clue, Morton, seems to me I've been writing all my life, off and on. Whenever I was moved to write, I wrote. And I've never made a point of it,

00:05:50.430 - 00:06:07.560

in fact, I'm surprised to have this book in front of me. And it was at the request of Robert Hughes that I organized it or rather, he organized it. I just got things out of the trunks and the notebooks, and so on. I did find that going around the world

00:06:07.560 - 00:06:22.140

with Bill, after we'd been in New Zealand on a fellowship, Fulbright, he made me a beautiful instrument to take around because I needed something, but it proved to be too large and cumbersome for us, though, it was terribly

00:06:22.140 - 00:06:34.770

beautiful. So we abandoned that and painting is a little difficult if you're touring and this was really a world tour, so I found though that I could write everywhere. If you have a pencil and a piece of paper you can write.

00:06:35.340 - 00:06:46.910

Morton Marcus: It's easy. Lou Harrison: Yes, so I wrote a number of pieces about- a number of poems about the places we had visited. I enjoyed that and I still do do that. We're going to be traveling a lot this summer

00:06:46.910 - 00:06:55.620

and that may happen again as well. Morton Marcus: Yes, you are off soon. Where are you traveling this summer, by the way? Lou Harrison: This summer, we'll be traveling to England for a

00:06:55.620 - 00:07:07.200

brief visit and then we go to Bonn for a production of my first opera, Rapunzel, from the William Morris poem. Morton Marcus: Right. Lou Harrison: And then up to Basel where I will talk on the

00:07:07.200 - 00:07:22.020

academy and then Dennis will repeat the new version of my Fourth Symphony. I'm dying to hear it, I have no idea what it's going to sound- well, I do to a degree, but I'm looking forward to that. Then back to Amsterdam, where he will repeat

00:07:22.020 - 00:07:40.320

my "Elegiac Symphony." And then from there, it's possible -- these plans are changing everyday, Mort, I just don't know -- it's possible that we'll go to Prague for rehearsals, more of the opera and chamber music. And then we're doing

00:07:40.320 - 00:07:57.270

Sapporo, Japan, for almost all of July for the Pacific Music Festival, which was founded by Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas, and now is of course under the direction of Michael. And then from there, there's the possibility that we

00:07:57.300 - 00:08:11.850

would return to Budapest for, I love this, a run of my opera which would start on the 10th and go on every even-numbered day. I don't know why, maybe they have to change clothes or something, but at any rate, every even-numbered day, and

00:08:11.850 - 00:08:25.800

also chamber music as well. By that time, of course, we will be happy to arrive home. Morton Marcus: Well, it sounds marvelous. And if people out there wonder why it is taking me so long to get Lou Harrison

00:08:25.800 - 00:08:37.200

here, it's because this is really on the occasion of the book that Lou mentioned, which is called, "Joys and Perplexities: Selected Poems of Lou Harrison," in which if nothing else, you can just -- as this book has sat on my desk --

00:08:37.350 - 00:08:55.500

just see Lou's joyous face every morning, and just has wonderful poems. And now, to talk about the poems, we know why you wrote, I mean, it keeps the mind going, but what I wanted you to read was the first part or comment on that first little

00:08:55.500 - 00:09:17.130

poem on page 51 because this is not the way a lot of young poets out there, who don't even know what meter means, approach poetry. And when I read this, I said, of course. And one of the joys of hearing you read, the first time I heard you read, was

00:09:17.130 - 00:09:27.270

the way you played with fixed forms, and how much love you have for forms and the filling out of those forms. So if you could just read that, then we'll start talking about it. Lou Harrison: I'd be happy to.

00:09:28.470 - 00:09:44.040

To my mind, meter matters more than rhyme does in the sweet chain of singing that is poetry, but swinging dance lifts words to melody and leads the movement that the heart takes in its curling concourse with the mind.

