Full Description
A vivid exploration of Harry Partch's visionary music, instruments, and identities, revealing how his singular sound-world challenges conventions, reshapes performance conventions, and continues to redefine the possibilities of musical expression.
Harry Partch (1901-74) stood apart in twentieth-century music. A visionary composer, theorist, and builder of over fifty visually and aurally astonishing instruments, he rejected the confines of Western tuning and performance to forge an art that fused sound, movement, and ritual. His music grew from his life, which included hobo journeys, explorations of alternative tunings, and a fierce commitment to individuality. These experiences resulted in a body of work as theatrical as it was sonically adventurous. In recent decades, scholarship has flourished, performances and recordings have become more numerous, yet Partch's legacy remains a challenge, largely because his identities as composer, instrument builder, philosopher, and provocateur resist easy categorization.
This collection gathers leading voices to expand present-day understanding of the diverse elements that defined Partch's multiple musical identities. Essays trace the entanglement of his instruments with his creative vision, reconsider his sexuality and self-mythologizing, link his microtonal theories to both ancient Greek thought and contemporary composition, and examine the practical and interpretive challenges of performing his music today. Contributors reveal a figure whose work speaks to questions of identity, community, and the very purpose of musical creation.
Richly interdisciplinary and vividly written, The Musical Identities of Harry Partch: History, Theory, Performanceoffers new perspectives for scholars, performers, and listeners alike, and invites all to step into Partch's singular sound-world and discover its continuing resonance.
Contents
Just Writings: An Introduction to Harry Partch
S. Andrew Granade
Part 1: Historical Identities
1: Partched Fields, or Musicological Borderlands in a Season of Voice
Jake Johnson
2: The Entangled Legacy of Harry Partch and His Instruments
S. Andrew Granade
3: Harry as Proto-Queer, Partch as Not Yet Here
Will Saunders
4: Hobo Space-Time and The Wayward
Graham Raulerson
5: Tonality Diamond Reflections: The Linked Philosophies, Theories, and Aesthetics of Harry Partch and Manfred Stahnke
Navid Bargrizan
Part 2: Theoretical Identities
6: The Tuning System of Harry Partch
Danlee Mitchell
7: Harry Partch in the Tradition of Truculent American Originality
Kyle Gann
8: Pythagoras, Plato, and Partch: Breaking the Chains of a Theoretical Art Form
Paul Varchola West
Part 3: Performance Identities
9: Corporeality: The Musician's Image in the Performance of Harry Partch's Music
Danlee Mitchell
10: Issues in Analysis and Realization of the Music of Harry Partch
Charles Corey
11: Adapted Voice: Intersections of Scholarship, Practice, and Intuition in Performing Partch
Sarah Elizabeth Kolat
12: In Search of a Sound Translation: Harry Partch's The Heron
Chris Rainier
Appendix A. A Philosophic Music Man Seduced into Carpentry: Biographical Sketch of Harry Partch and Works List
Appendix B. Glossary of Terms Related to Harry Partch's Musical Language
List of Contributors
Bibliography
Index
