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One voice: a reconciliation of Harry Partch's disparate theories

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One voice: a reconciliation of Harry Partch's disparate theories

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Content ONE VOICE: A RECONCILIATION OF HARRY PARTCH’S DISPARATE THEORIES by Brian Timothy Harlan A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HISTORICAL MUSICOLOGY) August 2007 Copyright 2007 Brian Timothy Harlan ii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables iv List of Figures vi Abstract x Introduction, 1:1 xii Introduction Endnotes xviii CHAPTER ONE: Just and Unjust Intonation 1.1 Limitations of a Single-System Musical Culture 1 1.2 A Just Solution 8 1.3 The Physics of Tonality 22 1.4 Partch’s Political Agenda: Liberating Intuition 35 1.5 Chapter One Endnotes 44 CHAPTER TWO: Unison Music 2.1 Partch’s Child World 50 2.2 Emergence of His Monophonic Theory 65 2.3 Tonal Identity in Monophony 78 2.4 The First Instrument to Realize his Musical Ideas 90 2.5 Chapter Two Endnotes 98 CHAPTER THREE: Spontaneous Music 3.1 Musical Communication in the Twentieth Century 105 3.2 Contradictions Between Monophony and Corporealism 116 3.3 “Ancient Magic” as Performance Aesthetic 132 3.4 Intra-Corporealism 138 3.5 Chapter Three Endnotes 147 CHAPTER FOUR: Analyzing Partch 4.1 Can Partch’s Music be Analyzed? 155 4.2 Existing Analytical Literature 158 4.3 Proposed Methodology 170 iii 4.4 By the Rivers of Babylon 176 4.5 Chapter Four Endnotes 198 Conclusion, 2:1 202 Conclusion Endnotes 207 References 208 APPENDIX: Matrix Analysis of “By the Rivers of Babylon” 212 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1-1 Example pitches from A2, frequency multiples (f = frequency), frequencies in Hertz, ratios, and antinote:node ratios resulting from creating a wave-like motion with a rope 19 Table 1-2 First ten harmonic of the harmonic series compared to overtones, frequency multiples, ratios, intervals, and decimal values 21 Table 1-3 Stacking of fifths up seven octaves; example from C 30 Table 1-4 Pythagorean twelve-tone scale 31 Table 2-1 Comparison between equal temperament and the just intervals of Monophony in Cents 77 Table 2-2 Forty-three-tone Monophonic scale shown with standard interval names, and measurements in cents between each scale degree 82 Table 2-3 Sixteen secondary tonalities in Monophony 88 Table 3-1. Scenes, programmatic reference, and dance styles originally stipulated by Partch for Bewitched 108 Table 4-1 Accidentals used in Ben Johnston’s microtonal notation 159 Table 4-2 Harmonic movement in Barstow 166 Table 4-3 Chromelodeon stops 179 Table 4-4 Kithara notation and tuning guide 180 Table 4-5 Formal structure of “By the Rivers of Babylon” 182 v Table Appendix-1 Example numerical key values assigned to ratios 207 Table Appendix-2 Example instrumental voice records with numerical key values (measures 48-53) 208 Table Appendix-3 Example of ratio plots within the matrix (measure 56-58) 209 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1 Monochord 9 Figure 1-2 Two monochords; the first tuned to 2:1, the second tuned to 1:1 11 Figure 1-3 Two monochords; the first tuned to 3:1, the second tuned to 1:1 13 Figure 1-4 Two monochords; the first tuned to 3:1, the second tuned to 3:2; and theoretical antinode to node ratio (3 antinodes to 2 nodes) 14 Figure 1-5 Tow monochords; the first tuned 4:1, the second tuned to 4:3 15 Figure 1-6 First four divisions of the monochord in staff notation 16 Figure 1-7 Grand staff 17 Figure 1-8 Example pitches of the first four harmonics from A2, which are analogous to divisions on a monochord from the same source tone 22 Figure 1-9 Pythagorean tetraktys of the decad 29 Figure 2-1 5-Limit Tonality Diamond. Includes superparticular ratios up to the integer 5, and their reciprocals (1:1 {3:3, 5:5}, 3:2/4:3, 5:3/6:5, 5:4/8:5). 80 Figure 2-2 5-Limit Tonality Diamond using standard interval names 81 Figure 2-3. 5-Limit Tonality Diamond using standard pitch names 82 Figure 2-4 11-Limit Tonality Diamond 83 vii Figure 2-5 “My Heart Keeps Beating Time”; music by Paul Pirate (A. K. A., Harry Partch) 91 Figure 2-6 Adapted Viola fingerboard with ratios indicated 94 Figure 2-7. Partch playing Adapted Viola in 1954 96 Figure 3-1 Bill Frank and Phyllis Lamhut rehearsing The Bewitched at the University of Illinois, 1957 112 Figure 3-2 The1969 production of Delusion of the Fury 135 Figure 3-3 Spoils of War (1950-1965) 140 Figure 3-4 Elizabeth Brunswick playing the Cloud Chamber Bowls in the 1952 production of Oedipus 141 Figure 4-1 Excerpt of “The Long-Departed Lover” from Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po 161 Figure 4-2 Example of tonality flux in “On Seeing Off Meng Hao-jan” from Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po 163 Figure 4-3 One-Footed Bride graph 174 Figure 4-4 A Monophonic ‘octave’ on the Chromelodeon 178 Figure 4-5a Excerpt from “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript (measures 1-12) 183 Figure 4-5b Excerpt from “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis (measures 1-12) 184 viii Figure 4-6a Example of Tonality Flux as a clouding effect in “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript (measures 49-51) 186 Figure 4-6b Example of Tonality Flux as a clouding effect in “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis (measures 49-51) 187 Figure 4-6c Example of Tonality Flux in the final cadence of “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript (measures 59-63) 188 Figure 4-6d Example of Tonality Flux in the final cadence of “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis (measures 59-63) 188 Figure 4-7b Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript; modulation from grief to anger, (measures 35-37) 191 Figure 4-7b Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis; modulation from grief to anger, (measures 35-37) 191 Figure 4-8a Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript; change of speaking characters, (measures 16-17) 192 Figure 4-8b Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis; change of speaking characters, (measures 16-17) 192 Figure 4-9 Frequency of One-Footed Bride interval types in “By the Rivers of Babylon” 194 Figure 4-10 Frequency of One-Footed bride interval types by section in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; point of modulation between grief and anger 195 Figure Appendix-1 Matrix analysis excerpt of “By the Rivers of Babylon”; Section A (measures 1- 20) 210 ix Figure Appendix-2 Matrix analysis excerpt of “By the Rivers of Babylon”; Section B (measures 21- 44) 211 Figure Appendix-3 Matrix analysis excerpt of “By the Rivers of Babylon”; Section C (measures 45- 63) 212 x ABSTRACT The study of American, microtonal composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) is complicated by specious autobiographical accounts, contradictory theoretical positions, and a methodology predicated on a vague concept of intuition. These complications are exacerbated by his use of a forty-three-tone scale, non-Western sources of inspiration, novel terms for preexisting ideas, and an integration of music, drama, and dance. In addition, his use of ratios to represent pitch, and the unique tablature notations for his nearly forty invented instruments create a seemingly insurmountable barrier to the analysis of his music. Yet while these complexities are initially overwhelming, they actually work to obscure the simplicity of Partch’s core ideas and compositional technique. At the foundation of all his ideas was an individualistic concept he called One Voice. One Voice was the process by which Partch projected his self image through his works. In doing so, he created a model that aimed to inspire others toward individual expression and artistic investigation. The concept of One Voice is often treated as a byproduct of Partch’s more well-known theories, namely Monophony (his intonation scheme), and Corporealism (his performance aesthetic). On closer examination, however, it can be shown that One Voice was in fact his most fundamental theory. This dissertation will provide new insight into Partch’s work by reevaluating it from the perspective of One Voice as his fundamental theory. It will be asserted that both his writings and his compositions support this view, and that Monophony and Corporealism developed out of the concept of One Voice. Along with this thesis, a new methodology for analyzing his music will be proposed to test the assumptions made. By xi addressing his music directly, Partch’s contributions as a composer can be presented in conjunction with his contributions as a theorist. The intent is to reveal the consistency between his theory and music. Despite claims to the contrary, analysis shows that Partch’s music did follow the principles laid out in his theory. Musical analysis and the concept of One Voice help to reconcile many of the contradictions that arise in Partch’s work, and they allow a holistic understanding of this work for the first time. xii INTRODUCTION 1:1 The inspiring-exasperating and life-giving, life-destroying purpose of the creative artists or interpreter is the attainment of understanding that sires communication. 1 When I first encountered Harry Partch’s essays I empathized almost immediately with many of his ideas, and I was immensely impressed with the way he presented them. His insight and conceptual thinking were always enhanced by his imaginative writing style. He had a way of representing complex ideas with simple, tangible analogies that were sometimes gritty, sometimes elegant, and sometimes simply hysterical. His language was always sincere, and the prevailing tone of his work was exceedingly passionate. All of these factors have continued to make Partch a pleasure for me to read. As I began my attempt to frame his work for the purpose of this dissertation, however, I was overwhelmed with both the number of ideas I had to manage, and the seeming disparity between them. His tuning theory, his original instruments, his interests in theatre, dance and literature, and his foray into physics, psychology, and phenomenology all invite different approaches to a study of his work. In addition, some of his explanations require previous exposure to the concepts even though he presented them with precise language and specific examples. He made an effort to quickly familiarize readers with the state of intonation theory, for instance, before he demonstrated how his forty-three-tone scale was based on the fundamental nature of sound. Yet, the chasm between the concepts and terms of mainstream music theory and musical acoustics is so great, that any attempt to close this gap quickly is problematic, to say the least. xiii This dissertation aims to facilitate a translation of Partch’s theory of One Voice into Western academic music theory. One Voice was the process by which Partch projected his self image through his works. The concept is often treated as a derivative of his intonation theory (Monophony) and his performance aesthetic (Corporealism). On closer examination, however, it can be shown that One Voice was in fact his most radical theory, and that these more often cited theories actually developed out of it. From this perspective it becomes clear, through both metaphorical and literal interpretations, that every aspect of Partch’s work was touched by the concept of One Voice. With what follows I attempt to address the very questions that came to my mind as I made my way through his writings. Such questions often caused me to re-read essays or sections of his book Genesis of a Music multiple times without ever gleaning what I believed to be a satisfactory understanding. In Partch’s writings the reader is saturated with all of his ideas at once, and initially it is challenging to make sense of them as a unified whole. This type of problem is not unusual in the study of historical figures, but in the case of Partch it is complicated further by his original terms that are sometimes loosely defined, and his theoretical positions that are sometimes self-contradictory. To ameliorate these complications the present study proceeds in a heuristic fashion so that his terms and concepts are established sequentially before they are interwoven together. I begin by explaining just intonation, mainly because I have yet to find such an explanation bound together with a full treatment of Partch’s theory. If the reader is already knowledgeable about just intonation, he or she might choose to skip some of the sections in Chapter One. Yet the entire chapter should not be overlooked because in it I also make an important claim; that Partch’s use of just intonation can be xiv directly connected with his political stance. In the Chapter Two I address how Partch used just intonation to create his Monophonic principles and forty-three-tone scale. The emergence of Monophony is presented in the context of Partch’s early biography so that it will be understood as a logical conclusion, rather than an indignant rejection of mainstream theory (as it has previously been described). I will then trace the development of Corporealism in the third chapter, and reveal its connection to Monophony. The interweaving of all these ideas is essential for a complete understanding of his work, but each need to be thoroughly explained before they can be brought together. When grasped as a whole his theory is consistent and well grounded. Unfortunately this fact is not self evident. As enjoyable as reading Partch is, without dedicating time to clarifying his ideas and terminology one might easily walk away from his work with a belief that his theory and music are mutually exclusive. I will argue just the opposite. One of the ironies in the study of Partch’s work is that his theory cannot be fully comprehended without an understanding of his music, and at the same time, his music cannot be fully comprehended without an understanding of his theory. The two strongly support one another, yet due to the challenges students and scholars face when approaching his work, Partch’s theory and music are seldom studied together. Admittedly, when I was pondering how to construct a thesis for this dissertation I too considered ways to avoid the difficulty of analyzing his music. Even though Partch stated that one only need a seventh-grade education to understand his ratio notation, at first sight his equations and mathematical tables are quite daunting. 2 The more intimate I became with his work, however, the more I realized the need to synthesize his ideas and xv present them holistically. One of the missing pieces that have prevented such a holistic study of Partch is an accessible methodology for analyzing his music. Such a method will be proposed in Chapter Four, but before this can even be attempted some of the misunderstandings of Partch’s theory will be dispelled. A few tangents will also be necessary to fill in the gaps of otherwise incomprehensible facts. How was it, for example, that Partch came to educate himself on acoustics, aesthetics, and the history of Western and non-Western music solely by visits to the public library? Without a formal education, how did he learn about literature, poetry, and psychology, and how did he win a Carnegie grant to study in England? How can it be that within the span of about a year Partch was first living as a migrant laborer in California, and then on board a ship as an ordinary seaman, and then giving a newspaper interview about his musical theories in Louisiana? And how could a man who lived as a hobo for roughly eight years continue to invent and construct an orchestra of instruments during that time? All of these questions require a critical look at his biography, just as the incongruities in his theory require investigation into the sources he drew upon. Some of the sources Partch drew from have been documented, but in most cases this has been done without any reference to the original source. And there other sources that have apparently gone unnoticed. For example, Herman von Hemlholtz's influence is frequently highlighted by researchers, but only a few have seriously ventured to look closely at where Partch borrowed from Helmholtz and where he turned away. It is interesting to note, for instance, that Helmholtz praised music for its incorporeality. 3 For him, it was precisely because music was incorporeal that it was able to affect our xvi emotions by emulating physical movement. This is directly opposed to Partch’s demand for musical Corporealism, though which he sought emotional affect through purely physical movement. Furthermore, although the influence of Helmholtz was important, it was no more important than the lesser-known influence of W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Oswald Spengler. Little attention has been given to the influence of Yeats and Lawrence, and Partch’s citation of Decline of the West has not been documented before now. Each of these individuals provided an important contribution to Partch’s artistic perspective, and therefore his interpretation of their ideas will be addressed here. Throughout Partch’s writings the idea that appeared over and over again was the view of individual expression that he put forth though his concept of One Voice. The complex factors of this concept require thorough treatment, but it can be briefly described as an attempt by Partch to uphold the authority of the artist. Nearly every essay he wrote was either based on, or blended with, this concept. At times it came though his work in a mood of longing, and at other times in a mood of protest, but it was ever present. Partch has often been depicted as an angry independent who wanted nothing to do with mainstream musical culture. This perspective is not entirely false, but it is clearly an oversimplification. By his own admission Partch had great reverence for Western culture. He was independent only because he wanted to express himself in his own terms, not because he was indifferent to audience appreciation, or to criticism. He did become increasingly obstinate both publicly and in print over the years, but this was largely due to his frustrations with what he believed to be social restrictions to individualism. 4 As he wrote about social relations in Bitter Music, even among the xvii homeless one encounters hierarchical bureaucracy and prejudice. 5 Limitation upon individual expression was the cause Partch spoke out most intensely for, and can be called the root of his life’s work. He articulated this cause as both a need for society to allow individuals the legitimacy of open artistic expression, and a need for individuals to allow themselves that legitimacy as well. He not only strove to bring awareness to these needs, he provided an example for how to eliminate them through his concept of One Voice. xviii INTRODUCTION ENDNOTES 1. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” (1952), reprinted in Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, edited with an introduction by Thomas McGeary, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000) 182. 2. Harry Partch interviewed by Vivian Perlis, San Diego, March 1974. Unpublished transcript: Oral History Project, American Music Series 24 a-f, Yale University School of Music, 25. 3. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological basis for the Theory of Music, edited by Alexander J. Ellis, second English edition (New York: Dover, 1954), 250. 4. Not incidentally, however, his frustrations were aggravated in his final years by health problems and alcoholism. 5. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” (1952), reprinted in Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, 68-72. 