00:09:45.260 - 00:09:57.920

Morton Marcus: I think the people on the airwaves could hear the beauty of sound, the sonorousness that you get into the language itself and the joy of that and as I read the book and took my notes, I said, you know, I should have realized

00:09:57.920 - 00:10:13.010

this was going to happen. Many of these poems aren't- do not have as their primary imagery the visual, which most poets 70% of the images they put in will be visual. Most of the images in most of these poems are audio.

00:10:13.690 - 00:10:19.180

Lou Harrison: But I'm a composer. [Laughs] Morton Marcus: You're a composer, of course, and it makes obvious sense. Lou Harrison: Yes.

00:10:19.520 - 00:10:28.040

Morton Marcus: And it is just wonderful to hear the play of language and the wordplay that is going on in a lot of these poems. Lou Harrison: Thank you. You're very kind.

00:10:28.000 - 00:10:42.970

Morton Marcus: Well, I bet you can read whatever you want to read. I would love you to start with, "Eighths On My Teaching," because it seems to me not only is this the second poem in the book, but it is the poem which is the philosophical stance, and

00:10:42.970 - 00:10:51.790

sense of man and artists, which really runs through all the different kinds of poems in this book. Lou Harrison: Thank you. EIGHTHS ON MY TEACHING

00:10:51.000 - 00:11:09.660

Now I have taught for many years and have grown to need young people, so that I panic after all, in thinking that soon I might not grow and debate in daily hours among the young and beautiful. Though I'm burdened o relieve their awful futures

00:11:09.660 - 00:12:21.750

n world's decline and can off r nothing of faith, I can my o n ache mollify to watch swe t growing in their hope and an's blood driving in their eye . What was I to say, all's well, And that just about says it. What is interesting to me about

00:11:24.420 - 00:11:44.190

or the world will cure that g ossly wars? What only I can elp them think is just within the art I teach, as many facts leaned fully out of superstitio as I may. And history, co joined with sense -- where histo y is stably known -- where music

00:11:44.820 - 00:12:04.230

s facts and history diverge, we seek society and find persua ion's remedy, birth another supe stition, society births bot . It makes possible the fact nd also cherishes delusion Nature is everywhere and for ver beautiful, but of human work

00:12:04.770 - 00:12:31.500

some are to be preferred above others. To find these and two ways of joy, what more can I d ? that is "where music's facts and history diverge, we seek society and find persuasion's remedy birth another superstition,

00:12:31.710 - 00:12:47.280

society births both." And it seems to me that what we have in there is a real sense of tradition, of history, of all the weaknesses and strengths of man coming together, but then a real sense of the human community.

00:12:47.970 - 00:13:06.420

And I have been a card-carrying humanist for a long time, Mort. Morton Marcus: That's good to know and I didn't even know that fact. And the echo here is those last tortured poems of W. B. Yeats, trying to find out of history's flux again some sense

00:13:06.420 - 00:13:21.900

of that beauty of society raised up to its heights by intellectuality and art, you know? And I was just struck by that. If anyone wants anything to live by and have a core of solidness in this world of chaos, those lines it seemed to

00:13:21.900 - 00:13:35.100

me really say it. And then the humility of, "What more can I do?" at the end of the poem. It's a marvelous testament, marvelous testament. And again, I think everyone on the airwaves heard the beauty of those sounds. But enough of my talk,

00:13:35.100 - 00:13:51.420

what would you like to read and also talk about on the show? Lou Harrison: Well, one of the things I thought to read would -- since you had mentioned my interest in forms -- was fours on Kenneth Rexroth's reading. This is also autobiographical

00:13:51.420 - 00:14:06.870

because Bill and I and a friend, Richard Dee, used to give concerts with Kenneth, and we would accompany him on Chinese instruments, very quietly while he read his Chinese translations. And then we would play, of course, separate pieces

00:14:06.870 - 00:14:21.310

in between his readings. And this is what- yes? Morton Marcus: Before you start, could you tell the people out there what you mean by fours, fives, and elevens? Lou Harrison: Oh, yes. Yes, well, they're syllable counts,

