that’s how harry partch -composer, microtonal theorist, instrument-builder, hobo, man of letters, and iconoclast- once described himself. a newsweek citation puts it this way: “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. his music is also influenced by african polyrhythms, ancient greek modes, bits of babylonia, and the american diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.”

admission, i’d never heard of partch until today when i came across a site devoted to his instruments (more on that later). looking further i found he was a really interesting fellow.

partch, yeats, and being a hobo- from wikipedia:

partch was born in Oakland, California. Both his parents were Presbyterian missionaries. He learned to play the clarinet, harmonium, and guitar as a child. He began to compose at an early age using the chromatic scale normal in western music, but burned all his early works after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the imperfections of that particular system of musical tuning.

Interested in the potential musicality of speech, Partch worked out his first extended scales to notate the inflections of the speaking voice. He built his adapted viola to demonstrate the concept. He then secured a grant, which allowed him to go to London to study the history of tuning systems. While there, he met the poet W. B. Yeats with the intention of gaining his permission to write an opera based on his translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. He took another instrument he had built, an adapted guitar, to the meeting, and accompanied himself in one of his own songs on it. Yeats was enthusiastic, saying “a play done entirely in this way, with this wonderful instrument, and with this type of music, might really be sensational”, and giving Partch’s idea his blessing.

Partch set about building more instruments to realize his opera with. However, his grant money ran out, and, back in the United States, he began to live as a hobo, traveling around on trains and taking casual work where he could find it. He continued in this way for ten years, writing about his experiences in journals that were later collected together under the title bitter music. They frequently include snatches of overheard speech notated on musical staves according to the pitches used by the speaker. This technique was to become a standard approach to vocal parts in Partch’s work.

partch and the 12-tone equal tempered tuning system-  from frank perry:

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 realized 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.

(also from frank perry) partch had this to say about creativity-

“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.”

all interesting stuff but what i really wanted to share was this american mavericks link where you can not only listen to the sounds some of instruments made but “play” them yourself with a mouse and keyboard. includes links to sound files of music as well as explanations and talks by the man himself. good stuff.

for more music and writing from / by harry partch check out the following:

view a bunch of his instruments in this slideshow at wnyc.org, or listen to their studio 360 segment on partch.

corporeal meadows. partch’s proper home on the internet. much writing and many sounds to be explored.

record label innova recordings offers a multimedia biography of partch called the enclosures. their site offers many free samples to listen to.

evenings on the roof with yeats includes interviews and a complete performance of “The Bewitched”, a dance satire.

also
the partch reverberations
the quality of vitality
the dreamer
the sound projector
enpsychlopedia

enjoy.