Michael Harrison

Michael Harrison, American Composer and Pianist

Interests: Western classical and Indian classical music

Composer/pianist Michael Harrison (called “an American maverick” by Philip Glass) is one of only a few musicians with equal training and immersion in both Western classical and Indian classical music. His music forges a new approach to composition through tunings and structures that extend the ancient concept of just intonation, a form of pure tuning constructed from musical intervals of perfect mathematical proportions.

His residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, Camargo, McColl Center, Ucross, Djerassi, Millay, Bogliasco, La Napoule, I-Park, MASS MoCA, and the Visiting Artists program of the American Academy in Rome. In addition to the Guggenheim, his awards include a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, Aaron Copland Recording Grant, Classical Recording Foundation Award, IBLA Foundation Prize, American Composers Forum residency and performance in the Havana School of Music. He invented the "harmonic piano," a grand piano that plays 24 notes per Contemporary Music Festival, and a New Music USA Grant.

Harrison received his Masters in Composition, studying with Reiko Fueting, at Manhattan octave, documented in the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. His music has been recorded on Cantaloupe, New Amsterdam, Innova, New Albion, and New World Records.

The interest in North Indian classical music

My initial fascination with pure tunings stems from my interest in North Indian classical music, which I began singing and studying in 1978 with one of India’s master vocalists, Pandit Pran Nath, and his earliest American disciples, La Monte Young and Terry Riley. Singing Indian ragas while accompanying myself on the tamboura, a resonant Indian string instrument, awakened my ears to the beautiful resonances of pure tunings. As I became more familiar with the intonation of the Indian ragas, the compromises of equal temperament sounded increasingly “out of tune” and became disturbing to my newly sensitive hearing. As I began exploring the application of just intonation to the piano these two musical worlds came together for me and opened the door to a new musical universe latent with potentials waiting to be discovered.

The “harmonically tuned” piano is my modern microtonal approach to the ancient principles of just intonation tuning based on non-tempered harmonic resonances or overtones. The foundation for this work was laid by Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers and mathematicians who worked out a theory of whole numbers as they relate to musical consonances. This concept of universal order links music, mathematics, architecture, and philosophy in a system of balance and proportion that was referred to as “the music of the spheres.” Just intonation is found not only in the music of ancient Greece, but also in that of India, Persia, China, and Japan, and the “a cappella” music of the West.

I strongly believe that in the generations and centuries to come hundreds and thousands of composers will explore new tunings at the piano, and that the instrument itself will be redesigned to accommodate this revolutionary new approach. Tuners will also learn these new tunings. But the composers need to be the sound explorers that lead the way—then the instrument makers, tuners, and performers will follow.

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Michael Harrison Performance on SWS Vienna Scientific Conference

https://www.sgemvienna.org

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