00:14:21.340 - 00:14:36.160

as a matter of fact, and isosyllabic verse has interested me for a long time. As a composer of course, Mort, I've got a vested interest in verse, and I found in studying world music that I was also finding out about, a certain amount,

00:14:36.340 - 00:14:54.970

about the poetry of the world and made the discovery that the largest amount of verse is written by syllable count, not rhyme or rhythmic metrics in the Western sense- accent I mean. And so, isosyllabic verses interested me. Also, as I

00:14:54.970 - 00:15:08.920

pointed out, in Wystan Auden's last volume of the seventeen poems ten are isosyllabic, have syllabic verse forms, ranging from haiku to Saint Ephrem's verse, which has seven syllables per line.

00:15:10.630 - 00:15:19.610

Morton Marcus: I want you to repeat for the people out there. I've read this in an interview that you gave me. Lou Harrison: Yeah. Morton Marcus: We all think of Alexander Pope as the master of

00:15:19.610 - 00:15:28.720

the iambic pentameter couplet, the heroic couplet. Lou Harrison: Yes. Morton Marcus: But your comment on what he's doing is: Lou Harrison: That he wrote ten syllables per line and actually,

00:15:28.720 - 00:15:36.220

you can find out how he pronounced some things by reading it in that way and thinking of it that way, instead of accentually. Morton Marcus: Right.

00:15:36.610 - 00:15:45.170

Lou Harrison: There are differences in pronunciation it turns out. Morton Marcus: It's fascinating because what you have to do when you're working those verse forms is you've got to turn syllables

00:15:45.220 - 00:15:58.200

around so they don't sound singsong. But then obviously, they open your Occam's razor mind to this great criticism, of course, you'd just have to count the syllables in the line. That's all you can really say about them. Anyway, please go on

00:15:58.250 - 00:16:16.140

with these fours or four syllables per line for Kenneth Rexroth. Lou Harrison: ON KENNETH REXROTH'S READING He always paused, just a breath pause at the end of lines, thus making meaning's own line often doubtful. So we were left to

00:16:16.140 - 00:16:37.380

bridge the gaps, collect context, and restore his flow of writing. Even when we played his background music absorbed in our own work, we heard these gaps. Clearly, he meant to audibly define his forms, at least as to the length of lines.

00:16:38.980 - 00:16:49.900

Morton Marcus: And on the page, what's so wonderful about that is this is exactly the way Kenneth's lines felt, even when he was doing his translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Lou Harrison: Which were wonderful.

00:16:49.960 - 00:17:11.770

Morton Marcus: Oh, marvelous, marvelous. Okay, the book -- as Lou is about to read some more -- is divided into ten sections and the poems range, as far as I'm concerned, from invocations to eclectic subjects, to occasional poems, to poetry and

00:17:11.770 - 00:17:27.280

music, this is just mine, to social commentary poems, and then to love poems, some beautiful poems on the male. The first one especially, four songs [unintelligible] just- boy, did I feel great. It was the way I feel when I read Whitman in,

00:17:27.280 - 00:17:33.880

"Calamus," you know? Lou Harrison: Oh, thank you for that. Morton Marcus: Beautiful stuff. I hope before the night is over, you'll read us that one.

00:17:34.090 - 00:17:41.050

Lou Harrison: Thank you. Morton Marcus: Anyway, please read anything you'd like and comment on it Lou Harrison: Well, you built that one up, why don't I read

00:17:41.050 - 00:17:47.540

that? Morton Marcus: Don't I have a way with me, though. Lou Harrison: Yes you do, Mort. FOUR SONGS OF THE MALE

00:17:49.100 - 00:18:03.800

He comes at hand like the winged serpent striking air, or like a tree to bloom bursts into whom an ejaculation of delight. Or he enters with his power's pleasure, there to shimmer and ascend.