1 CHAPTER ONE JUST AND UNJUST INTONATION Limitations of a Single-System Musical Culture What is just intonation, and why would a composer risk alienation from mainstream musical culture in order to use it? The necessity for posing this question upholds one of the aesthetic premises of Harry Partch’s work. Partch believed that the uncompromising status of equal temperament in Western culture was an unjust obstruction to creativity, and he sought to raise awareness of this through his writings and his music. It is indeed ironic that the simple mathematical elegance of just intonation confounds so many, while the comparatively complex calculations of equal temperament are accepted with ease. According to Partch, this paradoxical situation resulted from the standardization of pedagogical training, the mass production of musical instruments, the economic interests of the recording and performance industries, and—perhaps most importantly—the stylistic developments in Western music itself. In each case, equal temperament’s predominance has ostensibly been passed from one generation to the next without question or comment. The realization of this led Partch to suspect an ideological force behind equal temperament’s thrust. Twentieth and twenty-first century composers have been inspired by Partch’s rhetoric on just intonation, and it has even been suggested that he can be called an “icon of the American just intonation school”. 1 It is debatable, however, whether a “school” of just 2 intonation can be said to exist, since a similar tuning system is hardly the basis for a school of composition, and the personal motivations behind each composer’s attraction to just intonation are in no way unified. If nothing else, the use of just intonation among twentieth and twenty-first-century composers provides a reason to search for a connection between them. If a connection can be found, it might even be extended to a cross-cultural tradition that pre-dates the written record. Just intonation not only has its own history, it has its own prehistory. It is not one more modern compositional device to explore the limits of tonality, although it can be used in this way. For some composers, the use of just intonation rejoins a forgotten link between theory and experience, and in so doing it positions itself as the wellspring of all other tuning systems. 2 The idea of a forgotten aesthetic value was certainly an important motivating factor for Partch. For him, just intonation was both a practical and a symbolic tool that he employed to accomplish his artistic goal of communication through performance. In simple terms this goal can be described as musical communication through musical performance, but in Partch’s application, it is more aptly described as emotional communication through physical movement. Just intonation was practical because it was a preexisting alternative to equal temperament, and one that Partch found flexible enough to allow him to create his own individual system within it. And just intonation was symbolic in the sense that it was grounded on the physical properties of sound, thus bringing the performer and audience member intuitively closer to their individual physicality. Furthermore, both the practical and symbolic aspects of his use of just intonation helped to formulate the process by which Partch projected his own image 3 through his work. This process was codified in his concept of One Voice. One Voice can be succinctly defined by modifying Partch’s artistic goal to state: communication of the self through performance. What is perhaps most unique about Partch’s work is that he used just intonation exclusively. Once he established his theory he did not waver. 3 Yet, without understanding what just intonation is, it is not possible to draw conclusions about what Partch’s use of it actually meant. Western tuning theory begins with the Pythagoreans, and Partch’s explanation of just intonation often referred back to these sources. Nevertheless, there are some differences between Pythagorean tuning and the more paradigmatic just tuning, as well as the tuning used by Partch. There is clearly more than one way to realize a scale from just intonation, and it was the philosophy behind the approach that drew support from some of the greatest thinkers on the subject. Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to name a few, all upheld just intonation as superior to a host of rival systems. The most historically important among the multitude of proposed temperaments are mean-tone temperament, well temperament, and equal temperament. Although mean-tone and well temperament had significant supporters of their own, the fiercest struggle for dominance was fought between just intonation and equal temperament. 4 Each approach has its own virtues and limitations. To discuss what these are, a few fundamental tuning concepts must be clarified. To begin, in tuning theory there is a clear distinction between a tuning system and a temperament. The distinction lies in the quality of the measurements for each. Tuning 4 systems, according to this distinction, measure intervals with rational numbers (that is, positive whole-number integers: 1, 2, 3, etc.). Conversely, a temperament allows irrational numbers for some or all of its intervallic measures. 5 The concept behind equal temperament is easy to grasp; each of its twelve notes are an equal distance apart. Never mind that calculating the 12 th root of 2 (1.0595) distance between semitones to perfect the system was a mathematical breakthrough of considerable significance. The calculations necessary to measure the intervals of a just scale, in comparison, are so simple that they can be accomplished by counting on one’s fingers. Yet, the number of intervals possible when tuning according to just principles is theoretically infinite. And in a manner of speaking these infinite possibilities make just intonation literally incomprehensible. Understood in this light, equal temperament is a rational system of irrational components, and just intonation is an irrational system of rational components. Tuning systems and temperaments do share one important characteristic; they are both processes that spawn multiple results. Some temperaments, such as mean-tone, incorporate just and tempered intervals together. Numerous microtonal equal temperaments have also been developed, and there are diatonic and pentatonic just scales as well. This is critical to keep in mind when attempting to make sense of the diversity of the world’s musical scales. When understood as sets of principles rather than specific pitch arrangements, tunings and temperaments can be seen as differing cultural and historical solutions to problems resulting from a similar situation. The situation, namely, is that the pitch continuum is far more expansive than the human capability to perceive it, and we must make arbitrary choices when deciding which tones to sing and play. Yet, a 5 fundamental part of Partch’s justification for just intonation was that it has long been claimed that certain intervals between tones resonate within the body more than others. 6 According to this view, the most physically compelling intervals are those in the simplest proportions of one to another. 7 The critical difference between tuning systems and temperaments is that tunings seek to measure these proportions as simply (or as just) as possible. Temperaments, on the other hand, compromise proportional simplicity for the sake of greater harmonic flexibility. This harmonic flexibility, or the ability to perform tonal modulations from any tone in the scale, is the primary benefit of equal temperament, and perhaps the single most distinguishing feature that has secured its position in Western music. From another perspective, however, this benefit is also a liability. Indeed, real modulations (in other words, modulations based on intervalic relationships rather than key relationships) can be accomplished in non-equal temperaments and tunings. And furthermore, such modulations are often depicted as obtaining greater harmonic subtlety. Well temperament, which was arguably the temperament J. S. Bach had in mind for his Well-Tempered Clavier, allows sharps and flats of different keys to share tones even though the distances between the tones are unequal. 8 The unequal spacing was intentionally used in order to allow each key to have its own specific character. With just intonation the character of real modulations is even more unique, and it was partly this expansive sonic quality that intrigued Partch. He had begun to doubt the ability of equal temperament to fully express his musical ideas even before he could articulate his reasoning. It wasn’t until 1922 when 6 he came across Hermann von Hemlholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone that he found supporting language and concepts to realize many of his intuitive ideas. 9 Inspired by Helmholtz’s explanation of just intonation, in 1925 Partch wrote a just string quartet, and in 1926 he began to document his own ideas on the topic. “Patterns of Music” Partch’s his earliest surviving essay. It was later incorporated into Genesis of a Music, and in the preface, he described the limitations of equal temperament through a comparison to color. The painter begins with a scale of primary colors similar to a scale of tones, but unlike the composer, the painter can create new colors by mixing primary colors proportionately to his or her own specifications. “Consider the writer of music. Before him is also a scale. It holds seven white keys and five black ones. In his mind he approaches C-sharp, one of the five blacks. He approaches it, and he lands on it. His action is direct, simple, predetermined. “There are no shades of C-sharp, no shades of red, for him. The one shade that his gods will allow him to use is before him. He is taught that that is enough; it is good, traditional, and proper, and he feels a vague sense of immorality in even wondering about those possible bastard [shades of] C-sharps…. “With the disquietude born of a life getting substitutes for nearly everything he really wants, the composer yearns for the streaking shades of sunset. He gets red. He longs for geranium, and gets red. He dreams of tomato, but he gets red.” 10 A close reading of this passage reveals more than a simple analogy. To be sure, Partch used just intonation primarily to increase his tonal resources. This was necessary because a key aspect of his aesthetic was to emulate the dramatic qualities of speech. Yet, finer discriminations of tone can be achieved through any number of microtonal devices, and there were documented theories available at the time that Partch could have drawn upon. 11 A cornerstone in Partch’s work that must be understood from the outset is that 7 acoustically pure intervals were more important to him than the multiple divisions to the octave that his theory produced. What is most evident in the essay cited above is Partch’s frustration with the need to conform to a predetermined system of music, and this sentiment can be easily found throughout his writings. One example in his writings among many is Partch’s reference to the Laconian Decree against Timotheus of Miletus. Although the validity of the actual story is unclear, his depiction of it is nevertheless telling. Timotheus’s reported transgression was to corrupt the minds of young men at a Spartan music festival by adding extra strings to a lyre that had been standardized to seven, thus adding a new tone. Partch’s retelling stated that the Spartans “drove the immoral Timotheus from their city”. 12 For Partch, the story suggested that a break from accepted norms could raise questions about an individual’s personal character. No less disturbing to him was the implication that the creativity of an individual could be controlled by a dominant group. The concert music milieu in Partch’s era maintained a similar rigidity that still exists today: standardized pitch, tuning, instrumentation, repertories, forms, genres, techniques, and so on. Just intonation offered an alternative to the dominant system, which Partch felt was a dead end in terms of creativity. 13 It was also immensely significant for Partch that the system he chose to revive modern music was both primitive, and rooted in the physical nature of sound. What follows is a fairly rudimentary explanation of just intonation and the historical reasons for the rise of equal temperament. Since these topics are not typically taught as part of the core curriculum in music schools, it has been included here to prepare the reader for a better understanding of why Partch used just intonation and how he 8 applied it. Elements of his biography and the sources he drew upon have been integrated into the discussion, however, if well versed in these topics the reader can easily skip the next two sections and move on to the last. A Just Solution Our perception of pitch is the result of a rapid, and rhythmic, displacement of matter. When an object vibrates it pushes on the surrounding air periodically, resulting in a pulsating pattern of first condensed, then stretched, packets of air. Because the pattern is periodic, if it occurs very slowly it will be perceived as rhythm, but if it occurs faster than about twenty times every second it will be perceived as a tone. 14 The pitch of a vibrating object, consequently, can be traced back to the rate at which it is moving, and in turn, how frequently it is pushing on the air around it. Put more plainly, pitch is measured by vibration speed. 15 Tension and mass also play a role, but mainly to the extent that they affect the speed of vibration. Although the relationship between vibration speed and pitch is direct, it should be recognized that pitch is a perceptual measure, and hence subjectively variable. Acousticians prefer instead to work with physical measures such as frequency. Still, intervallic distances were quantified in antiquity before frequencies were precisely observable. This was possible because a proportion between two frequencies is a corollary of dividing the physical length of a vibrating object, such as a string. It follows then that there is a correlation between the pitch of a vibrating object, its vibration frequency, and its length. To take this one step further, it can also be said that the length of a vibrating entity determines its pitch. This last statement is one of Western history’s 9 oldest recorded acoustical facts. It was reportedly observed by Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C., but there is evidence that it was known much earlier. 16 It was an empirical observation well suited to Pythagoras’s esoteric teachings, which drew on connections between rational mathematics and the physical world. Perhaps more significant was Pythagoras’s observation that the most common intervals found in music, and implicitly the most suitable to our ears, could be devised by using nothing more than the first four whole numbers (1, 2, 3, and 4). Pythagoras and his followers interpreted these observations as evidence of a three-fold link between the physical world, mathematics, and aesthetics. 17 The musical intervals that manifest from these four numbers can be explained with a simple experiment. The primary scientific instrument for experimental acoustics before the oscilloscope was the monochord, and it remains useful for demonstrating musical intervals expressed as ratios. Figure 1-1. Monochord. 10 A monochord is simply a single string stretched across a resonating body. Only one monochord is necessary to demonstrate musical proportions, but for the purposes of a clear demonstration, a second monochord can be helpful. If we tune the first monochord to a specific tone, and tune the second monochord in the same way, both monochords will produce the same tone. There will be no distance between the two tones, therefore, the relationship between them will be one to one, or 1:1. The exact pitch of the tone is irrelevant at this point since musical ratios are relative labels. In this sense they are no different from the use of common interval names (octave, major second, minor third, etc.) that can represent a distance between tones regardless of the actual pitch. In musical practice, of course, when intervals are stated the reference pitch is typically stated as well. For example, one could state an octave above A, or a major second below G. Thus, by implication an interval represents not only a distance between pitches, but a new pitch as well. An octave above A4, for instance, is A5, and a major second below G is F. Musical ratios work the same way. There is no difference between describing an interval as a unison or as a 1:1. In both cases there are two tones, there is no distance between these tones, and one is considered the referent while the other is a new tone. The benefit of ratio representation, however, is that it provides a numerical and visual analogy at the same time. Visually, the ratio 1:1 tells the story all on its own. When the string of the first monochord is divided in half by placing a fret exactly in the middle, the two tones will have a new relationship to one another. The division can be made by sight, or by using a length measurement, but in the end it is the ear that will most precisely indicate when the fret has been placed correctly. Once the monochord strings 11 are in the exact proportion of two parts to one, there is an obvious effect of similarity between the two tones. In European tradition this interval is referred to as the octave, since it is the eighth note of a septatonic scale. Certainly the same interval occurs in a pentatonic scale, and thus the term is slightly misleading. 18 The ratio used to represent an octave, 2:1, is at once more clear and more universal in its application. Since the second monochord is referencing the original tone it is easy to visualize what is meant by a 2:1 (two sections of string, in relation to one section of string). Figure 1-2. Two monochords; the first tuned to 2:1, the second tuned to 1:1. Keep in mind that even when using only one monochord the ratio would still be 2:1. In this sense, only the ‘2’ would be audible and the ‘1’ would be implied. In all musical ratios one number of the ratio represents the originating tone by similar implication, and the other represents the new tone that is heard. At this point it is reasonable to question why this pitch is 2:1 and not1:2, since it is derived from 1/2 the string length. Part of the answer is that placing the larger number first is a matter of 12 convention. Yet more insightfully, a fraction of a larger part, and a ratio between a part and its source, are two different ways of describing the same thing. This point will be more transparent as further divisions of the monochord are made. Another simple ratio results by making two divisions spaced so that there are three sections along the length of the monochord. When one of the three sections is sounded a new tone is produced in a 3:1 relationship to the original tone, which is a twelfth higher (an octave plus a perfect fifth). Therefore, 1/3 of a string produces a tone that is a 3:1 higher than the original tone. If this is true, one would also expect that 2/3 of a string will produce a tone that is 3:2 higher than the original tone. Indeed, this is the case, but there is more to the explanation of where this ‘2’ comes from. Again, a 3:1 is more than an octave away from the original tone, and to be a functional part of a musical scale it will need to be represented within the same octave as the original tone. It was just demonstrated that the octave is twice that of the original tone, so it follows that tones within an octave must have a value between 1 and 2. 19 In other words, in order for the 3:1 to fit within an octave, it must be reduced to a number that is larger than one, but smaller than two. Since an octave is two times the original, any tone can be raised by an octave if multiplied by two, and lowered by an octave if divided by two. Multiplication with ratios is the same as fractions (when dividing, the divisor is inverted and the ratios are multiplied), thus the resulting interval is [3:1 ÷ 2:1 = 3 x 1/2 = 3:2] a perfect fifth. This can be understood from another perspective by realizing that the three sections of the string are determined by two divisions. 