Douglas Leedy (March 3, 1938;

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

– March 28, 2015;

Corvallis, Oregon Corvallis ( ) is a city and the county seat of Benton County in central western Oregon, United States. It is the principal city of the Corvallis, Oregon Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Benton County. As of the 2020 United ...

) was an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, performer and music scholar.

Biography

Born in

, Leedy studied with

Karl Kohn Karl Georg Kohn (born August 1, 1926) is an Austrian-born American composer, teacher and pianist. He taught at Pomona College for more than 40 years. Biography Kohn began playing the piano as a child in Vienna; after he emigrated to the Unite ...

Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became ...

and at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including

La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best kno ...

and

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...

. 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 (Devanagari: पंडित प्राणनाथ) (3 November 1918 – 13 June 1996) was an Indian classical singer and master of the Kirana gharana singing style. Promoting traditional raga principles, Nath exerted an ...

, and was first music director of the

Portland Baroque Orchestra Portland Baroque Orchestra (PBO) is an orchestra based in Portland, which is dedicated to historically informed performance of Baroque, Classical and early Romantic music on original instruments. It was founded in 1984 by harpsichordist, teacher, ...

and the musical director of the 1985 Portland

Handel George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training i ...

Festival, during which he conducted complete, period-instrument performances of Handel's oratorios

Jephtha Jephthah (pronounced ; he, יִפְתָּח, ''Yīftāḥ''), appears in the Book of Judges as a judge who presided over Israel for a period of six years (). According to Judges, he lived in Gilead. His father's name is also given as Gilead, ...

and

Theodora Theodora is a given name of Greek origin, meaning "God's gift". Theodora may also refer to: Historical figures known as Theodora Byzantine empresses * Theodora (wife of Justinian I) ( 500 – 548), saint by the Orthodox Church * Theodora of ...

. He taught music at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

, the Centro Simon Bolivar (Caracas), and at

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

. He founded the electronic music studio at UCLA, and his synthesized music was among the earliest commissioned album-length recordings of the

Moog Synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

and

Buchla Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments (BEMI) was a manufacturer of synthesizers and unique MIDI controllers. The origins of the company could be found in Buchla & Associates, created in 1963 by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla of Berkeley, Californi ...

Synthesizer. The triple album ''Entropical Paradise'' was both the first triple album of synthesized "musical environments"—perhaps the first recording of explicitly

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It u ...

—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 ''Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death'' is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to h ...

as atmospheric complements to the music by Bach that had been featured in the actual

Glenn Gould Glenn Herbert Gould (; né Gold; September 25, 1932October 4, 1982) was a Canadian classical pianist. He was one of the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century, and was renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann ...

-produced soundtrack). Although briefly composing in an atonal, but not strictly serial, style, Leedy's music is predominantly melodic and modal. His music includes theatrical and spatial or environmental elements (''Exhibition Music'', ''Decay'') and has deep relationships to early music (''The Leaves be Green'', ''Symphoniae Sacrae''). He explored the relationship, in classical Greek and Latin, between 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 In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

, 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 (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

and

Lou Harrison Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his form ...

, Leedy made a decisive turn away from 12-tone

equal temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, wh ...

. He was a scholar of tuning systems and composed for keyboard instruments in historical

meantone Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, that is a tuning system, obtained by narrowing the fifths so that their ratio is slightly less than 3:2 (making them ''narrower'' than a perfect fifth), in order to push the thirds closer to pure. Mea ...

temperament and in various systems of

Just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals Interval may refer to: Mathematics and physics * Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers ** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to ...

. He also proposed reconstructions of ancient Greek music, and prepared, on historical-theoretic principles, settings for musical performance of

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

Sappho Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while ...

Pindar Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is ...

, and the Persai (

The Persians ''The Persians'' ( grc, Πέρσαι, ''Persai'', Latinised as ''Persae'') is an ancient Greek tragedy written during the Classical period of Ancient Greece by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It is the second and only surviving part of a now other ...

) of

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek ...

. 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 B♭'', (1966) chamber ensemble. ''88 is Great'' (1969) pf 18 hands, ''Dulces exuviae (Dido's Lament after

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

)'' (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 An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

for chorus and retuned piano in Just Intonation, four hands. ''Three Symphonies'' (1993) orch. without conductor, ''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 appeared under the name ''Bhishma Xenotechnites'', including not only his settings for voices and instruments (in Greek) of

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'', ...

and other Greek and Latin lyrics 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. Leedy11limit12tonescale

Discography

*''The Electric Zodiac'' (1969,

Capitol A capitol, named after the Capitoline Hill in Rome, is usually a legislative building where a legislature meets and makes laws for its respective political entity. Specific capitols include: * United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. * Numerous ...

) *''A Very Merry Electric Christmas to You! '' (1969, Capitol) *''Entropical Paradise'' (1971,

Seraphim A seraph (, "burning one"; plural seraphim ) is a type of celestial or heavenly being originating in Ancient Judaism. The term plays a role in subsequent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Tradition places seraphim in the highest rank in Chris ...

)

References

*"Leedy, Douglas" in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music'' *"Leedy, Douglas" in ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Music & Musicians'' *Samson, Valerie
"Interview with Douglas Leedy 1974"
''EAR (magazine)'', vol. 4 no. 4, April 1976. *Strange, Allan, ''Electronic Music'' (includes the score to Leedy's ''Entropical Paradise with Birdcall''); *Wolf, Daniel

*Wolf, Daniel

*''Source: Music of the Avant Garde'' (includes the score to Leedy's ''Usable Music I for very small instruments with holes''); *Scores published by Fallen Leaf Press, Schirmer, MaterialPress.Com

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Leedy, Douglas Microtonal musicians 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers 1938 births 2015 deaths Musicians from Portland, Oregon Pupils of Pran Nath (musician) 21st-century American composers American male classical composers American classical composers 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American male musicians Pomona College alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Classical musicians from Oregon