00:18:05.450 - 00:18:18.410

TWO Your mouth, as the beautiful ellipses of experience, tells to my mouth in touching, a foretaste of desire grown full. THREE

00:18:19.650 - 00:18:40.200

Men as are heads high when walking through the sun to sea and back are splendid. Besides a top he has crisp filigree of hair down torso and cross chest, gleaming black over muscles pink or russet, gold over olive skin, or gray or white and more. His

00:18:40.200 - 00:18:59.730

bodies remind me as I remember him and his arms. His armpit's hair is scent, and the bush above his genitals is thick, his limbs perhaps bear hair, and he has sometimes at the small of his back, and diamond-shaped, a field of hair. Some there are

00:18:59.730 - 00:19:18.690

with fingers haired and around their mouths a prickly beard, a prickle of their own prick spell. Man as are heads high when walking through the sun to sea and back are splendid. Men carry genitals centrally as flowers do. At staff he is

00:19:18.690 - 00:19:39.390

straight, curved up or various, and covered or deprived. He bears himself as proudly late or twisted there. However he stands I love him and the twinned orbs of his generation, as these he carries down and moist, or up in tension, or activity, or cold.

00:19:40.080 - 00:19:55.180

Men carry genitals centrally as flowers do. Morton Marcus: And for the people out there, while Lou is reading, there's the obvious consonant sounds that will come again, the T sounds or the P sounds, but the real music in

00:19:55.180 - 00:20:06.970

this is the music of vowels. And your A and O sounds just continuing carry this mellifluousness which is just absolutely lovely to listen to. I've never heard "Rapunzel," you wrote the-

00:20:08.140 - 00:20:15.360

Lou Harrison: "Rapunzel" is- no, that's William Morris, it's from his first volume. Morton Marcus: It's his [unintelligible]. Lou Harrison: Yes. You remember, "The Defence of Guenevere,"

00:20:16.140 - 00:20:28.200

it's about the second poem in that Morton Marcus: Yes. Lou Harrison: And in the production, we're finding very interesting omissions on Morris' part. And remember that there

00:20:28.200 - 00:20:47.460

are omissions in the story of Rapunzel that he wrote and also there's this very strange triangle between Morris and his beautiful wife, May Morris, and Rosetti, and it's quite a tension. And we're in our production in Bonn, we're aiming

00:20:47.460 - 00:21:07.350

towards some of those expressionist characteristics that, in fact, are in the poem before expressionism happened in Germany, so it's quite fascinating to me. I would like to read, since we're on the classical way, I would like to

00:21:07.350 - 00:21:26.220

read three poems that I dedicated to Robert Duncan and were originally published by Jonathan Williams, who is also the kind publisher of, "Joys and Perplexity," along with the special department of the library at UCSC and the Cabrillo

00:21:26.220 - 00:21:42.780

Music Festival. And these are three choruses from opera libretti that I wrote some of but never composed music to. At any rate, they were once a jargon Christmas gift to Robert Duncan.

00:21:42.870 - 00:21:59.900

THE CHORUS TO HADES Dark heart, more dark for having known such brightness as her brightness, take heart. For years' last part will pass and last leaves whirling down will bring her down beside your side.

00:22:01.220 - 00:22:22.250

The chorus to Persephone: Persephone, Persephone, from whence will issue melody, from whence will flowers rise and trees take root? What tree grow where? Sweet girl, take care, take care. Chorus about Tiresias: his heart walks long

00:22:22.250 - 00:22:44.000

and late. The rooms and hall where slow, unmeasured dark uneasy waits, whose caving roofs remember sun, he walks, whose heart heard cries ahead and was in silence bound. Morton Marcus: Well, you remember two of California's

00:22:44.000 - 00:22:53.670

finest, as far as I'm concerned, Rexroth and Duncan. I'm sure they're up in heaven looking down at us modulating the airwaves. Lou Harrison: Well, let's hope. [Laughs] Let's hope so, Mort.

