LOU HARRISON: Double Concerto For Violin And Cello With Javanese Gamelan performed

by Kenneth Goldsmith & Terry King with the Mills College Gamelan Ensemble (TR
Records 1910 Ingersoll Ave., Des Moines, IA 50309)

Harrison is undoubtedly one of the finest and most interesting living American
composers, and the Double Concerto ranks with his Pacifiki Rondo, Canticle #3, and
a very few other works as his best.

It's a radical and highly successful experiment in the combination of traditional

Javanese forms with western ones, precisely the type of thing that Harrison has
concerned himself with for the last 15 years. The Mills Gamelan was in fact built
by Harrison and his colleague William Colvig (who also plays gambang), and though
its is based on Javanese ideas, is in many ways a radical and Americanized
departure from tradition as well, most notably in the use of aluminum and a nicely
worked out just intonation (based on 7-ratios for the pentatonic slendro, and on
the 2-3rd octave of the harmonic series for the pelog).

The Double Concerto is in three movements. The first, marked "Grandly, but
moderate," is a lyrical pelog excursion for the two strings, and serves as a warm
prelude to the second movement, marked "Stampede," which is nothing short of
astounding.

In this movement, the gamelan drops out (except for the kendang, or two-headed
drum), and the two strings play a long rapid, mostly unison melody based freely on
the octatonic mode. This is Harrison at his finest, drawing on his many years of
meditation of the "proper melody," and the listener can hardly believe how long the
phrases breathe, soar, and propel themselves past any prior expectations. It is
this movement which has been the most talked about, and rightly so.

The third movement, though less dynamic ("Allegro Moderato") provides an elegant
slendro cadence to the whole work. Harrison is a composer's composer, and one who
has transcended lesser questions of style, device, and intent to produce a music of
profound integrity and deep emotional content.

-- Larry Polansky

Lou Harrison said of his Double Concerto for violin, cello and javanese gamelan ...
I was much worried about the problem of intonation between the strings and the
Gamelan. The occasion arose to try two movements of it in a concert at the
University of California at Los Angeles, making use of the gamelan Kyai Mendung,
imported early on by our foremost Javanese music scholar Mantle Hood. To my
delight, it seemed that the piece would work. Since I had treated the two soloists
rather as the Javanese would, fairly simply in the other two movements, I wrote a
virtuosic middle movement in the "half step-whole step" mode frequently used by
Rimsky-Korsakov, Oliver Messaien, and others. It has the advantage of sounding
chromatic although it uses only eight tones, which would provide a distinct
difference from the traditional tunings of the outer movements, and still not allow
a full encampment of Westernism in the central section. I used only two kendang,
beduk, and gong ageng to support the soloists in the movement, and indeed they do
their traditional function of marking off the various sections of the movement. The
Concerto received its premiere in a handsome birthday concert given me by Mills
College in May of 1982, and it was recorded (with the Mills Gamelan....Si Darius
and Si Madelaine...built by William Colvig ) during the rehearsals.
Instrumentation: Solo violin, solo cello, Javanese gamelan (pelog and slendro)
Movements: (1) Ladrang Epikuros (2)Stampede: Allegro molto, vigoroso (3) Gending
Hephaestus
Date: Movements I and III: gamalan part, March 3, 10, 1981; violin/cello parts
added before May 1982; Movement II: April 1982
Premiere: May 10, 1982, Mills College, Oakland, CA: Kenneth Goldsmith, violin;
Terry King, cello; Mills College Gamelan, Oakland, CA.
Publisher: American Gamelan Institute
Length: 23 minutes
Cross Reference: Ladrang Epikuros and Gending Hephaestus (separate gamelan works,
1981) used as gamalan part in Movements I and III of Double Concerto.