Douglas Leedy
Encyclopedia
Douglas Leedy is an American
composer
, performer and music scholar.
, Leedy studied with Karl Kohn
at Pomona College
and at the University of California, Berkeley
, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including La Monte Young
and Terry Riley
. An orchestral hornist, harpsichordist, and singer, he studied South Indian music in Madras with K.V. Narayanaswamy, North Indian vocal music with Pandit Pran Nath
, and was first music director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra and the musical director of the 1985 Portland Handel
Festival, during which he conducted complete, period-instrument performances of Handel's oratorios Jephtha
and Theodora
. He taught music at UCLA, the Centro Simon Bolivar (Caracas), and at Reed College
. He founded the electronic music studio at UCLA, and his synthesized music was among the earliest commissioned album-length recordings of the Moog Synthesizer
and Buchla
Synthesizer. The triple album Entropical Paradise was both the first triple album of synthesized "musical environments" — perhaps the first recording of explicitly ambient music — and featured modular analog synthesizer patches that, once set, played without further intervention by the performer. (Excerpts from Entropical Paradise were also included in the soundtrack album to the film Slaughterhouse Five as atmospheric complements to the music by Bach that had been featured in the actual Glenn Gould
-produced soundtrack).
Although briefly composing in an atonal, but not strictly serial, style, Leedy's music has been predominantly melodic and modal. His music has included theatrical and spatial or environmental elements (Exhibition Music, Decay), has had deep relationships to early music (The Leaves be Green, Symphoniae Sacrae), and he has explored the relationship, in classical Greek and Latin betweent text and music. In general, his music exhibits a lyrical, melodic style, and connects, through its use of modality, repetition, and intonation, to the same radical reassessment of musical materials and musical history underlying the movement that came to be known as minimalism, led by his colleagues Young and Riley. Following his studies in early western music and Indian music, and following the same musical path as his west coast American models, Harry Partch
and Lou Harrison
, Leedy made a decisive turn away from 12-tone equal temperament
. He is a scholar of tuning systems and has composed for keyboard instruments in historical meantone temperament and in various systems of Just intonation
. He has also proposed reconstructions of ancient Greek music, and has prepared, on historical-theoretic principles, settings for musical performance of Homer
, Sappho
, Pindar
, and the Persai (The Persians
) of Aeschylus
.
Principal works include: Trio(1960) fl,hn,pf. Perspectives (1964) hn. Quintet 1964 cl,bn,tp,db,org. Antifonia (1965) 2tp,2tb. Decay (1965) theatre piece. Music for Percussion (1965) theatre piece. Usable Music for Very Small Instruments with Holes (1966). Usable Music II in Bb, (1966) chamber ensemble. 88 is Great (1969) pf 18 hands, Dulces exuviae (Dido's Lament after Virgil
)(1969) ssaattbb. Teddy Bears Picnic (1969) theatre piece. Gloria (1970) s, satb, orch. Sebastian (1971–74) chamber opera. Music for Meantone Harpsichord (1974–86). Canti (1975) cb solo with fl, va, gui, mar, vib. Symphoniae sacrae (1976) ms,viola da gamba, hps. Hymns (Rg Veda)(1982) chorus, gamelan. Pastorale (1987) setting of an Ode
of Horace
for chorus and retuned piano in Just Intonation, four hands. Three Symphonies (1993) orch. Piano Sonata 1994. Is This a Great Country, or What?(1995) multimedia. Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945-2005 for tuned bowls or bells, crotales (2005).
From 2003, most of his music has appeared under the name Bhisma Xenotechnites, including not only his settings for voice(s)and instruments (in Greek) of Homeric Hymns
, but also such obviously anti-Western works as Ein kleines Wagner Notizbuch (2005), a collage of emasculated Wagner quotations for the same ensemble as his 1965 octet Quaderno Rossiniano, and H5N1 (2006) for extremely high-pitched instruments or whistlers and antique cymbals.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, performer and music scholar.
Biography
Born in Portland, OregonPortland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, Leedy studied with Karl Kohn
Karl Kohn
Karl Georg Kohn is an American composer, teacher and pianist.- Biography :Kohn began playing the piano as a child in Vienna and, after he, at the age of 13, immigrated to the United States, continued his education in New York City and at Harvard where he studied composition with Walter Piston,...
at Pomona College
Pomona College
Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...
and at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including La Monte Young
La Monte Young
La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
and Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
. An orchestral hornist, harpsichordist, and singer, he studied South Indian music in Madras with K.V. Narayanaswamy, North Indian vocal music with Pandit Pran Nath
Pandit Pran Nath
Pandit Pran Nath was a Hindustani classical singer and teacher of the Kirana gharana , with a successful American career.-Early life:...