00:22:58.250 - 00:23:13.190

May I say that this book was for a long time after it was published or not- at least a fair time after it was published, it seemed to me a sort of piece of wood, obviously, ground up and made into paper and printed upon, but

00:23:13.190 - 00:23:32.540

nonetheless, I didn't have much of a response to it. I felt what is this? Until one day Jack Foley and his wife Adele read part of it to me in their characteristic choral way and all of a sudden it came alive, and I realized why, Mort. Just

00:23:32.540 - 00:23:50.210

because as a composer I have always expected what I put down on paper to be played back to me. And this wasn't happening with the book until they did this and suddenly it came alive. Now I realized that I must learn to perform vocally, which I've

00:23:50.210 - 00:24:06.080

not done. And I have to learn to do this correctly and well, in fact, I think I may even start to try to ask Bill to get involved here. When I was growing up, you're perhaps- I'm sure you're younger than I am. When I was growing up and in the

00:24:06.080 - 00:24:21.110

20s in the public schools in California, we had all sorts of wonderful things that came around for what we then called assemblies. And two of them I remember most vividly and they've had an influence on my later life. The first of them is

00:24:21.140 - 00:24:38.090

puppetry. We saw some of the productions of those wonderful puppeteers from Chicago who were a major center and major figures in the art of puppetry at that time, Peer Gynt, for example, and so on, wonderful productions. And then another

00:24:38.090 - 00:24:53.840

thing that I have never forgotten and only recently I've done some myself to try to revive it, is the verse choir. As you will recall, Rachel Lindsay wrote for verse choir. And there were actual verse choirs who went around giving

00:24:53.840 - 00:25:12.740

programs and they were quite marvelous, and Jack and Adele reminded me of this fact. And I had already written in my "Homage to Pacifica," which was commissioned by the Pacific Foundation, a litany about the Indians and how they were

00:25:12.740 - 00:25:31.700

treated, which we have a tape here of it if we'd like to use that. But I'd like to revive the whole idea of a verse choir. They were wonderfully moving and entertaining too. And there was a composer, he's not played so often nowadays, but his name is

00:25:31.700 - 00:25:49.910

Ernst Toch, but he is a known composer and he was an expressionist who settled in Southern California along with Schönberg and Stravinsky, who wrote two enchanting pieces for verse choir. The first is called "The Geographical Fugue," "Fuge

00:25:49.940 - 00:26:09.770

aus der Geographie" in German, and he had a wonder- John Cage and a group of us did it some time back and it had a wonderful fugue theme. It went, "Ratibor! Und der Fluss Mississippi und der See Titicaca, Popocatépetl liegt nicht in Kanada sondern in

00:26:09.770 - 00:26:25.430

Mexiko!" So it went on and the counter subjects would enter and the whole choir would be involved in an actual fugue with rhythmic recitation. And then another accompanying piece he wrote was a Walz and it was the absolute enchantment of a garden

00:26:25.430 - 00:26:38.120

party and romance and so on. I think these are recorded, but I haven't been able to find my copies of them. I don't know where they are, but I would like to revive the idea of the verse choir, I think it would be wonderful fun for us to do.

00:26:38.160 - 00:26:48.780

Morton Marcus: Well, I think that anything that can go to making poetry readings more accessible, more of occasions, more power, I mean- Lou Harrison: Yes.

00:26:48.840 - 00:27:00.990

Morton Marcus: You know, Rexroth really believed this. When I knew Rexroth, he was saying, the poetry on the page is dead, it must be performed, we must get back to its oral roots. And now they're having a lot of poetry slams, and they're having

00:27:01.410 - 00:27:17.400

performance poets, you know, which is fine. And I think we can add the sense of music and you see, the kind of poet I am, as I'm sure you probably know, is, I write poetry that is speech and not song. And we can change that too, I think it's

00:27:17.400 - 00:27:22.050

about time. Lou Harrison: Your language- your sentences are very svelte. They're beautiful. Morton Marcus: Well, thank you, thank you.

00:27:22.050 - 00:27:29.220

Lou Harrison: Lovely. Morton Marcus: But I- we can get back to the lyric as the lyric sense of music, not just the emotional moment, I think. Lou Harrison: Yeah.

