Douglas Leedy

Born in Portland, Oregon, Leedy studied with Karl Kohn at Pomona College and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including La Monte Young and Terry Riley.

He taught music at UCLA, the Centro Simon Bolivar (Caracas), and at Reed College.

Although briefly composing in an atonal, but not strictly serial, style, Leedy's music is predominantly melodic and modal.

88 is Great (1969) pf 18 hands, Dulces exuviae (Dido's Lament after Virgil) (1969) ssaattbb.

Pastorale (1987) setting of an Ode of Horace for chorus and retuned piano in Just Intonation, four hands.

Of special interest is his extended piece, _Harpsichord Book, Part III: Toccata, UtReMiFaSolLa and Chorale For Harpsichord in Just Tuning, _ which uses a scordatura, set to a Raga of his own invention, apam napat, or "Son of Water [Fallen Leaf Press, Berkeley, pub.

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 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.