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Lou Harrison (harrisondocumentary.com)
The father of the American gamelan movement, Lou Harrison brought together Eastern and Western music long before it was popular to do so. One of his early efforts in this area was the "Concerto in Slendro," which takes the form of a Vivaldi concerto — but uses modified Western instruments to simulate the sound of the Indonesian gamelan.
Concerto in Slendro
Harrison wrote this work while traveling aboard a freighter to Japan in 1961. In Indonesian music, "sléndro" refers to a five-note scale without half steps. Harrison called this scale the "prime pentatonic," characterizing it as "every human's most important tonal heritage."
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