00:27:29.220 - 00:27:41.280

Morton Marcus: And certainly, you know, you can show us the way in that. And people are listening out there. Lou Harrison: I have been trying, as a matter of fact, and I wonder if we have time to play some examples of these things. I

00:27:41.280 - 00:27:56.550

have an extraordinary example that is a recent one. You- I doubt you saw the poem called, "Journeys," in Reed. Well, that was written, as a matter of fact, as the third movement of a composition which- of mine, which was commissioned by the

00:27:56.670 - 00:28:11.490

National Theatre of Japan, and I chose only four sounds through the poem, but it was to be read. Well, my Japanese friends said, "Well, what do we do? Do we translate it in Japanese, or do we read it in English, or do we read it in Japanese?" And I

00:28:11.490 - 00:28:29.190

said, "All of the above." And then what happened was, somebody discovered that in Tokyo, there is an American by the name of Richard Emmet, who has learned to do Japanese Noh drama in English. And so, "Would that be okay?" they asked and I said,

00:28:29.220 - 00:28:40.140

"Oh, indeed, it would." So I have the video of it and we have a recording of that poem done. Morton Marcus: I'll tell you what we'll do: we have to take a break right now. We will set that up.

00:28:40.000 - 00:28:49.960

Morton Marcus: During break, and I will play the remainder of the Lou Harrison: All right. piece that we have played here. For you people just tuned in, we are talking to Lou Harrison on the publication of his book of

00:28:49.960 - 00:29:04.300

Selected Poems called, "Joys and Perplexities." And yes, this is the Lou Harrison, the famous American poet, who is one of, and let me say this, the four, maybe five treasures we have in this area. Bill Everson is another, Jack Zajac the

00:29:04.300 - 00:29:19.450

wonderful sculptor is another one, and Adrienne Rich has come and joined this group in the last several years and has been living here. So this area is very, very rich on its art and culture and I'm sure it makes our lives that much richer.

00:29:19.480 - 00:29:32.230

Lou Harrison: May I add that I am very warmed and astonished by the generosity and kindness of you poets. You have welcomed me in and I had no expectations of this. I thought this would be, really, a curiosity.

00:29:32.440 - 00:31:12.970

Morton Marcus: Sometimes we're alright. Not all the time, sometimes we're all right. Okay, we will be back in around three or four minutes. Going to get back to this show, which features Lou Harrison and

00:31:12.970 - 00:31:25.180

we are going to try to bring you recordings of what Lou was just talking about before we went off, but I'm going to let him reintroduce what he was just saying from his Fourth Symphony, the two coyote songs. Why don't you

00:31:25.000 - 00:31:40.420

Lou Harrison: Yes, the secon movement of my Fourth Symphon is a setting of three coyote s ngs. And two of them demonstra e- the first two demonstrate wo ways of dealing with words a d music. I've never been a songw iter, I just- it just doesn'

00:31:40.420 - 00:31:56.920

work for me. So I've had to find ways of cooperating with poetry and music and o e of them of course, is chant me hanics such as the church uses and all around the world chan s are used for all reciting, pic poetry among other things.

00:31:56.920 - 00:32:11.740

And their formulaic, there's a l ttle melodic formula usual y with a recognizable nding. And so the first coyote ong is done that way. Then the another way of doing it that is, I think, perhaps a lit le more recent, is the rhythmic

00:32:11.740 - 00:32:25.720

ecitation of verse with a percus ion accompaniment of some sort. So these two coyote songs emonstrate each one of those wo procedures. Morton Marcus: Marvelous.

00:32:25.750 - 00:32:39.760

Lou Harrison: The second song, by the way, is a text written for me by a descendant of Wintu Indians, and he's a Seattle resident and a very scholarly man with a big background in the arts as well. And he wrote this text for me.

00:32:40.930 - 00:32:53.410

Morton Marcus: Who are the performers? Lou Harrison: Oh, Milton Williams is the marvelous baritone, and Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Cabrillo Music Festival orchestra as of last summer.