13 Figure 1-3. Two monochords; the first tuned to 3:1, the second tuned to 1:1. A fret is used at a division marker to stop the displacement of the string. Acousticians refer to points of no displacement along a vibrating object as nodes, and to areas of displacement as antinodes. 20 If one conceptualizes the division markings as potential nodes, the 3:2 ratio can be said to result from a theoretical ratio of three antinodes to two nodes. 14 Figure 1-4. Two monochords; the first tuned to 3:1, the second tuned to 3:2; and theoretical antinode to node ratio (3 antinodes to 2 nodes). It has been noted that sounding 2/3s the length of the string results in a 3/2 above the original tone, and that the 3:1 and the 3:2 are separated by an octave, but there is one final observation to contemplate. Since the 3:1 is an octave plus a fifth above the 1:1, it is also a perfect fifth above the 2:1. This is important because what is beginning to be revealed is a kind of graduated sequence from one division to the next. This sequence is continued when dividing the monochord into four sections. Most of what has been observed thus far applies to this division as well. For example, 1/4 the length of the string is in a 4:1 relationship to the original tone, but the 4:1 also presents a special circumstance. As with the 3:2, when a fret is placed on one of the divisions the tones generated on either side of the fret are 4:1 and 4:3 (perfect fourth), and the 4:3 corresponds to the theoretical antinode to node ratio. antinode antinode antinode node node 15 Figure 1-5. Tow monochords; the first tuned 4:1, the second tuned to 4:3. Unlike the 3:2, however, the octave reduction technique used on 3:1 will not work to explain the 4:3. In fact, what we find is that an octave reduction of 4:1 results in a 2:1 [4:1 ÷ 2:1 = 4 x 1/2 = 4:2 (reduced to its lowest terms) = 2:1]. The tone resulting from this division is in the same pitch class as the original tone, but two octaves higher. Again the monochord can help to provide a visual aid. Notice in Figure 1-5 that what has been done is to divide the string into two parts, and then divided each of those two parts into two more parts, thus multiplying the original number of parts by four. The 4:1 can therefore be explained as a 2:1 inside of another 2:1, but this does little to explain the existence of the 4:3. 21 Resolving this problem requires a different approach altogether. All musical intervals have a potential for harmonic reciprocity (in other words, inversion). For instance, a major second up from 1:1 is a minor seventh down from 2:1, a minor third up from 1:1 is a major sixth down from 2:1, and so on. The inversion of a ratio can be found by dividing it from the octave above. 22 Dividing 4:3 from 2:1 provides 16 an intriguing answer [2:1 ÷ 4:3 = 2 x 3/4 = 6/4 = 3/2]. What this shows is that 4:3 and 3:2 share a reciprocal relationship, and with this information we find the missing piece to the puzzle. The first monochord division produced a tone an octave up from the original tone, the second produced a tone a twelfth up, and the third produced a tone two octaves up. For the sake of simplicity we can rely on common pitch names to clarify this further. If the original note was A2, the first division will result in A3, the second division will result in E3, and the third division will result in A4. Figure 1-6. First four divisions of the monochord in staff notation. The octave interval between the original tone and the first division is the gamut for a musical scale (1:1-2:1, or, for example, A2-A3). All new tones need to fall within this space. The interval from the second division to the third is a perfect fifth (2:1-3:1, or A3- E3), and the interval from the third division to the fourth is a perfect fourth (3:1-4:1, or E3-A4). Moving the latter intervals within the gamut of a 2:1, and starting from the original tone, we obtain the following scale: A, D, E, A’ (the D resulting from the 4:3 above A2). These three intervals 4:3, 3:2, and 2:1, derived from ratios using only the first four integers, are all that was needed to propel Western musical theory from ancient Sumer to medieval Europe. 23 By stacking, multiplying and dividing these four intervals a plethora of scales can be produced. This simple fact, as well as the perceptual stability of 17 these intervals, has been noticed throughout the world. Indeed, few musical systems—if any—do not include 1:1, 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 as primary intervals. Some traditions have even assigned the fifth and fourth reciprocal attributes, such as masculine and feminine, and yin and yang. 24 Even the Western grand staff, which consists of a G clef above (3:2) and an F clef below (4:3) pivoting on middle C (1:1), continues to symbolize our deep connection to these musical proportions. Figure 1-7. Grand staff. It was stated that the proportion between two frequencies is a corollary of dividing the physical length of a vibrating object, but this has not yet been fully explained. Simply put, frequency ratios are analogous to monochord ratios. In order to represent the monochord ratios that have been derived thus far as frequencies, the original tone must first be assigned a frequency by multiplying 1:1 by a given value. Any frequency will work, yet for the purposes of demonstration a frequency of 110 Hz (A2) provides a clear example. The 1:1 of 110 Hz would be [110 x 1:1 = 110:110]. Subsequent ratios can then be derived from this source. The 2:1 of 110:110 is 220:110, the 3:2 is 330:220, and the 4:3 is 440:330. Since for musical purposes ratios are typically represented in their lowest terms, in a musical scale 440:330 would be reduced back to 4:3, and so on. There are obvious benefits to both reduced and non-reduced representations of ratios. Smaller G (3:2) Clef F (4:3) Clef 18 numbers are easier to work with, but they express only relative values. A precise frequency ratio such as 440:330, on the other hand, provides additional information to describe what is physically occurring. What is most important is that when a vibrating object is divided, because the object is vibrating at a given frequency, the frequency will be altered as well. And as was demonstrated by the monochord divisions the alteration is an inverse relation (when the object is divided, the frequency is multiplied). For further explanation it is evident that ratios derived from 1:1 are multiples of the source. This fact holds true whether the multiples are represented as frequency ratios or as monochord ratios. As such, each ratio is ultimately related back to 1:1, for they would not exist without its generating properties. The 2:1 in particular is the most intimately related to 1:1. As the generation process continues, however, each new ratio is intimately related to the preceding ratio in a similar way. For instance, recall that 3:1 is a twelfth above 1:1, but that it is also a perfect fifth above the 2:1. The mystery of the 4:3 relationship to 1:1 can also be explained when it is understood in relation to the 3:1. Resorting back to pitch names once again, if monochord ratios are returned to their natural state, the reduced A-D-E-A’ sequence returns to A2-A3-E4-A4. Regardless of whether this is expressed in frequencies ratios, monochord ratios, common practice intervals names, or pitch names, what can be seen is that each new tone has a distinct relationship to its predecessor. In fact, they are ostensibly stacked, one on top of the other. 19 A4 4f 440 Hz 4: 3 E3 3f 330 Hz 3: 2 A3 2f 220 Hz 2: 1 A2 F 110 Hz 1: 1 Table 1-1. Example pitches from A2, frequency multiples (f = frequency), frequencies in Hertz, ratios, and antinote:node ratios resulting from creating a wave-like motion with a rope. This stacking brings a new dimension to the divisions on the monochord. The predominant reason why the ancient technique of deriving ratios from a monochord continues to hold significance is because modern contributions to acoustic theory have enhanced, and not diminished, what it demonstrates. The ability to measure frequency refines rather than alters the representation of ratios, and these ratios are mirrored in a refined examination of frequency as well. When examined on a closer structural level (magnified, in a manner of speaking), each frequency is found to contain multiple internal frequencies stacked upon one another according to the same principles as the monochord divisions. The principles used to divide the monochord, then, corresponded to the natural ordering of frequencies, which equally applies to the infrastructure of frequencies. These multiple internal frequencies within a fundamental frequency are called harmonics, and the natural ordering of harmonics is known as the harmonic series. In the early 19 th century Jean-Baptise-Joseph Fourier put forth a theorem which showed that any periodic oscillation, such as a tone, can be analyzed into a number of harmonics that are whole number multiples of the original. 25 Harmonics are far less audible than the fundamental 20 frequency, and indeed, it is the fundamental frequency that we are referring to when we denote pitch. Yet, harmonics are noticeably audible, particularly the first five to seven. 26 As it has been described, a harmonic is a resultant frequency that is a whole- number multiple of the fundamental. This whole-number constraint distinguishes a harmonic from an overtone, even though the two terms are often used interchangeably. Regardless of how it is produced every tone has resultant overtones, but some instruments produce overtones that are not quite harmonic. 27 The specificity of overtones will depend on the material the instrument is made of and the method by which the vibration is produced, as well as how it is tuned, and the technique the player uses. There is also an added terminological complication in that the first harmonic is referred to as the fundamental overtone, the second harmonic is the first overtone, and so on. Thus, the first overtone of a horn is already the second harmonic, and more interestingly, the first overtone of a flute is the third harmonic. Even more striking, pianos must be considered inharmonic since the high tension of their strings causes progressively sharper overtones that are not whole-number multiples of the fundamental. 28 This places pianos in the same category as bells and other idiophones, which can produce overtones that do not coincide with the harmonic series. The distinction between overtones and harmonics is presented here in order to show that, although the harmonic series is a stable structure, each sound actually has its own unique overtone series. This fact is important because the overtones that are audible determine the timbre of the tone. In their patterning, however, overtones and harmonics operate in a similar fashion, and their similarity is more paramount than their distinction. 21 10 th Harmonic 9 th Overtone 10f (10/1) 10:9 Minor Tone 1.1111… 9 th Harmonic 8 th Overtone 9f (9/1) 9:8 Major Tone 1.125 8 th Harmonic 7 th Overtone 8f (8/1) 8:7 Septimal Major 2 nd 1.1428… 7 th Harmonic 6 th Overtone 7f (7/1) 7:6 Septimal Minor 3 rd 1.1666… 6 th Harmonic 5 th Overtone 6f (6/1) 6:5 Minor 3 rd 1.2 5 th Harmonic 4 th Overtone 5f (5/1) 5:4 Major 3 rd 1.25 4 th Harmonic 3 rd Overtone 4f (4/1) 4:3 Perfect 4 th 1.3333… 3 rd Harmonic 2 nd Overtone 3f (3/1) 3:2 Perfect 5 th 1.5 2 nd Harmonic 1 st Overtone 2f (2/1) 2:1 Octave 2 Fundamental Fundamental Frequency (1/1) 1:1 Unison 1 Table 1-2. First ten harmonic of the harmonic series compared to overtones, frequency multiples, ratios, intervals, and decimal values. The table above shows a comparison and correspondence between harmonics, overtones, frequency multiples, ratios derived from a monochord and reduced within an octave, common practice intervals, and decimal equivalents. The decimal equivalents to intervals, which can be obtained by dividing the larger number of a ratio by the smaller, are provided as another way to judge the size of an interval. They also show the placement of a pitch within an octave by showing its value between 1 and 2. A further advantage of decimals is that they reveal some ratios to be more ‘rational’ than others. For instance, both the 2:1 and the 3:2 are more solid than the 4:3. There are several other notable observations that can be made from this table as well. One is that dividing a string on a monochord can bring forth all of the intervals found in Western music, although not tempered. There are some intervals yet to be discovered in this table, such as the minor second (16:15—among other possibilities), while others are reciprocals of those presented. It is also evident from this table that harmonics and overtones are multiples of the source frequency (f, 2f, 3f, 4f, etc.), and that each sequential whole number multiplied by the source produces a new harmonic and overtone. And finally, the table shows that 22 ratios comprised of successive integers (e.g., 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, etc.), known as superparticular ratios, produce a variety of pitches that Western mainstream music does not use. 29 With only the first ten ratios we have a choice of two minor thirds and two whole tones. Thus, the pitches obtained using superparticular ratios are inherently microtonal by Western standards. Figure 1-8. Example pitches of the first four harmonics from A2, which are analogous to divisions on a monochord from the same source tone. The Physics of Tonality Partch used a microtonal scale of forty-three tones in his tuning system, and these tones were separated in his theory into primary and secondary ratios. The primary ratios were superparticular ratios derived from the first eleven integers. The secondary ratios were used to fill in some of the larger gaps in the scale, and were obtained either by selecting ratios derived from integers larger than eleven, or by multiplying primary intervals together. His decision to stop at the number eleven for the primary ratios, referred to as the “eleven limit”, was pragmatic, but Partch also explained that it was a personal decision. 30 From a harmonic standpoint, the five limit used in twelve-tone equal temperament allows for triadic harmony (1:1, 5:4, 3:2 in its prime form). By adding 7, 9, and 11, a new upper triad is possible, creating new tonal possibilities. Partch’s tuning system was designed to expand the boundary of consonant tones. This, in turn, provided 23 more chromatic potential, and allowed more variety for working within tonality rather than outside of it. This is a crucial but often overlooked point: that microtonal music can be tonal music; and that Partch’s tuning system, which was grounded on the idea that all tones manifest proportionately from 1:1, was an extreme example of a tonal system. For Partch, the use of just intonation to develop Western music was an alternative to other contemporaneous attempts to resolve the modern crisis of tonality. While other composers were attempting to expand the acceptance of dissonance, Partch placed his efforts in expanding the realm of consonance. “It is not necessary”, he said, “to assume antimusic or nonmusic attitudes. It is not necessary to resort to noise or nonrhythmic music, or even excessive dissonance to achieve dynamism in creative art.” 31 His solution was further meaningful for him because of its historic precedent. Although the first use of just intonation is untraceable, an early documentation of its use can be found in Ptolemy’s Concerning Harmonics. Ptolemy’s work provided a comprehensive anthology of Greek musical scales, and showed that the Pythagorean method of obtaining existing scales could also be used to develop new scales. Ptolemy’s main contribution to just intonation was a scale he attributed to Didymos that made use of the natural major third (5:4). This scale, the Diatonic Syntonon (or sometimes Syntonic Diatonic) has since become a definitive just scale from which others are developed: 1:1, 9:8, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, 5:3, 15:8, 2:1. 32 The scale is one of hundreds that Ptolemy surveyed, and there is no indication that he believed it to be preferable to others. It is clear, however, that Ptolemy stressed the superiority of superparticular ratios, and that it was preferable to use the smallest number ratios possible in any scale. The 5:3 and 15:8 in the 24 Diatonic Syntonon example are actually reciprocals of the superparticlar ratios 6:5 and 16:15. Partch, like Ptolemy, used 16:15 as a secondary ratio since it is outside the eleven limit. Partch also cited Ptolemy as presenting the ratios within the eleven limit as a “body” of tones, and therefore justifying a theoretical delineation around ratios within the eleven limit. 33 Understood as a tonal “body”, Partch’s primary ratios provide a tonal basis for his concept of corporeality. Corporealism in Partch’s theory, instrumental design, theatrical staging and music will be presented more fully in chapter three. Noteworthy here is Partch’s method for justifying his theory, which he might have learned from Helmholtz. Classical humanism is a frequent theme in Partch’s writings, and he also turned to Ptolemy and Pythagoras to support his use of just intonation and ratio notation. Partch’s love of Classical literature began when he was a boy, so when he discovered Classical harmonic theory it made a lasting impression on him. 34 Among the key concepts that Partch embraced was the significance of numbers. It has not been shown that there was any numerological significance within Partch’s process for composing music, but in his writings he did hold close to the idea that numbers could embody ideas. In terms of his harmonic theory, one of his most basic tenets is that musical tones do not exist on their own. 35 Rather, musical tones are always heard in relation to other tones. And since tones can be expressed as numbers, the use of ratios, that represent a relationship between two numbers becomes paramount for revealing tonal relationships. In a lecture that discussed his use of just intonation Partch stated that “the only clear, logical, rational terms are numbers, the 25 relationships of numbers—that is, frequency ratios, or the relations of parts of sounding bodies.” 36 Ptolemy supported Pythagoras’s assertion about why 2:1, 3:2 and 4:3, later understood as the most radical intervals of the harmonic series, were the structural pillars in the musical scales he collected. He attributed this status to the sheer simplicity of the proportions. This notion has endured because it appeals to our intuition while being empirically grounded at the same time. There is no challenge in demonstrating that complexity increases as the multiples of the source increase, and that we can quickly exhaust our perceptual capacity by such increases. Since tones are essentially very fast rhythms, simply tapping the proportions with one hand against the other will make this clear. Two taps of one hand, against one tap of the other, can be performed by children. Three against two, and four against three, are more difficult, but still possible by young musicians. Yet with five against four, and six against five, we are already at an advanced performance level. Even the most rhythmically-minded composers would be hesitant to venture too far in this direction lest their work be unplayable (although some most certainly have). Furthermore, if a composition does call for, say, ten against nine, it is unlikely that the audience will be able to perceive it precisely as such. Ostensibly all forms of musical complexity run the risk of crossing human perceptual and cognitive boundaries. The human mind does have a penchant for complexity, but mainly because complexity begs for analysis. When encountering complicated information the human response is to isolate it, break it apart, categorize its components, and reduce them to their smallest identifiable units, and then build it all back up again. Just as with complex ideas, 26 the perception of complex tones (in actuality, all musical tones) involves a sort of Fourier analysis by the inner ear. 37 Upon hearing them, complex tones are immediately taken apart and reduced to simple tones. The final interpretive work requires placing each musical tone that is sensed into a meaningful relationship to the others. Perceiving music, according to Robert Jourdain, is an act of modeling these relationships between tones. You’ll never see a goldfish twitching in time to a waltz, because it is not a waltz’s notes, but rather the relations between the notes, that make a body want to dance. It’s these relations—intangible, resistant to observation, difficult to describe and classify—that are music, not the atmospheric vibrations that jiggle out of musical instruments. 