HARRY
PARTCH
|
Harry Partch
(1901-1974), one of the greatest and most individualistic composers of all
time, was not only a great composer, but an innovative theorist who broke
through the shackles of many centuries of one tuning system for all of
Western music, a music instrument inventor who created dozens of incredible
instruments for the performance of his music, and a musical dramatist who
created his own texts and dance/theatre extravaganzas based on everything
from Greek mythology to his own experiences as a hobo. Between
1930 and 1972, he created one of the most amazing bodies of sensually
alluring and emotionally powerful music of the 20th century: music dramas,
dance theater, multi-media extravaganzas, vocal
music and chamber music---mostly all performed on the instruments he built
himself. With parents who were former missionaries to China, living in isolated areas of the American southwest, Partch, as a child, was exposed to a variety of influences from Asian to Native American. After dropping out of the University of Southern California, he began to study on his own and to question the tuning and philosophical foundations of Western music. During and after the Great Depression, he was a hobo and itinerant worker and rode the trains, keeping a musical notebook of his experiences, which he later set to music. In 1930 Partch broke with Western European tradition and forged a new music based on a more primal, corporeal integration of the elements of speech with music, using principles of natural acoustic resonance (just intonation) and expanded melodic and harmonic possibilities. He began to first adapt guitars and violas to play his music, and then began to build new instruments in a new microtonal tuning system. He built over 25 instruments, plus numerous small hand instruments, and became a brilliant spokesman for his ideas. Largely ignored by the standard musical institutions during his lifetime, he criticized concert traditions, the roles of the performer and composer, the role of music in society, the 12-tone equal-temperament scale and the concept of "pure" or abstract music. To explain his philosophical and intonational ideas, he wrote a treatise, Genesis of a Music, which has served as a primary source of information and inspiration to many musicians for the last half century. (Just Intonation explained in more depth)
|