00:32:53.500 - 00:33:25.540

Morton Marcus: Yes, yes. Okay, we are going to try to get to this now. Everyone out there knows my technical inabilities, we are liable to be tuning in Mars but here we go. Milton Williams: What is this thing that the white people call

00:33:25.570 - 00:33:46.630

God? They're always talking about it. It's god damn this and god damn that, and in the name of the God and the God made the World. Who is that God, doc? They say that coyote is the Indian God, but if I say to them, God is Coyote, they get

00:33:46.630 - 00:34:24.740

mad at me, why? [Recorded music playing]: [Orchestra Music Playing] Milton Williams: He was walking down the road one day and it occurred to him that there was no one around but himself. So he

00:34:24.740 - 00:34:49.850

went to his house under the tree, determined to make some other people. He first [unintelligible] then he made it up today and that was round like the top half of an egg because good things come from eggs. He then made bread batter. And from

00:34:49.850 - 00:35:12.890

it he fashioned a great number of small people [unintelligible] charcoals in the oven and he looked at all the people he had made. "I have made so many that I shall have to make three times," he said. He placed some of the people on the bottom and

00:35:16.550 - 00:40:39.080

now I shall just have to wait. Coyote decided to rest his eyes for a while without falling asleep. But he did fall asleep. When he woke up he quickly pulled away... [Three Coyote Stories: Coyote's Path / Story I / Story II /

00:40:42.500 - 00:41:35.920

Story III] Lou Harrison: In the last coyote song, he forgets that the world is borrowed from the great great great grandchildren and he loses his behind by eating some berries he shouldn't. Now, in

00:41:35.920 - 00:41:50.380

the "Homage to Pacifica" that I wrote, I did a little experiment with a verse choir and it's a litany about the Indians. The same soloist is here and the verse choir is actually the Berkeley Chamber Singers who learned to do this.

00:41:51.760 - 00:44:31.390

Morton Marcus: Okay, here we go. [Recorded music playing]: [Homage to Pacifica] Lou Harrison: Yes. Next I'd like to read a poem called, "Journeys," which was written as a part of a commission from the

00:44:31.390 - 00:44:49.180

National Theatre of Japan. And then it is going to be- you're going to hear it as performed by Richard Emmett, an American in Tokyo who has learned how to do Noh drama in English, and I was delighted to hear it. But it's such an extraordinary sound that

00:44:49.180 - 00:45:00.990

I think I'll read the poem first to give you some idea of what he's doing. It's called: JOURNEYS, and it's a farewell to Toshi [unidentified] tenure as a musicologist for the National Theatre.

00:45:01.920 - 00:45:21.660

We borrowed time's carriage, wheels stirring a dust untracked by now or presence. We journey to imagined goals, whole lovely scenes whose sounds we seek for hearing. I have often stopped at old Alexandria to take a tuning or to read of marvelous man,

00:45:21.870 - 00:45:41.760

their sciences and verses rich with learning. When the carriage stops, do we bear the past against our backs and pushing? No, we journey together with it at our sides and companionably take to ourselves insights that help design an outline all of

00:45:41.760 - 00:46:01.620

future things. Time's wheels turn unmarked by us, so fast or slowly do they move, then stop at yearned for fabled places. You have often stopped at the [unidentified] and from an empress' goods found scraps of wood from whose readable burden

00:46:01.830 - 00:46:20.100

you have created [unidentified]. And from [unidentified] discerned the needed bracing. Instead of ruins you have made reality. [Unidentified] of grandly resonant wood, against which silken strings outline their twang on the blonde and

00:46:20.100 - 00:46:39.750

scented plank. Only at eighteen bamboo pipes the haisho sounds its tune. The stage will empty and you yourself will leave it, we'll go to gardens in good leisure and pleasure to think up bright new doings. Within this concert, now I heartily plays

00:46:39.750 - 00:49:42.220

you Toshi Rokido(?) who have so enriched us all with your ancient happy loves. [Recorded music playing]: ["Journeys" performed in the style of Noh drama]

00:50:34.530 - 00:50:47.370

Morton Marcus: Well, the time has gotten to the point that we had to cut that performance in the middle. But what I was talking about before, which was the direction or the presentation that the word can go in, what a very interesting

