Partch Harry Partch

Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales. He built custom-made instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music (1947).

Partch composed with scales dividing the octave into 43 unequal tones derived from the natural harmonic series; these scales allowed for more tones of smaller intervals than in standard Western tuning, which uses twelve equal intervals to the octave. To play his music, Partch built a large number of unique instruments, with such names as the Chromelodeon, the Quadrangularis Reversum, and the Zymo-Xyl. Partch described his music as corporeal, and distinguished it from abstract music, which he perceived as the dominant trend in Western music since the time of Bach. His earliest compositions were small-scale pieces to be intoned to instrumental backing; his later works were large-scale, integrated theater productions in which he expected each of the performers to sing, dance, speak, and play instruments. Ancient Greek theatre and Japanese Noh and kabuki heavily influenced his music theatre.

Encouraged by his mother, Partch learned several instruments at a young age. By fourteen, he was composing, and in particular took to setting dramatic situations. He dropped out of the University of Southern California's School of Music in 1922 over dissatisfaction with the quality of his teachers. He took to self-study in San Francisco's libraries, where he discovered Hermann von Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone, which convinced him to devote himself to music based on scales tuned in just intonation. In 1930, he burned all his previous compositions in a rejection of the European concert tradition. Partch frequently moved around the US. Early in his career, he was a transient worker, and sometimes a hobo; later he depended on grants, university appointments, and record sales to support himself. In 1970, supporters created the Harry Partch Foundation to administer Partch's music and instruments.

Music

Theory

Partch made public his theories in his book Genesis of a Music (1947). He opens the book with an overview of music history, and argues that Western music began to suffer from the time of Bach, after which twelve-tone equal temperament was adopted to the exclusion of other tuning systems, and abstract, instrumental music became the norm. Partch sought to bring vocal music back to prominence, and adopted tunings and scales he believed more suitable to singing.

Inspired by Sensations of Tone, Hermann von Helmholtz's book on acoustics and the perception of sound, Partch based his music strictly on just intonation. He tuned his instruments using the overtone series, and extended it past the twelfth partial. This allowed for a larger number of smaller, unequal intervals than found in the Western classical music tradition's twelve-tone equal temperament. Partch's tuning is often classed as microtonality, as it allowed for intervals smaller than 100 cents, though Partch did not conceive his tuning in such a context. Instead, he saw it as a return to pre-Classical Western musical roots, in particular to the music of the ancient Greeks. By taking the principles he found in Helmholtz's book, he expanded his tuning system until it allowed for a division of the octave into 43 tones based on ratios of small integers.

Partch uses the terms Otonality and Utonality to describe chords whose pitch classes are the harmonics or subharmonics of a given fixed tone. These six-tone chords function in Partch's music much the same that the three-tone major and minor chords (or triads) do in classical music. The Otonalities are derived from the overtone series, and the Utonalities from the undertone series.

Style

Partch rejected the Western concert music tradition, saying that the music of composers such as Beethoven "has only the feeblest roots" in Western culture. His Orientalism was particularly pronounced—sometimes explicitly, as when he set to music the poetry of Li Bai, or when he combined two Noh dramas with one from Ethiopia in The Delusion of the Fury.

The age of specialization has given us an art of sound that denies sound, and a science of sound that denies art. The age of specialization has given us a music drama that denies drama, and a drama that—contrary to the practices of all other peoples of the world—denies music.

Partch, in Bitter Music (2000)

Partch believed that Western music of the 20th century suffered from excessive specialization. He objected to the theatre of the day which he believed had divorced music and drama, and strove to create complete, integrated theatre works in which he expected each performer to sing, dance, play instruments, and take on speaking parts. Partch used the words "ritual" and "corporeal" to describe his theatre works—musicians and their instruments were not hidden in an orchestra pit or offstage, but were a visual part of the performance.

Instruments

Partch called himself "a philosophic music-man seduced into carpentry". The path towards Partch's use of a large number of unique instruments was a gradual one. Partch began in the 1920s using traditional instruments, and wrote a string quartet in just intonation (now lost). He had his first specialized instrument built for him in 1930—the Adapted Viola, a viola with a cello's neck fitted on it.

Most of Partch's works used the instruments he created exclusively. Some works made use of unaltered standard instruments such as clarinet or cello; Revelation in the Courtyard Park (1960) used an unaltered small wind band, and Yankee Doodle Fantasy (1944) used unaltered oboe and flute.

In 1991, Dean Drummond became the custodian of the original Harry Partch instrument collection until his death in 2013. In 1999 Drummond brought the instruments to Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey where they resided until November 2014 when they moved to University of Washington in Seattle. They are currently under the care of Charles Corey.

Works

Partch's later works were large-scale, integrated theater productions in which he expected each of the performers to sing, dance, speak, and play instruments.

Partch described the theory and practice of his music in his book Genesis of a Music, which he had published first in 1947, and in an expanded edition in 1974. A collection of essays, journals, and librettos by Partch was published as posthumously as Bitter Music 1991.

Partch partially supported himself with the sales of recordings, which he began making in the late 1930s. He published his recordings under the Gate 5 Records label beginning in 1953. On recordings such as the soundtrack to Windsong, he used multitrack recording, which allowed him to play all the instruments himself. He never used synthesized or computer-generated sounds, though he had access to such technology. Partch scored six films by Madeline Tourtelot, starting with 1957's Windsong, and was the subject of a number of documentaries.