Cope, David Howell

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(b San Francisco, May 17, 1941). American composer, writer, and instrument maker. He studied composition with Grant Fletcher at Arizona State University (BM 1963) and with Halsey Stevens, Dahl, and Perle at the University of Southern California (MM 1965). He then taught at Kansas State College, California Lutheran College, the Cleveland Institute, Miami University of Ohio, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since the early 1970s (particularly from 1979, working at Santa Cruz) he has constructed several percussion instruments for use in his own compositions. The Way (completed 1981) is based on Navajo Indian rituals, and is written in a system of just intonation having 33 notes to the octave. The instruments it uses are mostly of familiar types, and include aluminium bells, a large drum, plastic tubes blown transversely, and musical glasses. There are also parts for several ‘symbiotic’ instruments based on interacting systems of vibration and resonance: the Logsprinoka, for example, consists of a form of nail violin, and long springs stretched over bridges, which are attached to a 2-metre log drum. Some instruments, some with only one note, were made from Navajo prayer stones and other materials obtained from Canyon de Chelley in Arizona. Cope has also explored unconventional playing techniques and prepared instruments....