, and was first music director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra and the musical director of the 1985 Portland Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
Festival, during which he conducted complete, period-instrument performances of Handel's oratorios Jephtha
Jephtha
Jephthah is a character in the Old Testament's Book of Judges, serving as a judge over Israel for a period of six years . He lived in Gilead and was a member of the Tribe of Manasseh. His father's name was also Gilead...
and Theodora
Theodora
Theodora is a name of Greek origin, meaning "God's gift". It is the feminine form of the Greek name, Θεόδωρος meaning "God's gift" , neuter gender...
. He taught music at UCLA, the Centro Simon Bolivar (Caracas), and at Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
. He founded the electronic music studio at UCLA, and his synthesized music was among the earliest commissioned album-length recordings of the Moog Synthesizer
Moog synthesizer
Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for older-generation analog music synthesizers. The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled...
and Buchla
Buchla
Buchla & Associates, Inc. is a manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, notably synthesizers and unique MIDI controllers. The 200e Electric Music Box and Lightning III are currently in production.-Buchla Music Box :...
Synthesizer. The triple album Entropical Paradise was both the first triple album of synthesized "musical environments" — perhaps the first recording of explicitly ambient music — and featured modular analog synthesizer patches that, once set, played without further intervention by the performer. (Excerpts from Entropical Paradise were also included in the soundtrack album to the film Slaughterhouse Five as atmospheric complements to the music by Bach that had been featured in the actual Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould
Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...
-produced soundtrack).
Although briefly composing in an atonal, but not strictly serial, style, Leedy's music has been predominantly melodic and modal. His music has included theatrical and spatial or environmental elements (Exhibition Music, Decay), has had deep relationships to early music (The Leaves be Green, Symphoniae Sacrae), and he has explored the relationship, in classical Greek and Latin betweent text and music. In general, his music exhibits a lyrical, melodic style, and connects, through its use of modality, repetition, and intonation, to the same radical reassessment of musical materials and musical history underlying the movement that came to be known as minimalism, led by his colleagues Young and Riley. Following his studies in early western music and Indian music, and following the same musical path as his west coast American models, Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...
and Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, Leedy made a decisive turn away from 12-tone equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
. He is a scholar of tuning systems and has composed for keyboard instruments in historical meantone temperament and in various systems of Just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
. He has also proposed reconstructions of ancient Greek music, and has prepared, on historical-theoretic principles, settings for musical performance of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
, Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, and the Persai (The Persians
The Persians
The Persians is an Athenian tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. First produced in 472 BCE, it is the oldest surviving play in the history of theatre...
) of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
.
Principal works include: Trio(1960) fl,hn,pf. Perspectives (1964) hn. Quintet 1964 cl,bn,tp,db,org. Antifonia (1965) 2tp,2tb. Decay (1965) theatre piece. Music for Percussion (1965) theatre piece. Usable Music for Very Small Instruments with Holes (1966). Usable Music II in Bb, (1966) chamber ensemble. 88 is Great (1969) pf 18 hands, Dulces exuviae (Dido's Lament after Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
)(1969) ssaattbb. Teddy Bears Picnic (1969) theatre piece. Gloria (1970) s, satb, orch. Sebastian (1971–74) chamber opera. Music for Meantone Harpsichord (1974–86). Canti (1975) cb solo with fl, va, gui, mar, vib. Symphoniae sacrae (1976) ms,viola da gamba, hps. Hymns (Rg Veda)(1982) chorus, gamelan. Pastorale (1987) setting of an Ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
of Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
for chorus and retuned piano in Just Intonation, four hands. Three Symphonies (1993) orch. Piano Sonata 1994. Is This a Great Country, or What?(1995) multimedia. Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945-2005 for tuned bowls or bells, crotales (2005).
From 2003, most of his music has appeared under the name Bhisma Xenotechnites, including not only his settings for voice(s)and instruments (in Greek) of Homeric Hymns
Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three anonymous Ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. The hymns are "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter—dactylic hexameter—as the Iliad and Odyssey, use many similar formulas and are couched in the same dialect...
, but also such obviously anti-Western works as Ein kleines Wagner Notizbuch (2005), a collage of emasculated Wagner quotations for the same ensemble as his 1965 octet Quaderno Rossiniano, and H5N1 (2006) for extremely high-pitched instruments or whistlers and antique cymbals.