38 A static analogy of this perceptual process is a musical scale. Developing a musical scale requires isolating a manageable subset of tones out of infinite tonal space, and then creating meaningful relations between these tones in order to create a set of musical resources. 39 A subset of tones can be theoretically determined, as with equal temperament, or it can manifest according to the pure tonal relations that resonate according to the harmonic series, as with just intonation. It was the theoretical advantages that most intrigued Pythagoras about musical ratios; his interest being more metaphysical than musicological. 40 It is both fascinating and telling that a core principle of Western music theory, the circle of fifths, and a related tuning technique that predominated in ecclesiastical music until the Renaissance, were both predicated on a kind of numerological mysticism. Very little is known about Pythagoras, and he left us no texts. Yet we do know that he had considerable influence, and that he was deified by his followers. Rather than attempt to decipher between the historical and mythological Pythagoras in the records that do exist, it is preferable to speak 27 rather of the Pythagorean School. The Pythagoreans even held political power in some regions, however, documents show that they were not always in favor. 41 Pythagoreans believed that the cosmos (literally, the order of the universe) was a unity bound together by a divine coordination, and that the key to understand this structuring was through an interplay of numbers. According to this view, number made chaos more tangible by delineating conceivable units, and by defining limits. Not only the universe, but politics, matters of justice, even the human soul could be rationalized with the aid of numbers. In Metaphysics, Aristotle wrote: …the people called the ‘Pythagoreans’ took up mathematics, and were the first to advance this science; and having been reared on it, they thought that its principles were the principles of all things. Since of these it is the numbers that are by nature first…all other things seemed to have been framed, in the whole of their nature, in the likeness of the numbers, and of all nature the numbers seemed to be first, they supposed that the elements of the numbers are the elements of all things, and that the whole heaven is a harmonia and a number. 42 Aristotle’s tone is slightly judgmental here, and he even pointed out in a later passage that the Pythagoreans were not above manipulating the numbers in order to maintain consistency in their cosmology. Nevertheless, he provides us with an exceptional description of Pythagorean thought. Harmonia, strictly speaking, was a tuning system associated with a specific character, but Aristotle uses the term here more broadly. When used outside of a musical context in ancient Greece, harmonia referred to a ‘fitting together’ by the adjustment of one thing to another; i.e., an attunement. 43 And since all things were expressible in numbers for the Pythagoreans, any such fitting together of disparate things would have been represented by a numerical ratio. Musical ratios were cited as a paradigm of this world order, which is apparent in the notion of ‘heaven as 28 harmonia’, later expressed as the ‘music of the spheres’. Yet the elaborate explications of the universe’s harmonic laws that later resounded in the theories of Kepler and others were stated more plainly by the Pythagoreans. In the few extant fragments of the Pythagorean Philolaus it is described this way: Nature in the universe was harmonized from unlimiteds and limiters, both the whole universe and all things in it [fragment 1]. Harmonia comes to be in all respects out of opposites: for harmonia is a unification of things multiply mixed, and an agreement of things that disagree [fragment 10]. Things that were unalike and not of the same race nor equal in rank, for such things it was necessary to have been locked together by harmonia, if they were to be held in the cosmos [fragment 6]. 44 All things, physical and metaphysical, were describable for Philolaus in terms of their ability to be limited. We learn from Aristotle that the Pythagoreans attributed the even numbers to unlimited qualities, and the odd numbers to limited qualities. 45 Since evens and odds evidently did not inherently cohere, a structuring principle was posited to exist that harmonized them together. This structuring principle formed the universe out of primordial chaos, and was presumed essential for maintaining it. Most musical ratios are comprised of one even and one odd number; a notable exception being 1:1. The number one was considered both odd and even, and appeared in both categories because it was the source of each. Although the number 1 was a special number for the Pythagoreans, it was the number 10 that was considered perfect. Perhaps the most profound link between Pythagorean metaphysics and musical ratios was represented in the 4 of the 10, or the tetraktys of the decad. A tetraktys could be any coordinated set of four items, but this particular set was considered the first, and served as 29 a foundation for Pythagorean belief. Represented as a perfect triangle, the tetraktys of the decad visually depicted how the first four integers are contained within the ten. Figure 1-9. Pythagorean tetraktys of the decad. The importance of this structure for the Pythagoreans, and its tie to musical structure, was stated clearly by Sextus Empiricus. …by ‘tetraktys’ they mean a number which, being constituted out of the first four numbers, fits together the most perfect number…for one and two and three and four becomes ten. This number is the first tetraktys, and is described as the ‘fount of ever-flowing nature’ in as much as the whole universe is organized on the basis of these numbers according to harmonia; and harmonia is a systema of three concords, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave; and the proportions of these concords are found in the four numbers previously mentioned… 46 The implication of this passage is that four ratios (1:1, and the three concords) represented the most important intervals in the music of the time. The number 4 also held special significance, as is evident in the use of tetraktys, as well as with the preferred method of building scales from tetrachords. Yet, the 4:3 was not used in Pythagorean tuning, and might have only been included because it is the reciprocal of 3:2, and—of course— because it was needed to make 10. 47 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 1 + 30 Pythagorean tuning requires only two intervals: the 2:1 and the 3:2. With only these two intervals it is possible to tune a twelve-tone chromatic scale. The tuning process involves stacking twelve 3:2s on top of one another, and requires seven 2:1s. 531441:4096 octave VII C 177147:2048 octave VI E#(F) 59049:1024 octave V A# 19683:512 octave V D# 6561:256 octave IV G# 2187:128 octave IV C# 729:64 octave III F# 243:32 octave II B 81:16 octave II E 27:8 octave I A 9:4 octave I D 3:2 initial octave G 1:1 initial octave C Table 1-3. Stacking of fifths up seven octaves; example from C. Again, a musical scale can be created by reducing the resulting tones down within a single octave, and then placing them in scale order. The scale can be generated mathematically by multiplying 3:2s, and then dividing the resulting tone from the appropriate amount of 2:1s. For example, [1:1 x 3:2 = 3:2], [3:2 x 3:2 = 9:4], [9:4 x 3:2 = 27: 8], [27:8 x 3:2 = 81:16], and so on. The 9:4 and 27:8 are already in the 2:1 above the initial 2:1, so they must be lowered [9:4 ÷ 2:1 = 9:4 x 1:2 = 9:8] (a major whole tone); and [27:8 ÷ 2:1 = 27:8 x 1:2 = 27:16] (a major sixth). The next tone, 81:16 is in the second 2:1 above the initial 2:1, so it must be lowered by 4:1 [81:16 ÷ 4:1 = 81:16 x 1:4 = 81: 64] (a major third), and so on. 31 2:1 Octave 243:128 major seventh 16:9 minor seventh 27:16 major sixth 128:81 minor sixth 3:2 perfect fifth 1024:729 diminished fifth 729:512 augmented fourth 4:3 perfect fourth 81:64 major third 32:27 minor third 9:8 Major second 256:243 minor second 1:1 Prime Table 1-4. Pythagorean twelve-tone scale. 48 The technique of tuning by a series of perfect fifths is very ancient, and Pythagoras is believed to have appropriated it from either Egyptian or Near Eastern practice. 49 Therefore it is historically inaccurate to attribute Pythagorean tuning to the Pythagoreans themselves. The Pythagoreans were drawn to it partly because of its ancient mystique, but also for pragmatic reasons. Above all, tuning by stacking 3:2s yields the highest results from the simplest of whole integers. For example, stacking 2:1s results only in other octaves, and stacking 5:4s results in only three tones per octave (e.g., A-C#-F-A). Because of its usefulness Boethius was still perpetuating Pythagorean tuning techniques in the 6 th century, and it was likely the predominant tuning for the early music of the Catholic Church. 50 Certain instruments, notably unfretted string instruments, tend toward Pythagorean tuning as well. It was not until the increasing importance of thirds and sixths in the fauxbourdon style that there was any need to challenge this method of tuning. The necessity of such challenges, incidentally, revealed a contradiction in Pythagorean tuning: the thirds and sixths that this method produce are not in their purest form. 32 This fact points to a significant difference between Pythagorean tuning and just intonation. The Pythagoreans laid the ground work for just intonation by revealing the mathematical simplicity of the consonant intervals. Pythagorean tuning employs only pure (untempered) intervals, and thus it is a species of just tuning. Yet, due to its reliance on the technique of tuning by fifths, not all of the intervals it produces are in the simplest harmonic proportions. Perhaps most important for Renaissance theorists, was that the Pythagorean emphasis on the fifth compromised its thirds. In accord with the superparticular proportions of the monochord one would expect the Pythagorean third to be 5:4 for major, and 6:5 for minor. Instead we find 81:64, and 32:27 respectively. Although these are perfectly just intervals, just intonation strives not only for acoustical purity, but also for harmonic simplicity. 51 This is particularly the case with diatonic tones. And with even more specificity, a typical just scale will always contain both a just 3:2 and a just 5:4. 52 The problem the Pythagoreans neglected to solve was how to include both. For tuning by pure 3:2s does not result in pure 5:4s, and tuning by pure 5:4s does not result in pure 3:2s. This problem arises because harmonics are, in a sense, nontransferable, and this caused another problem for the Pythagorean technique. The seven-octave stack of 3:2s has been called the Pythagorean Circle because it eventually returns to the initial pitch in a higher octave, but in truth it is not a closed system. One would expect that if twelve 3:2’s traverse seven octaves, the final tone should be in a 7:7 relationship to the 1:1. Much to the dismay of the Pythagoreans, the thirteenth 3:2 above 1:1 was slightly off by a distance of 531441:524288 (approximately 74:73); a proportion known as the Pythagorean comma. 53 33 Much of the history of tuning theory can be traced back to these problems. The multitude of tunings and temperaments put forward since the Renaissance can be viewed as alternative solutions either to rationalizing thirds and fifths within one system, or to eliminating the Pythagorean comma. The sixteenth-century Chinese Prince Chu Tsai-Yü not only resolved the Pythagorean comma by reducing a 3:2 of 750:500 to 749:500, but also proposed the notion of using twelve equal-sized intervals. 54 His motivation was partly based on the tradition of associating each of the twelve months with a discrete pitch. To be sure, a single historical source for musical temperament cannot be identified, and furthermore the tendency to temper appears to be a typical aspect of human reasoning. Interestingly, it was also in the sixteenth century that Pope Gregory XIII proposed a calendar reform that would immediately eliminate ten days from the year 1582. For many, the reaction to this temperament of time was similar to the reaction to the temperament of tone. In both cases it was viewed as being against the natural order, or against God’s plan. In rebuttal Isaac Newton wrote in his Treatise on Musical Temperament, “tis unworthy of philosophers to contrive of the corrupting of the true proportions”. The debates that ensued were focused on the implication that arose of an imperfect (irrational, or unlimited) quality of the universe. Clearly, to describe the universe as perfect is anthropocentric, for nature is expansive and open, while human logic strives toward standardized metrics and closed loops. In this sense one could state that just intonation is a more natural system, while equal temperament is a more human system. Yet, such a statement is ultimately illogical in the fact that humans are part of nature. For the purpose 34 of understanding Partch’s use of just intonation, one only needs to accept the idea that it is not necessary to limit a musical culture to one system or another. From his perspective, although the arithmetical and geometrical formulas established to temper harmony are a testament to human ingenuity, the authority of tempered harmony over just intonation should be questioned. A bone flute discovered in Slovenia and dating from somewhere between forty to eighty thousand years old, for instance, provides support for the idea that early musicians made use of just scales. 55 Of course, it is reasonable to assume that the limitations of the materials played an equally important role in determining the scale that this Neanderthal flute produced. In other words the holes could only be made so close, and hence the intervals could only be so small. It is likely that the instrument maker did attempt to match some preferred tones, but even if this was not the case, the more systematic the placement of the finger holes, the better sound the instrument would have produced. The simplest interval to place visually would have been the octave since the finger hole for this interval would have fallen neatly in the middle of the tube. This interval is also arguably the easiest interval to tune by ear. It has been suggested that intervals are easier to tune if they fall lower in the harmonic series, and if this is so we would expect the fifth and fourth to follow the octave. 56 The 3:2 (one third from the end of the flute) and the 4:3 (one fourth from the end) would have also been the next easiest placements to find visually. At this early stage in musical instrument making there would have been no reason to attempt to make all the intervals an equal distance apart. This is particularly true since tuning a pure interval, either by ear or by sight, is far easier than tuning a tempered 35 interval. For tempered intervals a visual method would have required an extremely precise metric, and an auditory method would have required the counting of beats. Beats, which are rhythmic pulses that result when the overtones of two tones are not harmonic, fall away as the interval becomes justly tuned. Using just intonation the instrument maker would only need to test for a lack of beats to know that the instrument was in tune. From a purely practical standpoint then, there is a basis for the proposition that early instruments were tuned in just, and that using simple ratios has obvious advantages. Such a claim suggests that just intonation predates equal temperament regardless of whether or not it can be said to be more natural. Partch’s Political Agenda: Liberating Intuition The benefit of equal temperament for composers in building complex inter- relations between keys has inspired the common repertoire as we know it today. According to David Dotty, however, the result of its use led to a crisis in the twentieth century. Like a plant stimulated by chemical fertilizers and growth hormones, music based on equal temperament grew rapidly and luxuriously for a short period—then collapsed. If equal temperament played a prominent role in stimulating the growth of harmonic music in the common-practice era, it played an equally large part in its rapid demise as a vital compositional style. Twelve-tone equal temperament is a limited and closed system. Once you’ve modulated around the so-called circle of fifths, through its twelve major and minor keys, and once you have stacked up every combination of tones that can reasonably be considered a chord, there is nowhere left to go in search of new resources. 57 Dotty and other composers who use just intonation have pointed to benefits such as superior consonances, greater variety of both consonance and dissonance, expanded 36 tonality and the opportunity for the emergence of new musical styles. The significance of common-practice music, both in terms of its volume and the historical importance of many of the works within it, is perhaps the greatest reason for equal temperament’s continued use. Indeed, if a composer wishes to compose music in just intonation he or she is presented with a number of problems. The composer can choose to write differently-sized intervals for Western instruments, but this is extremely difficult for performers after years of exercising equal-tempered intervals. Alternatively, the composer could compose for non-Western instruments, but in doing so the composer must manage the cultural expectations these instruments carry with them from their culture of origin. Or finally, the composer could build, compose for, and train musicians to perform on a new set of instruments. This last seemingly insurmountable option was the path chosen by Harry Partch. Partch’s use of just intonation must be understood in the larger context of what he was trying to achieve artistically. In the simplest of explanations, Partch used just intonation because it allowed him to compose for intoned voice, which helped to create the dramatic effect he was trying to achieve in his music. To accompany the voice in his music Partch needed instruments to play the forty-three-tone just scale he developed. Over the course of his career he designed and built some forty unique instruments. His first successful instrument was the Adapted Viola; a viola to which he attached a cello neck in 1928. 58 Beginning with King Oedipus, Partch’s first theatrical production, his instruments began to appear onstage as part of the set design. Such staging was used in all of Partch’s theatrical works, and as a result, the musicians were more easily integrated 37 into the drama as actors, singers, and dancers. 