HARRY PARTCH
June 24 1901 – 1974
Composer, microtonal theorist, instrument-builder, writer, visual
artist, satirist, philosopher, flunky, musicologist, copy editor, hobo, man of
letters, publisher, iconoclast, record producer, eccentric, teacher….
Harry Partch challenged our entire musical world with, what I might term, his 'back-to-nature' approach to music and most especially to the Western diatonic scale and tuning system - what is termed the 12-tone equal tempered tuning system.
The 12-tone equal tempered tuning system has been around
for about 300 years in the Western world but is scientifically an impure system
of pitch relationships. In other words, notes have been ‘adjusted’ or put out
of tune from the pure intervals of the harmonic series. This is borne out by
the fact of much non-western music having different pitch relationships to the
12-tone system and, of course, much so-called ethnic music has been around
since the dawn of time. One of the most ancient scales exists in Javanese
gamelan. In the Paris fair of 1898 composers such as Debussy were strongly
influenced by these strange oriental scales and tuning systems. However, this
wasn’t the first encounter by a westerner of such tuning systems. In 1580, for
instance, Sir Francis Drake logged in his diary that the music of this land
‘was of a very strange kind, yet the sound was pleasant and delightful.’
Partch is perhaps best known for his innovative so-called 43-tone-to-the-octave scale structure. Partch realised that Western music since Gregorian chant was completely out of tune and set about devising a scale system based on the overtones of a vibrating string or column of air. He calls this system Monophony, as all the musical principles relate to ONE tone (i.e. the first eleven partials of the harmonic series). Partch spent 12 years researching the science and musical theories which led him to this system beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC) through Ptolemy (2nd cent. BC), Rameau (17th cent.) up to Riemann (19th/20th cent.) and concludes that Monophony reveals the falsification of the present 12-tone tempered scale and is not necessarily requisite to a practical music system, and that the basis of all musical materials lies in the understanding of the intervals that have true relationships i.e. those whose vibrations are expressed by small numbers.
"The creative person shows himself naked, and the more vigorous his creative act the more naked he appears - sometimes wholly vulnerable. yet always invulnerable in the sense of his own integrity. I am now 69 as this is being said, and I've been doing my own thing for more than five and a half decades. This thing began with truth, and truth does exist. For some hundreds of years, the truth of Just Intonation, which is defined in any good music dictionary, has been hidden. One could almost say maliciously. because truth always threatens the ruling hierarchy, or they think so. Nor does the spiritual, corporeal nature of man fare any better. We are reduced to specialties: a theatre of dialogue without music, and a concert of music without drama. Basic mutilations of ancient concept. My music is visual; it is corporeal, aural, and visual.
The
creative man will rise above, he will transcend the mutilations. for every
deeply sincere offering there is a corresponding deep and sincere hunger. Not
the European chauvinism of New York, nor the mindless caterwauling of Hollywood
recording studios, nor the "we-sell-music-by- the-yard," mood-music
people, can suppress either the sincere offering or the sincere hunger. True
creativity is present. It is here, because man is here, in his true, deep, self.
Unmutilated."
“Harry Partch is an American visionary and stubborn
individualist. . . . He has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo
speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and
nuclear cloud chambers. Recently. . . . an army of young music lovers stormed
New York’s Whitney Museum to hear Harry Partch and his thirteen disciples
produce a music that was totally personal and eclectic in the best sense.
African polyrhythms, and ancient Greek modes, bits of Babylonia and the pulse
of the American diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive,
fresh and stirring drama of sound” –
Newsweek.
“The work that I have been doing these many years parallels
much in the attitudes and actions of primitive man. He found sound-magic in the
common materials around him. He then proceeded to make the vehicle, the
instrument, as visually beautiful as he could. Finally, he involved the
sound-magic and the visual beauty in his everyday words and experiences, his
ritual and drama, in order to lend greater meaning to his life. This is my
trinity: sound-magic, visual beauty, experience-ritual.”
“The major contribution of Monophony an intonational
system is its realisation of a subtle and acoustically precise
interrelationship of tonalities, all stemming or expanding from unity, 1/1.
This interrelation is not capable of manifold modulations to “dominants” or to
any other common scale degrees; it is not capable of parallel transpositions of
intricate musical structures; it does not present any tone as any specific
tonal identity. Conversely, it is capable of both ordinary and hitherto unheard
modulations to the natural limits imposed by Just Intonation and the arbitrary
limit of 11; it is capable of an expanded sense of tonality, from Identities
1-3-5 to identities 1-3-5-7-9-11; it is capable of great variety in that
expanded sense; it does offer twenty-eight possible tonalities, more than are
inherent in Equal Temperament, and therefore a greater total of tonality
identities; or assumable senses, than does Equal Temperament.” Harry
Partch.
Recordings:
Enclosure 2 4-CDbox
Archive
material – historic Speech-Music
Enclosure 5 3-CDbox
Mostly
Archive Gate 5 recordings
Enclosure 6
Delusion
of the Fury
CRI CD 751 Partch Collection Vol. 1
11 Intrusions, Plectra
& Percussion Dances
CRI CD 752 Partch Collection Vol. 2
The Wayward,
Bartsow, Petals etc
CRI CD 753 Partch Collection Vol. 3
Water! Water! Windsong,
etc
CRI CD 754 Partch Collection Vol. 4
The Bewitched
My all-time favourite is Partch’s masterwork: DELUSION OF THE FURY. First issued as a 3-record box set in the early 1970s, long out of print and only very recently released in conjunction with SONY (after years of hoping against hope) as a CD. An excellent studio recording - Hi-Fidelity had finally caught up with this remarkable world of sounds. We've lost the free record featuring Partch speaking and illustrating his musical inventions and philosophy, but, nevertheless it is beautifully re-packaged on the INNOVA label as Enclosure 6. Incidentally, should you be interested in Partch speaking about his musical philosophy there is a 60 minute-long piece titled "A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations" on Enclosure Two INNOVA 401 A 4-CD set.
If you’re going to buy just one, then, DELUSION OF THE
FURY must be it!
Videos:
Enclosure 1
4
Historic art films – music by Harry Partch
Enclosure 4
Delusion
of the Fury & Documentary
Writings:
Harry Partch Genesis of a Music
Enclosure 3
bio-historical-scrapbook –
many illustrations
BITTER MUSIC book
ed
Tom McGeary – Libretti, Articles, Journals
Bob Gilmore
Harry Partch the Early Vocal
Works
Bob Gilmore
Harry Partch – A Biography
Any or all of the above can be ordered from The British Harry
Partch Society
Email the Secretary:
There's a brilliant website put together by one of Partch's ensemble members with much more about Harry Partch
Or there's Newband's site with Partch material:
©
Copyright by Frank Perry 2000. All rights reserved.
© Frank Perry, 2000. All of these articles are copyright. They may individually be copied and shared with others in a spirit of knowledge-sharing and fair play, but they may not be sold, printed or reproduced in quantity or changed in form without the permission of the copyright holder. None of this material may be reproduced in workshops or lectures of any kind unless quotes are credited or properly attributed.
Magazine and other editors may e-mail me for permission to reprint. E-mail:
Harry
Partch Giacinto Scelsi
Alan Hovhaness
