A Serenade To Frank from Louie

I'd apologize for including this picture of Frank and Louie, the world's oldest Janus cat, but I can't resist any temptation to feature him.  The Louie pertinent to this article is Lou Harrison (1917-2003), a seminal American musical figure who transformed from Ultra-Modern to Faux-Eastern, carving out a very unique private world.  While most famous for his gamelan works (tinkering with Western instruments to replicate the sound rather than using the real thing), he was a prolific composer whose output covered many instrumental combinations.  By 1994 he had written enough works for guitar that Presser published The Lou Harrison Guitar Book, collecting six pieces from across his career, beginning with a leaf:

(Click for larger view)

Called Serenade here, I've also seen it called Serenade for Frank Wigglesworth.  Frank Wigglesworth (1918-1996) isn't really worth investigating, but I certainly won't keep you from your curiosities.  It's one of the few works he wrote spontaneously, authored in 1951 (or '52, my sources conflict) as part of a private letter to Frank.  Like much of Harrison's work it exudes a bucolic simplicity, bouncing off the major scale in rapidly shifting meter, and its openness allows for instinctual stretching of tempo and dynamics.  It's as attractive as any guitar work I've heard, and fits in nicely with the American classical guitar idiom, a world unto itself untouched by the ravages of modernism, much like choral music.  There are several recordings, my favorite being David Leisner's on his album Music of the Human Spirit.  For those of you who can't secure a copy, here's two semi-par YouTube performances: 1. On a guitar tuned in just intonation (better explained by the video description than by myself):

2. On a normally-tuned harp:

The guitar is an ideal instrument for leaves, with its intimate resonance and history with music-making in living rooms and porches.  There are plenty more six-stringed leaves to come, and the next leaf is another offering from Music of the Human Spirit, which I'll leave for you to ponder over.  The Serenade is a balm for the brain, so I hope there are enough ideas for me to start up a betting pool.

~PNK