59 Thus, for Partch, the idea to use just intonation was embedded within a matrix of ideas that served a broader goal. All of these devices, his integration of drama with music and dance, his use of invented instruments tuned to just intonation, his forty-three tone scale, his use of intoned voice, as well as his reliance on percussive techniques, and settings of plots inspired by ritualistic practices, were tools for Partch. He used these tools to create his musical vision, which was clearly not a common vision, nor was it apolitical. Partch’s theory and aesthetics can ultimately be traced back to a specific a problem; an insular and inflexible opposition to tuning alternatives in Western art music during the twentieth century. Indianist and exotic-inspired compositions of his era notwithstanding, Partch believed that our musical culture was too rigid at the time to allow alternative systems to coexist. This rigidity was due mainly to the inflexibility of equal temperament, but it was also informed by two other related factors. One of these factors was the monolithic status of common-practice music. It was not that Partch rejected the Western tradition, but rather that he felt it should be revered “dynamically”. 60 He vehemently upheld that tradition should be under constant review in order to verify its continued relevance. In a pointed comparison to religious prescription, Partch explained that his musical “heresy” 61 was due to the fact that most musicians treated equal temperament as if it was “handed out of the clouds of Mount Sinai”. 62 Therefore any important music created using that system was sacrosanct. In Partch’s view of Western music history the church played a significant role in determining the restrictive nature of modern music, but so did court music, and all of this was kept afloat but commercial 38 interest. He described his era as an “interpretive age” that strove for the accurate representation of (usually historic) compositions over the individual creativity of the performer. We accept without even a gesture of investigation any instrument, any scale, any asinine nomenclature, any rules—stated or implied—found in the safety-deposit boxes of various eighteenth-century Germanic gentleman whom we and our immediate ancestors have been dragooned into idolizing. And we permit an industrialization of music on the basis of such parlous degeneracy: issuance of interpretation upon interpretation of the accepted limited repertory by the record companies; facture on an assembly line of the accepted musical instruments— required by that accepted repertory—by other companies; the publishing of the music of that accepted repertory—for the same accepted instruments in whatever asinine notation and implied nomenclature they require—by still other companies, and so on, perennially sporting a bloom of pride over the magnificent spread of our culture. 63 Another motivating factor Partch’s critical perspective revolved around music education, and particularly the teaching of music in academia. He felt strongly that creativity was stifled in education at every turn: for composers by the emphasis on the imitation of historic styles, and for performers by the emphasis on virtuosic proficiency. Beyond this, he complained, creativity was even further restrained by academic specialization. Partch suspected that academic specialization sprung from the interest of faculty who were themselves products of specialized training, and who maintained their positions by ensuring clear demarcations between departments. 64 Much like Helmholtz, Partch called for an interdisciplinary approach not only in the arts, but in all areas of study. Partch also viewed the formal training of musicologist as nearly antithetical to what was needed for truly creative research. He felt the years spent making sense of complex historical developments, as well as learning the procedures of musical analysis, required a 39 commitment that could not afford one to broaden his or her scope to investigate alternative musical systems. And for Partch, musicology’s use of abstract symbols and words to explicate musical action was far from innocent. Although the intention could be described as the preservation of music, to his way of thinking the extant explanatory texts on music from the earliest records of history revealed another story. In fact, according to Partch, what tends to happen is that the preservation intention initiates a process where texts about music take on a special status of their own. In what he called an “apotheosis” of the text, ultimately texts about music become more important than the music itself. 65 He substantiated this by pointing to numerous texts on music by Aristotle, Plato, and Aristoxenus, while very few fragments of music from their times have actually survived. Partch did rely heavily on the historical record in developing his theory, and it can even be argued that he attempted to present himself as an academic in some of his writings. Yet, he remained outspoken and cynical about academic music pedagogy throughout his life. His approach to the study of music was marked by his insistence that academic knowledge differs from truth. Truth, for Partch, was both personal and timeless, and could only become known through experience and intuitive understanding. 66 It was largely by his intuitive approach that Partch was able to relate with musical ideas beyond his own culture and era, and in turn, his output cannot be explained solely in that context either. “I care even more”, he wrote, “for the divination of an ancient spirit of which I know nothing. To encompass—at least intuitively—thousands of years of man’s sensitivity to his world is to rise above the merely encyclopedic.” 67 In terms of his emphasis on experience, he wanted to study music at its deepest levels. The two 40 “comparative constants” of music, as Partch called them, are the capability of a body to produce sound, and the capability of a body to perceive sound. All other elements of music (scales, tuning systems, styles, and so on) are cultural byproducts, and thus susceptible to continuous development. By coming to terms with its physical nature, and using this experience to develop new musical ideas, Partch believed one could produce a truth that was individually meaningful. 68 To accomplish this, Partch looked to both ancient and non-Western traditions for inspiration. His interest in non-Western musics was instilled upon him at a young age from his parents, who had been missionaries in China. Both his parents spoke Mandarin, and his mother would sing him Chinese lullabies while accompanying herself on their reed organ. Later his parents purchased Edison cylinders of Hebrew chants, Congo dances, and Cantonese opera. 69 All of these musics had a lasting effect on Partch. One of his earliest works Two Psalms (1931), “The Lord is my Shepherd” and “By the Rivers of Babylon”, composed for intoned voice and Adapted Viola, was based on the spoken inflections of a cantor. It is likely that his experiences attending Chinese operas as a young man in San Francisco helped him to realize his recreation of the ancient Greek dramas. His early attempt to do this with King Oedipus infused epic poetry and music according to the ancient aesthetic that did not strictly differentiate between these two elements. In his later works he also included dance. King Oedipus was rewritten between 1952-1954 as Oedipus—Dance-Drama, and this was followed by The Bewitched—a Dance Satire (1955), Revelation in the Courthouse Park—After The Bacchae of 41 Euripides (1960), and his monumental Delusion of the Fury—a Ritual of Dream and Delusion (1963-1966). In all of these works Partch strove to tap into something eternal. He noted the existence of rituals past and present, around the world that made use of music, dance, and drama simultaneously and interchangeably. The combination was obviously powerful, but according to Partch Western music had forgotten this ancient practice. To reinstate this practice, however, he needed not only to erase the arbitrary distinction between music, dance, and drama, but also to return to the use of “infinitely varied melodic and harmonic subtlety”. 70 Just intonation was thus a key aspect of Partch’s project to transcend his own era, an effort he believed was a primary obligation of the artist. What made just intonation so attractive was that it was both an expression of the harmonic series that revealed a connection to our physical being, and a system used by historically and culturally diverse groups. He wrote: Traditions in music do not begin with recent European centuries. They begin with the human race, in the deepest wells of wisdom. Knowing this, and knowing it deeply, I am incapable of discussing my particular direction in the arts as though it had a relationship only to the contemporary scene in music. There are two essential [relationships]: first, our world, this time and place, in every way that my experience has touched it; second, ancient usages and traditions as they concern my privilege as an individual… Ours is a time of scientific magic, and it would be great if one could say that insight is its invariable companion. But only in art—if it is truly art—is insight automatic. Art-magic is something that we desperately need to replumb. 71 This passage and others similar to it clarify the fact that Partch’s use of just intonation was purposeful. It was decidedly not the result of an attempt to be original, or to create a movement for other composers to follow. 72 It was, instead, an attempt to be 42 individual, and to show that alternative musical systems can—and should—co-exist. Partch would not have been satisfied to see just intonation usurp the authority of equal temperament, even though he himself deemed it to be a superior system. Sincere to his sentiments, he expected his musical system to be subject to critical review, just as he called for the scrutiny of equal temperament. Through his attack on our single-system musical culture, what Partch was ultimately challenging was the limitations it placed upon individual creativity. The technical capability required to enter music school, even today, suggests that one cannot aspire to be a musician unless he or she accepts the dominant system from a very early age. Only then will the young musician be recognized by the authorities against the established standards of talent. Partch believed that humans are inherently creative, and that we cannot ignore this basic aspect of our nature. 73 To ignore it, is to suppress it, and Partch’s work is a fervent revolt against any attempt to place limits on individual expression. Furthermore, the aim of expression is communication; communication of one’s individuality in the hope that it will be intuitively understood by others. The importance Partch placed on individuality, then, should be understood in terms of its social implications. “There is an abiding tie”, he said, “with peoples removed both in time and space”. 74 Without understanding of human experience there is nothing. No interpretation, therefore no communication. No at-oneness, therefore no universality. We may work, as artists and creators, toward originality and individuality. Yet we must know that this is not a goal, that it must simply be inevitable and incidental, because—in a true biological sense—each of us is an original and individual being. Death alone, however we may interpret it, is evidence enough... 75 43 An important characteristic of just intonation is that a composer can create an individualized scale from the infinite space of tone. Therefore, it was essential for Partch to make use of it to underpin his phenomenological and political ideals at the same time. He struggled with the epithet of ‘microtonal composer’ throughout his career, despite his frequent attempts to state that it was not the sum total of his artistic purpose. 76 Understanding just intonation is key to making sense of Partch’s system, and to making sense of the sounds that are encountered in his music. But Partch himself stated that his theory eventually became “tedious” for him, and was far less meaningful than the musical experiences he created using it. 77 Above all, Partch’s art provides an example of politically charged works that delivered their message nonverbally. His message, in fact, was incorporated into the performance of each piece. 44 CHAPTER ONE ENDNOTES 1. Stuart Isacoff, Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization (New York: Vintage, 2001) 238. It should be noted, however, that Isacoff also refers to Partch as a mediocre composer. 2. W. A. Mathieu, Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1997) 2. 3. Two notable exceptions are Bitter Music (1935-1940) for spoken word/intoned voice and piano accompaniment; and My Heart Keeps Beating Time (1929), a popular song for voice and piano that Partch published under the pseudo name Paul Pirate. 4. Stuart Iasacoff, Temperament, 4. “…for hundreds of years, suggestions that our modern system be used were taken as a call to battle: musicians, craftsman, church officials, heads of state, and philosophers fought heatedly against the introduction of this ‘equal temperament’ tuning as something both unnatural and ugly.” 5. J. Murray Barbour. Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2004) x. 6. W. A. Mathieu, Harmonic Experience, 5. “..the rules of music—including the rules of counterpoint and harmony—were not formed in our brains but in the resonance chambers of our bodies. What feels right is what survives. The “rules,” codified over many generations by musicians serving as teachers, arise to protect and disseminate the good vibrations. But every rule and formulation ever made burns away at the moment of music making.” 7. Rudolf Rasch and Reinier Plomp, “The Perceptions of Musical Tones” in The Psychology of Music, edited by Diana Deutsch, (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999) 108. 8. Stuart Iasacoff, Temperament, 217. 9. Harry Partch, Genesis, vi-vii. 10. Harry Partch, “Patterns of Music” [1940] in Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, edited with an introduction by Thomas McGeary, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000) 159-160. 11. Harry Partch, “Monoliths in Music” in Bitter Music, 195: “Quarter tones would not give us acoustic intervals. As far as I can see, they would only provide material for a twenty-four tone row”. See also: Read, Gardner. 20th-Century Microtonal Notation, New York: Greenwood Press, 1990 45 12. Harry Partch, Genesis, 364. 13. Harry Partch, “Patterns of Music” [1940] in Bitter Music, 160. 14. Robert Jourdain, Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination (New York: Quill, 1997) 6. 15. Ian Johnston, Measured Tones: The Interplay of Physics and Music (Bristol: Institute of Physics, 2002) 33. Frequency measures pitch by the number of periods (or complete vibration cycles) per second. In 1960 the Système Internationale established “hertz” as the unit of measurement after the German scientist who discovered how to generate radio waves. It is typically shortened to Hz, as in 440 Hz. 16. John H. Chalmers, Jr., Divisions of the Tetrachord: A Prolegomenon to the Construction of Musical Scales (Hanover, New Hampshire: Frog Peak Music, 1993) 7. 17. Ian Johnston, Measured Tones, 4. 18. There is evidence to suggest that the choice between five or seven pitches for musical scales is not arbitrary. See: George A. Miller, “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Information,” Psychological Review 63 (1956), 81-96. 19. W. A. Mathieu, Harmonic Experience, 95. 20. Ian Johnston, Measured Tones, 44. 21. W. A. Mathieu, Harmonic Experience, 42. “The perfect fourth [from the generating tone] does not appear in the overtone series—even if you ascend to the millionth overtone. Its not there, even though it is found in nearly every musical culture. So where does it come from?” 22. This process is typically explained as subtracting the ratio from the upper octave, however, both subtraction and division of ratios can be accomplished with the same process. See: David B. Doty, Just Intonation Primer: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Just Intonation (San Francisco: Just Intonation Network, 2002) 23. 23. John H. Chalmers, Jr., Divisions of the Tetrachord, 5. 24. W. A. Mathieu, Harmonic Experience, 44. 25. Ian Johnston, Measured Tones, 97. 46 26. Rudolf Rasch and Reinier Plomp, “The Perceptions of Musical Tones” in The Psychology of Music, 92. 27. Ibid., 98. 28. This fact is well-known among tuners, and is more prominent with poor quality instruments. See: Owen Jorgensen, Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear (Marquette: Northern Michigan University) 421. 29. J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament, x. 30. Harry Partch, Genesis, 123. See also p. 125: “To chain oneself, as a creator—to impose limitations within which to work—is a legitimate exercise of personal freedom; to be forced to endure such limitations because of a conspiracy of factors quite beyond the ordinary creator’s control is a musical horse of another color”. 31. Harry Partch, “Monoliths in Music” [1966] in Bitter Music, 195. 32. J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament, 2. 33. Harry Partch, Genesis, 127. 34. Harry Partch, Genesis, viii. 35. Harry Partch, Genesis, 86. 36. Harry Partch, “A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations” [1967] in Bitter Music, 197. 37. Rudolf Rasch and Reinier Plomp, “The Perception of Musical Tones” in The Psychology of Music, edited by Diana Deutsch, second edition (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999) 92. 38. Robert Jourdain, Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy, 4. 39.. William A. Sethares, Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale (London: Springer-Verlag, 1998) 41. Although tonal space is infinite, experimental research on just noticeable difference (JND) suggests that under laboratory conditions humans can only hear differences as small as 2-3 hundredths of a semitone. This still results in hundreds of potential tones per octave. 40. Andrew Barker, editor, Greek Musical Writings, Volume II, Harmonic and Acoustic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 29. 47 41. Ibid, 28. An uprising at Croton, for example, is well documented. 42. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 985b23ff, cited in Greek Musical Writings, Volume II, 33. 43. Andrew Barker, editor, Greek Musical Writings, Volume I, The Musician and his Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 163. 44. Andrew Barker, editor, Greek Musical Writings, Volume II, 36-38. 45. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 986a15, cited in Greek Musical Writings, Volume II, 33. 46. Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., vii. 94-5, cited in Greek Musical Writings, Volume II, 30. 47. Aristotle wrote that the Pythagoreans imagined a “counter-earth”, since there were only nine visible heavenly bodies, but ten were needed for a perfect universe. See the full passage in Metaphysics cited above. 48. Michael Hewitt, The Tonal Phoenix: A Study of Tonal Progression through the Prime Numbers Three, Five and Seven (Bonn: Orpheus-Verlag GmbH, 2000) 69. 49. John H. Chalmers, Jr., Divisions of the Tetrachord, 5. 50. Anicus Manlius Serverinus Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, translated by Calvin M. Bower, edited by Claude V. Palisca (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) 17. “The Pythagoreans estimate consonances themselves with the ear, but they do not entrust the distances by which consonances differ among themselves to the ears, whose judgment is indecisive. They delegate the determination of distances to rules and reason—as though the senses were something submissive and a servant, while reason is a judge and carries authority. Although basic elements of almost every discipline—and of life itself are introduced through the impression of senses, nevertheless there is no certain judgment, no comprehension of truth, in these if the arbitration of reason is lacking” 51. David B. Doty, Just Intonation Primer: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Just Intonation, third edition (San Francisco: Just Intonation Network, 2002) 1. See also: W. A. Mathieu, Harmonic Experience, 29. 52. J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament, 2. 