Carl Ruggles
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Carl Ruggles was an American composer, painter and teacher. His pieces employed "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by fellow composer and musicologist Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music. H
Detail from a portrait of Ruggles taken in Minnesota, c. 1911
Lou Harrison
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Lou Silver Harrison 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
Carl Ruggles
…about, "that filthy bunch of Juilliard Jews ... cheap, without dignity, and with little or no talent," especially targeting Arthur Berger. His friend Lou Harrison dissociated himself from Ruggles after the 1949 performance of Angels because of the older composer's racism, noting specifically a luncheon at…
Portrait of a young Harrison at the piano, c. early 1940s
Lou (left) and Bill Harrison (right), c. early 1920s
Harrison considered Henry Cowell (pictured) his greatest musical inspiration and one of his closest friends
Harrison developed a deep interest in the traditional gamelan ensembles of southern Indonesia (pictured)