Critics’ Choice: Selected as one of the 10 best books of 1999.
BBC Music Magazine, December 1999.


LOU HARRISON
"Garrulous and loving, remarkably successful in distilling abstruse musical manipulation, this is one of those rare musical biographies that draws you close to the subject with words of kindness rather than scholarly gobbledygook or scabrous patter."
—Alan Rich, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
"Far from academicizing or otherwise constraining Harrison by placing him between its solid covers, Composing a World seemingly manages the impossible in striking a perfect balance between convention and alterity, seriousness and humor, scholarship and celebration, erudition and readability, macrocosm and microcosm…"
—David Nicholls, Notes (Sept. 1999)
Composing a World

(book with enclosed CD)


Leta E. Miller
Fredric Lieberman

Oxford University Press
New York
1998
"An inspirational assessment of a remarkable musical figure."
—David Kettle, BBC Music Magazine, June 1999
More Praise for

"Lou Harrison: Composing a World"

"Engrossing, indispensable…"
—Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

Lou Harrison's instruments
PLATE from Chapter 6: "Instruments, Foraged, Modified, or Invented." Clockwise from upper left: clock coils mounted in a guitar, which serves as resonator; coffee-can metallophone; steel brake drums; two elephant bells; two ocarinas (globular flutes). (Photo by Fredric Lieberman)


 

Table of Contents

A World Composed CD
Order a copy of Composing a World
Table of Contents
A World Composed CD
Order Composing A World
Review of Composing a World