53. J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament, ix. 54. Stuart Iasacoff, Temperament, 163-170. Prince Chu’s 1584 treatise was called, “A New Account of the Science of Pitch Pipes”. 48 55. William Thomson, “From Sounds to Music: The Contextualization of Pitch,” Music Perception 21:3 (2004) 431. 56. Owen Jorgensen, Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear, 23. 57. David B. Doty, Just Intonation Primer, 5. 58. A chronology of Partch’s instruments can be found in “Appendix VI” of Genesis, 488- 491. 59. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch: a Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 201. Partch collaborated with theatre director Arch Lauterer at Mill College to produce King Oedipus in 1952. It was Lauterer who had the idea to put the instruments onstage, and the idea resonated perfectly with Partch. 60. Harry Partch, Genesis, xv-xvii: “…tradition in the creative arts are per se suspect. For they exist on the patrimony of standardization, which means degeneration. They dominate because they are to the interest of some group that has the power to perpetuate them, and they cease to dominate when some equally powerful group undertakes to bend them to a new pattern…the later history of Western music is of one system, one philosophy, and one attitude. The prevailing attitude is a symptom, a danger signal, or possible decay…” 61. Harry Partch, “Patterns of Music” [1940] in Bitter Music, 160. 62. Harry Partch, “Bach and Temperament” [1941] in Bitter Music, 162. 63. Harry Partch, “Show Horses in the Concert Ring” [1948] in Bitter Music, 175. See also “A Somewhat Spoof” [1960] in Bitter Music, 189: “If Europe can fart, by golly we not only can, we must!” 64. Harry Partch, “The University and the Creative Arts: Comment” [1963] in Bitter Music, 191. 65. Harry Partch, “Monoliths in Music” [1966] in Bitter Music, 193. 66. Harry Partch, Genesis, xix. 67. Harry Partch, Genesis, xiii. See also: Harry Partch, “The Ancient Magic” [1959] in Bitter Music, 185, and “W. B. Yeats” [1941] in Bitter Music, 166; “It was all intuitive. I did not know that this was a system, both of music and of a manner of creating music, that was the oldest in the world”. 49 68. Harry Partch, Genesis, xvi. See also: “Show Horses in the Concert Ring” [1948] in Bitter Music, 176; It need hardly be labored that music is a physical art, and that a periodic groping into the physical, a reaching for an understanding of the physical, is the only basic procedure, the only way a musical era will attain any enduring significance.” 69. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 19-25. 70. Harry Partch, “The Ancient Magic” [1959] in Bitter Music, 185. 71. Harry Partch, “The Ancient Magic” [1959] in Bitter Music, 184. 72. Harry Partch, Genesis, xi. “I am not trying to institute a movement in any crypto- religious sense…Originality cannot be a goal. It is simply inevitable.” 73. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” [1952] in Bitter Music, 183. See also: Harry Partch, “Show Horses in the Concert Ring” [1948] in Bitter Music, 177; “If I were to choose a single dominant adjective to describe human beings, that adjective would be creative.” 74. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” [1952] in Bitter Music, 182. This same statement appears in the preface to the second edition of Genesis, yet there he includes not only peoples, but also “animals and things”; xi. 75. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” [1952] in Bitter Music, 181-2. 76. Harry Partch, “A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations” [1967] in Bitter Music, 195. 77. Harry Partch, Genesis, xi. 50 CHAPTER TWO UNISON MUSIC Partch’s Child World “The small child feels that he is the center of the world, in both his joys and his disasters. It is redundant to say the world he knows. There is no other. And every lonely child builds worlds of his own, both with objects and in fantasy, a dozen a year, or even a dozen a day.” 1 Partch wrote these words to describe his childhood growing up in the American Southwest. His loneliness was partly due to the relative isolation of his family’s various homesteads, and perhaps, to the fact that their frequent moves precluded the opportunity for long-term friendships. There is no evidence that his relationships with his brother and sister were ever strained, yet his personality was such that he could have felt alone even among them. His sexual orientation, furthermore, was no doubt difficult to come to terms with lacking the benefit of positive role models. 2 Whatever the source of his loneliness, it appears to have been a catalyst for his creativity. 3 His love and devotion to music began early in his life, but the path of his musical career was in no way direct. The decision for him to pursue music academically would have already been a challenging one for a family without means, and it was not far into his concert music training that he became uncomfortable with that direction. Concert music would later seem distant and irreconcilable with his musical ideas. He held great reverence for concert music, but he was not satisfied with interpreting or emulating this music as a means of personal expression. The popular music of his day apparently resonated with him even less, even though later in his life he did compose a number of songs in a popular style. Ultimately, 51 Partch felt that the only option for him was to find his “real child world” again. 4 To do so he used his child-like imagination to create a fantastic musical world of unusual sounds, newly invented instruments, and ritualized performance practices. Despite these unique elements, the objective of this chapter is to present Partch’s work as a reasoned and informed development within American music. Without question his concepts and techniques were decidedly personal, but they were justified by historical precedents and authoritative sources. The experience of many listeners when they initially encounter Partch’s music is one of confusion. Both educated and non-educated twenty-first century listeners can typically accept the sonic incongruities of atonal music even if they do not fully appreciate the actual music. In addition, non-Western musics are now more often recognized contextually, even when the listener has no understanding of their style, structure, or language. Partch’s music does not fit into either these categories. In fact, it is different enough from other types of music that listeners may have no association with which to reference, and therefore no ability to project a category to place it in. Indeed, the effect of microtonal melodies and harmonies performed with acoustic instruments and voice is nearly as “eerie” sounding today as it was when Partch received his first concert reviews in 1931. 5 This is particularly so because the instruments used in Partch’s music are not readily identifiable. Given this situation it is a complicated task to explain how his music fits within the tradition of Western music. Partch’s music might be understood as part of a tradition of just intonation, but this provides very little insight into his compositional style and how it developed. 52 Insight can be gained by inserting some of Partch’s biography within the explication of his ideas and his music. Depictions of Partch’s tumultuous existence are a fascinating study of twentieth-century American life even when told independently. His saga of working as a migrant laborer during the picking seasons, surviving for weeks on green bananas in a New Orleans harbor, and living in hobo camps during the Depression are all engaging regardless of the artistic output he produced while living through them. Partch’s personal history cannot be separated from his corpus because it provides a context for its character. That he was able to accomplish as much as he did while enduring periods of poverty and homelessness is quite astounding. Most notably he produced a massive theoretical treatise and numerous essays, audio recordings and short films, large-scale theatrical productions, and the design and maintenance of numerous instruments. In many ways Partch’s story is as dramatic, and romantic, as the narratives he tells in his work. The theatrical aspect of his work is unequivocally the most fundamental, and without exaggeration one might say that Partch lived his work. At the same time, exaggerations were constantly woven together during his lifetime (mainly by Partch himself), to the extent that any attempt to portray his life as history is fraught with challenges. Acquaintances of Partch often received different truths and fictions from him beginning with his childhood. The first press coverage he received in 1930 about his Monophonic theory stated that he was trained as a “concert pianist” from the time he was six. 6 Although he did study piano to a certain extent in his youth, other depictions of his life—even oral histories he provided himself—suggest that this was a purposeful misrepresentation. In one interview late in his life he explained that although music was 53 important to his family, it was only a diversion and no one thought seriously about becoming a musician. 7 Partch’s long-time patron and close friend Betty Freeman recalled that he even claimed to have been “raised by Yaqui Indians”. 8 The Yaqui are native to northern Mexico so he might very well have encountered them while living in Arizona and New Mexico, but the tale is unquestionably false. One of the more common unsubstantiated incidents about Partch’s life was that he was born in China; nevertheless, documents have placed his birth at his parent’s home on Occidental Street in Oakland, California (1901). 9 Even in his older years Partch continued to hold to the possibility that he was at least conceived in China. Approximately a year before his birth Partch’s parents had returned from China, where they served as Presbyterian missionaries from 1888-1900. It is likely that Partch would have been born in China if his father had not had a turn in faith and consciousness. His father Virgil’s sympathy for Chinese culture, philosophy, and spirituality had grown through his experience. With the rise of the Boxer Rebellion, however, his return to the United States was both a retreat from the dangers it posed, and a personal testament to its ideals. Shortly before leaving China, Virgil Partch documented his skepticism about the Presbyterian agenda in China, and asked to be released from his position. Although this skepticism was not shared by his wife Jennie, the family left China, and Virgil found work in a San Francisco post office. A few years later Jennie Partch was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and it was recommended that she be moved to a dryer climate. Due to Virgil’s ability to speak Chinese, he was able to secure a job with U. S. Immigration stationed in Arizona. 10 At that time there were large numbers of Chinese immigrants in Arizona attracted by the availability of railroad work, and Virgil was hired to enforce the 54 1902 Chinese Exclusion Act. The family would continue to move several times within the region, but the Southwest was where young Harry Partch remained until he graduated from high school. Religion was a constant point of discussion among Partch’s parents, and the disagreements that would inevitably ensue colored his childhood. 11 His father withdrew further from the Church toward complete atheism, and his mother whimsically dabbled in various modes of Christianity. His mother’s apparent fanaticism had both psychological and physical affects on Partch. For instance, while practicing Christian Science, his mother decided not to seek medical treatment for him when he contracted mumps. 12 Instead she took him to a fellow practitioner’s house who read to Partch from the Bible. This was intended to dispel his delusion of bodily illness. Partch always believed that he later suffered complications as a result. More traumatic was Jennie’s decision to circumcise Partch at the age of eight, for which he openly resented her. The incident was still troubling for him in his seventies. He later called circumcision a conspiracy between doctors and mothers who want to symbolically castrate their sons. “If they can castrate them”, he said “they can keep them close.” 13 Such experiences and conflicts revolving around religion had an impact on Partch’s theory and his music. In tracing the development of what he called an “abstract” tendency in Western music, he laid much of the responsibility on the Catholic Church. Partch believed that the Church’s music was designed to deny individual expression by calling for polyphonic vocal techniques that could not be sung by most of the congregation. At the same time the congregation was expected to take part in this group (rather than individual) expression, and in this way the music became abstract. Church 55 music then became further abstract by severing its tie with narrative, which Partch believed to be connected to the origins of all music. Devoid of any narrative elements, music proceeded to become a language of its own. Music could be said to have its own abstract meaning. And following his historical interpretation, the virtuosic requirements and unintelligibility of the texts forced members of the congregation to become passive observers rather than active participants. He placed the beginnings of this process near the beginning of the Christian era, and pointed to its continuing influence to the present day. He wrote: The hymn, a generic term that can be applied to all theistic adoration in music, was the inevitable musical vehicle to express the introspection of “faith” of the first converts, the zealots. And the hymn, like the philosophies that mother it, is a mass expression beyond the boundaries of the individual and the Corporeal, beyond this time and space (with ineludible exception), and it is not particularly important that the words be understood; they assert a pre-known transcendent belief, and they have no story to tell. 14 His articulation of Christianity as a mothering philosophy, an ideological force exacting unseen control, reveals the impact of his early experiences. Rather than take a spiritual stance of his own during his youth Partch sought refuge in music, theatre, and Greek mythology. It was his fascination with the mythology of ancient Greece that sparked his interest in the close association between music and narrative, as well as pre-Christian history. His parents had a substantial library of Greek myth, and particularly his father instilled an appreciation of it in both Harry and his older brother Paul. Partch explained that his attraction to these myths was based on both the dramatic structure, and the content, which to him offered a complete representation of the “human psyche”. 15 In addition, Partch scholars have pointed out that of the two myths he set as theatrical 56 productions, Oedipus and the Bacchae, both involve dramatically-charged, mother-son relationships. 16 While at Albuquerque High School, theater and public speaking were passions for him. He enjoyed major roles and received supportive reviews in the two plays he took part in, and he participated in a school oratorical contest in his senior year. Although he sang in the chorus for three years there is no record of Partch distinguishing himself as an instrumentalist within school, as did his sister Irene who played violin in the orchestra. Like his sister, and presumably the rest of the family, Partch experimented with a number of instruments that were purchased by mail order. Living at times in remote towns with populations under a thousand, the family relied upon mail-ordered items from clothing to food. Partch recalled a variety of musical instruments: guitar, coronet, cello, violin, mandolin, and an assortment of harmonicas. 17 Along with his sister’s dedication to the violin, his brother focused on mandolin, while Partch gravitated toward his mother’s reed organ. Partch’s mother accompanied herself on the reed organ as she sang hymns, and she taught him to read music on the instrument. He recalled that he began playing the organ when he was five or six, and it was the instrument on which he most excelled. Although the extent of his formal keyboard study is unclear, private lessons likely took place at some point. He had adequate technical proficiency, for example, to find work as a pianist in movie houses while in high school. He was also accomplished enough by the time he graduated from high school to be accepted into Olga Steeb’s piano studio at the University of Southern California. It is also possible that only his mother’s guidance, his choral training, and his own self discipline were enough to bring him to that level. 57 Perhaps more important than Partch’s musical technique were his ideas about music. He stated that no one in his family mused on the conceptual nature and origins of music more than him. There were two important influences that shaped Partch’s overall notion of music. The first was his exposure to non-Western culture. This exposure was limited to be sure; he never traveled outside the United States until he was thirty-two, and even then he did not go culturally further than England, Ireland and Italy. Yet the experience his parents had in China left a distinctive mark on their lives, which also carried into the lives of their children. Both his mother and father often spoke Chinese to each other, and to their frequent Chinese-speaking visitors. Partch recalled that his father also wrote in Chinese and often corresponded with acquaintances. The family’s home was filled with Chinese images, artifacts, and furniture, and according to his memory there were more books in Chinese than English. His mother also sang him Chinese lullabies, some of which he could still sing from memory into adulthood. 18 All of these factors would have made Partch’s home life somewhat different from his Caucasian peers, and the influence might easily have instilled a sort of quasi- identification with the numerous Chinese residents in the area. If this were the case, Partch would have been an outsider to both worlds, as well as to the Native American world that he gazed at from a distance. At the very least he would certainly have had a more inclusive predisposition toward non-Western culture than other Caucasians at the time, and more importantly, he would have had a more sympathetic ear to non-Western musics. It is not likely that Partch ever attended any musical performances of these musics early on, but he did hear them on Edison cylinder recordings. 19 Another mail- 58 order item, the family received their Edison machine when Partch was ten years old. Partch remembered recordings of Chinese opera, Congolese drumming, and Hebrew chants among others. Given these limited experiences Partch could not have gained any extensive knowledge of non-Western musics. Instead, what they demonstrated to him was that multiple musical systems were possible, and that each system had its own merits. It would be many years before he was able to articulate this, but Partch often stated that even at a young age he already understood this intuitively. The second influence upon Partch’s thinking about music was his deep appreciation of dramatic narrative. This is apparent with his interest in Greek mythology and drama, particularly Sophocles, but also in his first composition. The piece entitled “Sandstorm on the Desert” was a tragic narrative with piano accompaniment composed in 1916 during Partch’s freshman year at Albuquerque High. 20 Initially he did not make a conscious decision to compose, but rather developed simple tunes through improvisation. When he was around the age of fourteen he began to write these ideas down, and “Sandstorm on the Desert” was his first fully-developed piece. His idea to set stories to music might have been inspired by radio shows, or possibly films. Partch began playing both piano and organ to accompany films at Albuquerque’s Pastime Theater while still in school, and the experience would have taught him a great deal about how to support drama with music. He even reported to have experimented while accompanying by alternating the emotion of the drama, with the presumed correct emotion of a key or motive. In one instance, Partch said, “when somebody got shot and was being buried I put in some happy bird calls. Nobody noticed it.” 21 59 Partch composed other narrative works with piano accompaniment as well, but unfortunately none of these compositions have survived. He destroyed them himself, as was his practice when he felt that a work was not consistent with his overarching musical goals. The fact that he destroyed these early pieces is somewhat paradoxical, since an emphasis on story telling and the importance of a close association between words and music is characteristic of his mature work. He also returned to this genre in his thirties by setting a personal diary to piano accompaniment. This work, too, was destroyed. 