00:50:47.370 - 00:50:58.640

way it would be to start doing this over here, even with, let's say, Native American Indian chant. Lou Harrison: Yeah. Morton Marcus: And contemporary, very, almost urban poetry. When

00:50:58.640 - 00:51:07.010

you get back, I certainly would like to talk to you about some of these thing; we may be able to have some real fun. Lou Harrison: It would be fun. I'd love it, yes. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Anyway, Lou, I'd love you to read

00:51:07.010 - 00:51:11.330

another poem or- Lou Harrison: All right. Morton Marcus: -say something to us of great wisdom. Lou Harrison: [Laughs]

00:51:12.740 - 00:51:29.930

Morton Marcus: You know- [cross talk] Lou Harrison: I'm afraid I can't do that, but let's see. What would you like? Morton Marcus: I am open to any of the poems, there's so much-

00:51:30.110 - 00:51:38.150

You know, what's really a nice one- Maybe let's just sign this off with a poem about the California landscape. How about the Oleander poem? Lou Harrison: Oh, the Oleander.

00:51:38.000 - 00:51:46.270

Morton Marcus: I will- because I love oleanders. Lou Harrison: All right, fine. Morton Marcus: No, let's not do that. I know what we'll do, let's do something new. Because here's where the visual and the

00:51:46.270 - 00:51:55.090

audio come together so beautifully. I do want Oleanders too, on page 52, "Ode on the Monochord." Lou Harrison: Oh, all right. Morton Marcus: If you tell them, the listeners out there, what a

00:51:55.090 - 00:52:07.690

monochord is. Lou Harrison: Oh, yes. A monochord is a single-stringed instrument as the name implies, on which one can make all of the intervals of music, and I just love the instrument. It's

00:52:07.690 - 00:52:21.170

actually a tool but it's a wonderful one, you know. Morton Marcus: Well, they will see it and hear it in this poem. Lou Harrison: All right, thank you. Thin shining stretch of vibrant, tuneful wire pulled taut to

00:52:21.170 - 00:52:40.640

teach each measured interval of song and dance and hymn. The slim monochord is lord of melody. The shimmering string is like a branch to bloom into tunes, to curl and trill in tones gardens of melody, exhaustless glories, glimmering

00:52:40.640 - 00:52:59.240

lines of joy. Along strings swift and glistening pass, we trace the overtones and sweet toppings that are of our music, all of its measurement, and all its spell and art. As he had brought it west from Babylon, Pythagoras enjoined its use in

00:52:59.240 - 00:53:19.220

schools and as he marked it off, so millions knew their music and modalities. His old Sumerian measurements still make the two-stepped bright, unsettled melodies that are ancestral to all our modes and every tuning cycle. Our kite has touched the

00:53:19.220 - 00:53:36.740

melodious chord, and there was [unidentified], who was the first of men to measure earth. These and all such men came to this instrument. Along trembling tuneful shining wire we hear the careful tones that Ptolemy made in Alexandria, who wrote in

00:53:36.740 - 00:53:57.410

numbered ratios all his tunings. The monochord's lord of melody, and such sweet division sings from its wire, so wondrous this beauty, we are moved to laud all who have made a mode. Morton Marcus: Lou, thank you so much for being here tonight. We,

00:53:57.410 - 00:54:09.860

of course, have not scratched the surface. One of the things that we did not get into, but I think many of the people out there know if they don't, we are very conscious of the Pacific Rim now and this culture that we share with Asia that moves

00:54:09.860 - 00:54:24.380

around like the currents of the Pacific themselves. But thirty years ago or more, you are tapping into this brilliantly with the Chinese music and the gamelan. And we're hearing in the background some of gamelan music, and we're going to go out

00:54:24.380 - 00:54:36.290

with it. Hopefully this is not the last time we see you on the show. It's really been marvelous, and thank you for being so generous and open to my shenanigans here. Lou Harrison: Thank you, Mort, this was wonderful.