Music
Harry Partch
Introduction
Every other music genre has its own outstanding representatives. Singers and musicians who raise a particular genre to whole a new level of recognition. Those who made this genre worth speaking about. Those who write down their own names between the lines of their eternal compositions. These people will live as long as there will be at least one person who admires their input into the development of the musical industry. One of such memorable musicians was Harry Partch. In this research paper, we will talk about his life, career and a road to success which made his everlasting name.
Life and Career
Harry Partch wrote music, he investigated musical acoustics. He rejected standard twelve-tone equal temperament and developed an alternative temperament. He found his own system of notation. Harry Partch was famous for his ability to construct new instruments and play them.
Parch was born in Oakland, California, the son of Presbyterian missionaries, who had escaped China after the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) (McGreary, 2000). It was his mother who taught him how to read music and inspired to learn it. As a teenager, he was in love with Greek mythology that was why his first attempts in composing dealt with stories and drama. When he graduated high-school he was full of ideas. He began to study music theory but he did it at public libraries. At the age of twenty-two, Parch read the doctrine On the Sensation of Tone written by Helmholtz. With the help of this book, Partch got acquainted with the classical view on the theory of music. This book changed Partch life. He understood that standard twelve-tone equal temperament was not enough to get clear consonance. That was why he began to think about the development of his own system (Gilmore & Johnston, 2002).
At the age of 23, he moved to San Francisco and began to experiment with string proportion. This experiment gave a birth to the first draft of his theory. Parch proposed to expand the consonant sound by adding to the triad of the 7th, 9th, and 11th overtones. The treatise also contained a theoretical justification for the scale of the symmetric adapted alto, includes 29 sounds in octave range. He experimented with the different number of tones but in the final version of a treatise in 1941, there were 43 tones.
Instruments
His first works he played on his own adapted instruments like viola and guitar (1941) (Schneider, 1985). The first music performances by Harry Partch bore a lot of resemblance to folk music. During the time, he created a lot of unique instruments. The first instrument that was built under his supervision was an adapted viola (viola with a cello’s neck) (McGreary, 2000). His first re-tuned reed organ was named Ptolemy.
Most of his instruments were created only in one copy for Partch. Sometimes he himself took already made instruments and just added something that he felt will make the sounding of the instrument better. Sometimes he was interested in particular objects that made intriguing sounds for him. He has built the whole orchestra of instruments.
So, he built two steel strings guitars. One was of six-strings and the other had ten strings and had to be played with a slide. The next was the adapted viola. Partch added the cello’s fingerboard to a viola. At first, it was called monophonic but then it became famous as an Adapted Viola. He needed it for his one-finger technique and this viola allowed him to glide from tone to tone (Partch, 1979).
There were also two types of Marimbas. The first were Bamboo Marimbas also known as Boo and Boo II. The first Boo had 64 tubes (resonators) with sealed tubes. Boo II had 64 tubes, too but they were opened at both ends. His Chromelodeons were known for their colored keyboards with numbers to represent ratios (Partch, 1979).
It will take a lot of time to describe all of the instruments created by Harry Partch but there is one more that should be mentioned. A Cloud-Chamber Bowls was built at 1950. It was a set of 12 gallons 16 inch in diameter cut from carboys bowls. Every other bowl had its own unique sound because all of them were cut differently.
All of these instruments could surprise the audience only with their view. They created a special atmosphere to all of his performances.
Parch developed a special notation for all of his instruments, but it helped mainly for those who rehearsed with him and received play skills hands in hands. The music created on these instruments couldn’t be written down. Adequately his works are preserved only in the record. There is a great collection of the instruments created by Harry Partch in the Montclair State University in New Jersey, which is regularly used to play music composed by Partch and others. In 2014, his instruments were moved to the School of Music at the University of Washington, Seattle in order to have them safe. The first performance with them was held in 2015.
Compositions
‘Tastes differs’ is the best way to begin talking about the music style of his compositions. And we used to describe music as dance music, calm music, fun music, etc. Harry Partch’s music wasn’t so easy to describe. His music was something different. He gave culture traditions of different countries its due. His music was confusing and mysterious. At first, you hear the stories, you see the instruments, and then you hear the music. The atmosphere of his performances was hard to describe. And it was the main point of them. The source of his music was his interests. It was all about being personal. He has lived through every sound of his. That was why he needed new instruments and new tones. He knew how to play every one of his 25 instruments. It was not necessary but it was his way of making music personal (Evans and Green, 2006).
While creating his music he followed some idea that only he could understand. And we can see this from the fact that he destroyed all his early composition and began building instruments for needed sounds. His instruments had the ability to blend with a spoken voice as Partch wanted (Larry Sitsky, 2002). So, we can say that process of Partch music creation was based upon finding a suitable sound to describe things that only Partch could understand.
In the early 1940s, the musician spent much time wandering around the country. To honor one of such trips, committed in September 1941 from Chicago to San Francisco, he wrote a great song Parch - U.S. Highball - A Musical Account of Slim's Transcontinental Hobo Trip (1943). In 1991, after the composer's death, his works were collected and published under the name "Bitter Music". The most significant compositions Harry Partch are The Bewitched (an amalgam of ballet and opera) and Revelation in the Courthouse Park, created after the Bacchae of Euripides. Both were first played in the 1950s, at the University of Illinois at Urbana. The last big thing Harry Partch was the Delusion of the Fury (1965-1966), was first staged at the University of California Los Angeles in 1969. It was recognized as the best work written by Harry Partch by many music critics. Another remarkable work of his And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma (1963-1966).
Conclusion
His last years he spent in different places near California. He was working on the second edition of his book. His book reveals in details all of his theories and works. In 1966 he won National Institution of Arts and Letters award (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016). Harry Partch was a great developer and representative of his own particular music genre. He will be remembered for his unique instruments and the theory of music that he developed. He wasn’t only a musician he was a creator, a philosopher. He abandoned stated music norms and developed his own the ones that he felt was right. And this is worth admiring.
Bibliography
"Harry Partch And The Sociology Of Composition". 2016. Furious.Com. http://www.furious.com/perfect/harrypartch.html.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "Harry Partch", accessed 23, April, 2016
Partch, Harry and Thomas McGeary. 2000. Bitter Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Partch, Harry. 1974. Genesis Of A Music. New York: Da Capo Press.
Schneider, John (1985). The Contemporary Guitar. University of California Press.
Sitsky, Larry. 2002. Music Of The Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