22 What would have been inconsistent between these works and his extant body of compositions was that they were composed for equally-tempered keyboard. Yet, the possibility that Partch simply believed these to be substandard works should not be overlooked. He stated early in his career that his need to venture into just intonation was determined by his desire to uphold the drama of his chosen texts. He was able to achieve this more fully through a microtonal just scale because it provided the sonic resources needed to mimic natural intonations of speech. 23 Speaking of the different periods of his work (the early poetry settings, the Americana pieces, and the large-scale theatrical works) Partch maintained that his concern with words and the human voice were constant throughout. 24 Thus, the narrative aspect of his music is far more essential than any other, and if they had survived these early pieces would have provided profound insight to the young composer’s developing ideas. After graduating from high school in 1919 Partch move to Los Angeles ostensibly to study at the University of Southern California. Shortly before Partch graduated his father became ill and quickly passed away within a few months. Partch’s relationship with his father by this time was already distant. It is possible that his father did not 60 approve of his interest in pursuing music as a profession. He recalled that his father rarely spoke to him, and Partch left home several times due to their inability to get along. 25 If his work provides any insight into his personal life, unresolved issues with his father might have haunted Partch for some time. In Delusion of the Fury (1965) Partch juxtaposed two narratives, an Ethiopian folktale and a Japanese Noh play. 26 In the Noh play a young warrior respectfully goes to visit the shrine of a princely warrior who he killed in battle. At the same time, the slain warrior’s son has also come to visit his father’s shrine. The father manifests as spirit to reenact the battle with the young warrior, but upon seeing his son, the father’s resentment of his slayer compels him to return to the phenomenal world to fight again. In setting this play Partch provided at least some indication that the suddenness of his father’s death did not allow their relationship to fulfill itself. With his father deceased, however, Partch was now capable of directing the course of his life without regard to his father’s wishes. On the other hand his mother remained a dominating factor, and she followed Partch to Los Angeles less than year after he settled there. Once in the city he found work as a copy editor at the Los Angeles Times. Copy editing became a regular type of work for him, perhaps the most consistent type, before becoming established enough to secure grants and patronage for his creative work. Although Partch was certainly intent on pursuing music, there is reason to question whether the decision to pursue it academically was completely his own. His mother’s return to college in her fifty’s and his sister’s recent admission to the University of Hawaii’s School of Music were likely influential factors. Jennie Partch’s high esteem for elite culture and its music certainly had an impact on all of her children. Partch 61 maintained suspicions of elite culture, in contrast, and these were already entreched before his admission was finalized. In 1919 Los Angeles was a metropolis in comparison to Albuquerque, and Partch rushed to engage with its cultural offerings. He attended numerous concerts of the newly-formed Los Angeles Philharmonic, often by working as an usher rather than paying for admission. 27 He had a special affinity for Romantic composers, and this might have been partly formed by his experiences at these concerts. During its inaugural years the Los Angeles Philharmonic often performed Romantic and Classical composers over contemporary composers. The notion of Partch himself as a Romantic composer is compelling with respect to the link between Romantic music and Romantic literature. His emphasis on self expression and composer as sole author of a work also support this view. 28 In fact one of his earliest compositions after attending university, which he later burned, was a symphonic poem. 29 Yet, according to his statements it was the large forces often required to realize Romantic works that discouraged him from pursuing that style. He also perceived a general lack of intimacy between performer and audience in performances, and particularly between composer and audience. 30 The black-tie formality of these events epitomized this distance for Partch. It seemed that the more opportunities he had to glimpse into the world he was now entering, the more he began to reevaluate his possible place in it. In a brief autobiography Partch prepared in 1945 he wrote that in 1919 he had already given up both academic education and private music lessons, preferring rather to take his own direction in his music studies. 31 The date of this disillusionment was repeated twenty-five years later in the second edition of Genesis, where he stated that he had rejected the modern intonation and “concert system” of Europe before he was 62 twenty. 32 The year of 1919 is no doubt plausible due to the serious thought he had already given to music, but regardless of its accuracy Partch did not enroll at the University of Southern California until 1920. According to the school’s records he enrolled three times between the years 1920 and 1922. In each period of enrollment he subsequently withdrew, or stopped attending, within a matter of weeks. Partch experienced disappointment in his academic studies for a number of reasons. Right away he found that the approach to music at the university was radically different from his own interests. He wanted to understand how music worked physically and psychologically, while American musicology at the time dealt mainly with the history of style and formal analysis. He was frustrated in his harmony classes when forced to write in the styles of Palestrina or Bach, which he found antithetical to his desire for self expression. In one anecdote Partch recalled deciding to make a point of composing an assignment piece that strictly observed every possible contrapuntal rule. When the instructor put it up on the blackboard it was ridiculed it for being unmusical. “Of course, I knew it”, Partch remembered, “it was an absurd experience. I didn’t want to learn”. 33 At this young age he could not clearly describe what he was looking for, but even then he had a sense that there must be an alternative method for investigating music that was more suited to his ideas. If he did reject academic education before he entered into it, his attitude would certainly have influenced his perception of what he encountered. Had Partch accepted even a part of it his musical output would have been drastically different. His job at the Los Angeles Times must have made keeping up with his studies even more challenging, and therefore, the question remains as to why he would have enrolled in the first place. It 63 is tempting to assume that his mother’s dominating presence had something to do with his repeated attempts to continue toward a degree. Yet this explanation is complicated by the fact that his mother died before his initial enrollment. 34 Her death was sudden and quite traumatic for Partch. She was then a school teacher at Westlake Military School, and Partch had gone to meet her after work. When she did not show up he called the school, who informed him that she was dead. He later learned that she was fatally struck by a streetcar at the intersection of 43rd and Marmion. It had been planned that Partch would enter school in the second semester, which was still two months away at the time of his mother’s death. If an agreement was made between them, Partch might have wanted to follow through with attending school out of respect. If so, his attempts to maintain enrollment even after disengaging with the university’s approach would reveal a sincere loyalty to his mother. It took some time before he could part with his mother’s cremated ashes. He finally did so in a private ritual in the middle of the night on Santa Monica Pier. Partch did not stay in Los Angeles long. Once resolving to withdraw from the university for a third time he never returned. Now on his own, he continued the rootless existence of his family. Over the next ten years he would move to San Francisco, to New Orleans, back to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then to New York before securing a Carnegie grant to study in Europe. Furthermore these destinations were never direct, and often Partch spent months in route, working odd jobs or surviving the best he could with no work at all. In his application for the Carnegie grant he stated he had received no academic training, but rather achieved the equivalent of an academic degree by his own initiative. 35 By presenting this emphatically and without apology, Partch intended to 64 make a statement about institutional education while simultaneously projecting his self image as a Benjamin Franklin-like autodidact. On one hand he was demonstrating that anyone could pursue academic knowledge under their own direction as he did by using the resources available in public libraries. On the other hand, he was presenting himself as a determined inventor whose genius would not be contained despite his underprivileged background. On the whole, both statements were accurate, even if they can be described as self promoting. It would have been disingenuous for Partch to present himself as an academic composer by citing his brief periods of study. He chose, rather, to wear his self-directed education as a mark of distinction. His ability to maintain years of focused research motivated solely by his own intellectual curiosity are truly unique. Partch much preferred the approach of working in public libraries over attending classes. If he found an author uninteresting, he would simply put the book down and move on to another. This practice allowed him to move more quickly toward the content he was after, even if he did not actually know what he was searching for. For sometime he read aimlessly in musical aesthetics, acoustics and psychology. What he was seeking was a systematic approach to the understanding of music, but what he found was that it was not only musicology that used a decidedly insular methodology. Other disciplines were equally specialized, and relied heavily on esoteric terminologies and taxonomies. Yet while researching in a Sacramento Public Library in 1923 Partch stumbled upon a book that attempted to bring these specialized disciplines together, and to develop a new way of thinking about music. The book he encountered was On the Sensations of Tone (1885) by Hermann von Helmholtz. The influence of Helmholtz on Partch should not be overstated, however, 65 Partch himself often referred to finding Helmholtz’s book as a pivotal moment in his career. 36 He contemplated the insights that On the Sensations of Tone had to offer over the next five years, and in 1928 he completed the first draft of his own theoretical thesis. Emergence of His Monophonic Theory His early thesis would later be expanded and published as Genesis of a Music, but the early drafts were believed lost until the 1980’s. 37 Partch’s first patron, music critic and close friend, Bertha Knisely, had collected her own personal Harry Partch archive of letters, clippings, articles, and other papers. Knisely was an important supporter of Partch’s music during his first performances in the 1930’s. She introduced him to her circle of friends in Los Angeles, and wrote glowing reviews of his performances in a Los Angeles weekly called Saturday Night; referring to him in one review as a “young genius”. 38 After her death, Knisely’s husband gave the collection to Jonathan Glasier. Partch had befriended Jonathan’s father and lived with the Glasier family in the 1940’s when Jonathan was a child. In the 1960’s the young Glasier also worked as Partch’s assistant. Glasier eventually became a microtonal composer and instrument builder, as well as the founder of a microtonal publication entitled Interval: Journal of Music Research and Development. Partch’s thesis entitled “Exposition of Monophony”, as his musical system was called, was among the manuscripts given to Glasier. It was found in an unopened package postmarked August 10, 1933, presumably for the purpose of reserving the copyright on that date. By 1933 the thesis had already been revised five times. In the margins of the text Partch noted the series of revision dates and locations: San Francisco, 1928; New 66 Orleans, 1930; San Francisco, 1931; Visalia, CA, 1932; Los Angeles, 1933. 39 Perhaps out of necessity, there was a sense of finality about the fifth draft. The draft’s completion coincided with his 1933 Carnegie Grant application and was included as supplementary material. Yet, the thesis would remain a living document almost until the end of his life. He was still adding and revising its content for the second edition of Genesis as late as 1972. Much of the material added between the years of the 1933 “Exposition of Monophony” draft and the first edition of Genesis in 1949 resulted from his studies at the British Library. The wealth of material he encountered there provided much of the historical context and support for his use of just intonation. The content of the 1933 thesis focused mainly on an explanation of the eleven limit ratios, his use of thirty-seven intervals within an octave, and the overtone and undertone series (inspired partly by Henry Cowell’s explanation of undertones in New Musical Resources). 40 There were also chapters on the musical notation he developed, a system for classifying intervals according to their character, and his perspective on the spoken word in song. Each of these elements would remain foundational to Monophony throughout Partch’s career. Even in writings a few years before his death Partch was still emphasizing these elements as “dominant themes”. 41 He continued to develop his system of notation, however, and to experiment with different secondary ratios for many years. 42 His use of secondary ratios had a direct effect on the number of tones he used per octave. After the publication of Genesis this number remained consistent at forty-three, but in 1933 he had decided on thirty-seven. What’s more, a 1929 New Orleans Times-Picayune article reported that he used twenty- nine tones per octave, while a 1932 San Francisco Chronicle review reported fifty-five. 43 67 This inconsistency is at first compelling, but in fact it is largely irrelevant within the overall scope of his theory. The number of tones per octave was never an important aspect of Monophony, and Partch was often indignant about the sensationalism surrounding it in the press. News stories, and even reviews,” he said, “have almost exclusively latched onto the number forty-three as though it were somehow the touchstone of my life. It is not. In fact it is about the one-half truth of the one-fourth factor. It is totally misleading. 44 The forty-three ratios of Monophony represent a core set of resources, yet they should not be understood as either the limit or requirement for the music he produced. Some of Partch’s instruments could not even produce this many tones, and on other instruments he typically used more than forty-three tones per octave through a variety of compositional techniques. In frustration with the emphasis on the number of tones in his scale, Partch once claimed that “before I die, I have the firm intention of writing some music in one tone to the octave”. 45 No such music was ever written, but his sentiment presents a caveat for researchers looking for a direct correlation between Partch’s theory and his compositions. 46 Partch himself pointed out that not only the scales used in music, but also the way melodies were derived and resolved was never determined by previously established rules. 47 Indeed, it was his aversion to the blind acceptance of compositional rules that led Partch to search for a more personal mode of expression. Just intonation provided a framework that allowed him to alternatively make use of twenty-nine, thirty-seven, fifty- five, and more tones per octave while maintaining the stability of his aesthetic ideals. The benefits of just intonation, as well as the potential for tunings and temperaments to 68 alter the structure of music, were two ideas that attracted Partch to Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone. Helmholtz identified the most problematic intervals in equal temperament as the major and minor thirds. He noted that the imperfections of equally tempered fourths and the fifths were barely perceptible, but in contrast the thirds revealed unacceptable flaws. Helmholtz found this to be true not only in the thirds themselves, but in their combinational tones as well. Combinational tones are tones that result acoustically from two simultaneous source tones, and as such they are neither composed, nor directly played by the performer. 48 When thirds are tuned to just intonation their combinational tones are in harmonic relations, but with equally tempered thirds the combinational tones do not correspond to any other diatonic or chromatic tone; in Helmholtz’s words, “they simply sound out of tune and wrong”. 49 Helmholtz’s experiments were facilitated by a free-reed organ he had constructed specifically for that purpose. He chose the reed organ because the reeds provided an easy and stable way to alter tunings, and they produced distinct combinational tones. He tuned the two manuals differently so that he could compare equally tempered, just, and Pythagorean intervals side by side. What he proclaimed based on his experiments was that just intervals were the most musical of all three. And importantly, this led him to question the impact of the deficiencies of equal temperament on Western music. As regards musical effect, the difference between the just and the equally tempered, or the just and the Pythagorean intonations, notwithstanding the rather piercing quality of the tone of the vibrators, [just] possesses a full and as it were saturated harmoniousness; they [just chords] flow on, with full steam, calm and smooth, without tremor or beat. Equally-tempered or Pythagorean chords sound beside them rough, dull, trembling, restless. The difference is so marked that every one, whether he is musically cultivated or not, observes it at once. 50 …in rapid passages, with a soft quality and moderate intensity of tone, the evils of tempered intonation are but little apparent. Now, almost all instrumental 69 music is designed for rapid music, and this forms its essential advantage over vocal music. We might, indeed, raise the questions whether instrumental music had not rather been forced into rapidity of movement by this very tempered intonation… 51 This idea that tempered intervals could actually change the way we compose was extremely enlightening for Partch, as was the importance that Helmholtz placed on the role the body plays in processing music. The aim of Helmholtz’s project was to blur the boundaries between acoustics and aesthetics by connecting together the physical nature of musical sound, our physiological reaction of aural sensation, and our psychological transformation of sensation into perception. 