This relatively brief piece helped to demonstrate the viability of a new arrival on the musical scene—the all percussion orchestra—in one of the most venerable and complex of Western classical music forms.

The composer, Lou Harrison (b. Portland, Oregon, 1917) wrote several percussion works in the two or three years before he turned to the challenge of writing this complex (but highly listenable and comprehensible) piece. It was partly a question of practicality that turned him towards percussion writing. He and his friend John Cage worked for modern dance companies, providing and playing music on a shoestring, often in cramped quarters that did not allow room for pianos and even small chamber groups. Sometimes, in fact, the dancers doubled as percussionists, requiring Harrison to devise ways of building sound variety and complexity through the juxtaposition of simple individual parts.

In addition, Cage and Harrison scoured Chinese instrument stores for cheap percussion instruments, and found free sources of sound in junk yards.

Harrison points out that this work, formally, contains all the "paraphernalia" of a classical fugue. It is built on rhythmic and melodic sequences, and uses enough pitched percussion to make some melodic patterns.

In contrast to melodies and rhythm (which are horizontal musical elements on paper) and harmony (which is a vertical element), the fugue (and other forms of canon) creates a "diagonal" texture where one musical pattern starts in one voice and then transfers to another voice (and even to another and another), often overlapping with its original statements. In his earlier works, particularly the ones where dancers had to play the music, Harrison had used overlapping patterns as a major element of his compositions. The reason was that the dancers could be expected to play only simple patterns, so the complexity and contrast of the pieces had to be build by their simultaneous juxtaposition.

In this Fugue for percussion Harrison came up with striking and individual musical ideas that could stand on their own but took on added fascination when overlapping.

The work begins and ends with the eerie wail of the Flexatone, a novelty noise-maker in theater orchestras. The instrumentation also comprises claves, maracas, metallophone, box, cowbells, meditation bells, brake drums, wash-tub, bell-coils, bass drum, gongs, suspended Turkish cymbal, and triangles.



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