52 He began with the premise that music is more closely connected to sensation than any other art. While the senses apprehend the content of the other arts, be they images or ideas, Helmholtz argued that with music the sensation of tone is itself the content. Helmholtz’s view was somewhat in step with Edward Hanslick’s effort to move the focus of musical exegesis out of the psychological realm. Yet rather than returning the focus to musical elements and structures as Hanslick did, Helmhotlz looked more closely at the processes that take place within the ear. Helmholtz studied, for example, the affects of combinatorial tones, and consonance and dissonance. He then used the results of his experiments to speculate about the relationship between these phenomena and musical style. This was drastically different than what Partch encountered at the university, which was the analysis of harmonic movement, and melodic and rhythmic motives. It seemed logical to Partch that the processes involved in hearing was the appropriate place to begin because the ear is the most acutely affected organ in musical experience, and the best suited for aural 70 observations. As Partch’s theory developed, he began to consider that musical sensation was not limited to the ear. Rather, it is the entire body that responds. The five years between Partch’s initial encounter with Helmholtz’s work and the first draft of “Exposition of Monophony” are difficult to trace. According to Partch, the years were spent in experimentation with a number of new ideas. He also stated that his transition to just intonation was not immediate. The liberation of his thinking was paralleled by capricious movement throughout California. In 1923 he had been proofreading at the State Legislature in Sacramento, but later that same year he taught private piano lessons in La Jolla. And he was likely back in Los Angeles in 1925 when he submitted his symphonic poem to a new-music competition sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 53 Partch had been studying orchestration on his own ever since he left the University of Southern California. His symphonic poem did not place in the competition, but his efforts to compose such a work are telling. If nothing else it reveals the young Partch’s interest in orchestral music, as well as a willingness to compose within the mainstream. This interest and willingness were manifested again in 1926 when Partch began to study and play viola in the University of California’s community orchestra in San Francisco. We do not know if he was self taught or if he studied with someone privately, but Partch was quite open about the difficulties he had with it. 54 His new interest in string technique also coincided with his first experiences of Chinese opera, which was readily available in San Francisco. 55 The influence of the sounds and theatricality of Chinese opera performances, together with the excitement of new compositional possibilities working with strings, and ideas still percolating from Hemlholtz’s book, all initiated an outburst of creativity. 71 The unique instrumentation used in Chinese opera, as well as the integration of drama, music, dancing, miming, and acrobatics, was highly inspirational for Partch. He never intended to expressly emulate non-Western music, however, and from the very beginning he wanted to create something musically personal. 56 In many ways he was still bound to Western instruments and forms, and his first composition with these new ideas resulted in a string quartet in just intonation. As his first piece in just intonation one might expect its survival, yet it was destroyed along with his symphonic poem a few years later. There is an indication in “Exposition of Monophony” that the quartet was composed for twelve-tone just intonation. If so, the quartet would have become disconnected from his theory as it developed, and in Patch’s mind this could have justified its elimination. Yet he also noted that experimental notation was needed to realize the work, and this suggests that some microtones beyond twelve were being introduced. His move from a large orchestral work to a chamber work could further reflect a variety of positions. The least likely, although possible, would be an attempt to broaden his portfolio to include both large and small-scale works. It might also reveal his intent on creating a more intimate music, with a closer connection between the listener and the performer. Equally probable was an attempt to reduce the scale of his works in order for performances to be more manageable. The quartet was composed for violin, two violas, and cello, and at the time Partch had purchased a violin and two violas. 57 His intention was clearly to have his own instruments on hand in order to facilitate the performances of his works. The idea of being a self-sufficient composer with a ready ensemble, although in no way a singular notion among folk and popular musicians, was not common among 72 concert musicians at the time. The composer/ensemble approach to realizing performances of one’s work became a viable option for twentieth-century composers largely based on the precedence of Partch, Stockhaussen, Glass, and others. For Partch in particular, it eventually became a vital necessity. In this case the string quartet was apparently never performed. There is some discrepancy about this fact, however, as one account contradicts Partch’s. According to Partch he never attempted to have the work performed, but Rodney Oakes recalled that an “unsuccessful” performance took place in San Francisco. 58 Oakes also stated that Howard Hanson attended the performance and spoke of it favorably. Unfortunately Oakes’s recollection is not supported by any extant documentary evidence. Regardless of whether the performance actually took place, Partch did correspond with Howard Hanson for a number of years. This was a somewhat unlikely association considering the differences in their music, yet Hanson was intrigued by Partch’s work and was highly supportive. In late 1927 Partch sent Hanson a copy of the quartet along with a brief theoretical explanation of his ideas. He also sent Hanson an aid he developed for any potential performers of the piece. In order to help musicians trained in equal temperament to play the quartet, Partch conceived of placing paper marked with precise just intervals on the fingerboards of each instrument. The advantage of these paper coverings was that they were transferable to a performer’s personal instrument, but they were also cumbersome. To Partch’s knowledge Hanson never had the piece performed, and once Partch began creating his own instruments, he no longer sought performances of his work without his direct involvement. 73 Just a few months after his initial correspondence with Hanson, Partch completed the first draft of “Exposition of Monophony”. He described it as his earliest accomplishment of any significance, and had it notarized on May 20, 1928. 59 His communications with Hanson may have triggered the realization that a treatise of some kind would be a necessary supplement for his compositions. This situation was often uncomfortable for Partch, as he considered himself to be foremost a composer. Yet, the need was more real for his works than many other twentieth-century composers who attached notes of explanations to their scores. The information Partch supplied was needed not only to explain his new notational symbols, it was also needed to ground his Monophonic theory. The term he chose for his theory, Monophony, is in some ways unfortunate because it carries a different meaning in another context. It has long been a cause of confusion for those approaching his work, and it no doubt resulted in prejudgments about the theory’s merit by some. Henry Cowell wrote in his review of Genesis, for instance, that Partch’s specialized use of common terms often made for difficult reading. 60 In the case of the term “monophony”, Partch never acknowledged it as having the potential for a misunderstanding. He simply used the term without commenting on its connection to the term more commonly used. Ironically, and to complicate the matter further, Partch’s Monophony also corresponded to Helmholtz’s concept of “Homophonic music”; another unfortunate use of terminology. In On the Sensations of Tone Helmholtz drew a distinction between three phases of Western musical style: Harmonic, Polyphonic, and Homophonic. 61 Harmonic music was the last to appear in the historical development of music, and was characterized by an independence of harmony. Its most distinguishable trait, according to Helmholtz, is the 74 interconnection of tones throughout a piece in order to achieve a perceptible sense of tonal connection, or tonality. Historically preceding Harmonic music was Polyphonic music where tones had not yet achieved the same sophistication of interconnections. Helmholz asserted that this can be heard in music beginning in the middle ages. Although numerous tonal relationships were recognized and adhered to, according to his explanation of Polyphonic music, the importance of a tonic and the relationships of keys were not yet established. Helmholtz described the earliest known music as Homophonic, or “Unison” music, because of its reliance on a single part. According to this definition Partch was correct to prefer the term monophonic over homophonic; the latter implying a single part with a harmonic background. Helmholz’s Unison music was the music of the ancient Greeks, but he also recognized that it was still in use in many contemporaneous cultures. It still existed in China, India, and other regions, he explained, but more importantly one-part Unison music was the original texture of music for all peoples. 62 Without tonal connections between keys, and harmonic devices to move melodies forward, Unison music would have been inclined to small or repetitive pieces such as dances. Helmholtz posited that the only way more extensive works could have been created was with a reliance on plot, and this could be achieved either through text or dance. He cited Balinese music as an example where music is used to accompany actions that tell a story, but the use of epic poetry in Unison music is far more prevalent. Authentic instances of this from ancient Greece had been well established by Helmholtz’s era, and he also presumed that there might be a connection to the intoned chants of the Catholic Church. Partch’s use of the term monophony is intended to take this idea into account. As such, in Partch’s theory monophony describes not only the texture of the 75 music, but also the subordinate role of the music with respect to the text. He goes even further to propose that these elements can be used to metaphorically represent an aesthetic expression of intimacy and individualism, and that this was an equally important part of ancient monophony as well. Throughout history the Monophonic concept has been consistently manifested through on medium: the individual’s spoken words, which are more certainly the juice of a given identity than anything else in the tonal world. Of all the ingredients a creative man can put into his music, his voice is at once the most dramatically potent and the most intimate. His voice does not necessarily mean his own voice and it certainly does not mean the specialized idiosyncrasy known as “serious” singing. It means one voice. The instant when other voices are added to that one voice is an instant of metamorphosis. Thereafter his identity is not that of the inner self alone but the identity of a group. The drama and the intimacy of the individual are superseded by a different esthetic or sociological quality. 63 Partch’s complete theory of Monophony had still another dimension, which pertained to the tones he used to create new works in the manner described. In the same way that the listener’s emotional experiences were said to relate back to the composer/performer’s voice, Partch demonstrated how all the tones within his monophonic scale relate back to a single source tone. This was a primary principle of Monophony; that the scale of musical resources begins with a 1:1 relationship and progresses gradually into increasingly dissonant tones. 64 A corollary to this was that the use of consonance in the world’s music was determined by the number of intervals allowed. Because Western music stops at the 5 limit, it recognizes significantly less consonances than Partch’s 11-limit system. Partch believed extending the number of available consonances to be one of the major contributions of his theory. This is not to say that he believed consonance to be more useful than dissonance in his music. Like 76 any composer he recognized the virtues of each. “Both can be powerful”, he said, “both can be provocative, and both can be obnoxious if overdone”. 65 It is more important to understand that the most consonant intervals are also the most fundamental, and according to Partch this is paralleled in the history of music theory. In other words the octave and unison would be the most primal of all intervals, but 5-limit equal temperament music would not be closer to this source than Monophony because the purity of the tone must also be considered. Partch’s 11-limit system, therefore, could be deemed a modern extension of an ancient system, while equal temperament is better described as a modern system based on ancient ideas. Partch referred to the differences in the tonal relationships between just and equal temperament in terms of their implications. In line with Helmholtz, Partch noted that equal temperament maintains the integrity of tonal relationships fairly well. Although pure intervals are not heard in equal temperament, they are implied, and the ear completes the intonation in a perceptual Gestalt. For example, in the graph below it is apparent that an equal temperament Major Third is only 13.7 cents flatter than the 5:4 in Partch’s Monophonic scale. 77 Interval Names Interval Ratios Equal Temp. In Cents Monophony In Cents Unison 1:1 0 0 Minor Second 16:15 100 111.7 Major Second 9:8 200 203.9 Minor Third 6:5 300 315.6 Major Third 5:4 400 386.3 Perfect Fourth 4:3 500 498 Tri-Tone 7:5 600 582.5 Perfect Fifth 3:2 700 702 Minor Sixth 8:5 800 813.7 Major Sixth 5:3 900 884.4 Minor Seventh 16:9 1000 996.1 Major Seventh 15:8 1100 1088.3 Octave 2:1 1200 1200 Table 2-1. Comparison between equal temperament and the just intervals of Monophony in Cents. He believed that although the ear can make these leaps, its capacity would, nevertheless, be better utilized by conserving the energy it takes to perform such operations. At the same time, one might reasonably question whether this would justify the need to reject equal temperament since the relationships hold true. Again, the benefit of pure intervals was clearly not the sole motivating factor for Partch’s use of just intonation. Instead it was part of an overall package that included the extension of available tones, thereby extending the subtlety of both consonance and dissonance, and in turn increasing the richness of the tonal relations. With respect to the tonal relations, Partch presented twenty-eight “tonalities” in Monophony. These tonalities can be understood as keys within two modes: “Otonality”, essentially a just Major tonality; and “Utonality”, a just Minor. 66 In order to fully grasp these new terms one must grapple with still more terms; three in particular are most important: “Identity”, “Unity”, and “Numerary Nexus”. 67 Partch found standard academic terminology in music theory to be awkward for supporting his ideas. Mainly, 78 he simply found standard terminology to rigid to embrace Monophonic concepts. All of the intervals in equal temperament can be located in Partch’s Monophonic scale, for example, but this is not true in the reverse. Also problematic for Partch was the lack of continuity between terminology used in music theory and acoustics. The disconnection between the two disciplines was incomprehensible for Partch, and although he did not borrow extensively from acoustic terminology, he did attempt to bring a more objective nomenclature to music theory. He considered terms like ‘major’ and ‘minor’ to be relatively meaningless, and the use of intervals names like ‘seconds’ and ‘thirds’ to assume seven diatonic tones per octave. Using ratios to represent both intervals and tones provided more information, and retained a connection to the science of sound. To be sure, the terms he coined create yet another obstacle for theorist approaching his work, but he coined them only as they were needed. He also made a sincere effort to equate his terms to standard terms as much as possible. Furthermore, his terms are always logical, and in many instances define themselves in the way they are named. Tonal Identity in Monophony To begin, the numerical Identity of a ratio reveals both the key, and the position of the ratio within that key. In Monophony the primary identities are: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. Recall that when using numbers to represent tones any number multiplied or divided by two will raise or lower the tones to a new octave. All the tones in Partch’s Monophonic scale are reduced to a common octave; therefore, multiples of two (in other words, the same tone in different octaves) will share the same identity. Partch referred to a series of numbers multiplied by two as a geometrical succession of doublings based on 79 a given number. For example, a geometrical succession of doublings based on 1 would be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. All of these multiples of 1 share the same identity as 1 in different octaves, and therefore can all be classed as 1 Identities. A geometrical succession of doublings based on 3 would be 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, etc., and all can be classed as 3 Identities. When ratios have numbers that share Identities, regardless of whether or not they are ordered in a series, they comprised what Partch called a Numerary Nexus. For instance, the ratios 1:1, 5:4, and 3:2 share a Numerary Nexus of 1 because 2 and 4 are geometric doublings of 1. Since ratios have both an over number and an under number, each ratio has two potential identities. A 5:4 has both a 5 identity, and a 1 identity. If read from the top- down, the over number 5 of 5:4 reveals the ratio’s Odentity. If the ratio is read in reverse, the under number 4 reveals the ratio’s Udentity. Irrespective of whether it is expressed as an Odentity or Udentity, the tonal Identity also signifies the ratio’s position within a given tonality. To demonstrate tonal relationships in Monophony, Partch used a diamond-shaped graph he called a Tonality Diamond. The graph did not appear in the earliest drafts of his thesis, but the relationships it presented were already in place. 68 Before deciphering an 11-limit Tonality Diamond, however, a 5-limit diamond will more easily clarify the concepts defined thus far. This is also appropriate because a 5-limit Tonality Diamond is based on triads, and Partch considered the phenomenon of tonality to be established by the triad. The reason, he explained, was because the 3 and 5 Identities provide maximum consonance with the 1 Identity, and thus establish a stronger tonal “polarity” around it than any other tones. 69 80 Figure 2-1. 5-Limit Tonality Diamond. Includes superparticular ratios up to the integer 5, and their reciprocals (1:1 {3:3, 5:5}, 3:2/4:3, 5:3/6:5, 5:4/8:5); Otonality ratios circled in blue, Utonality ratios circled in green. When reading a Tonality Diamond each string of ratios between solid lines (for example, 1:1, 5:4, 3:2) is a triad in Otonality; a tonality constructed with the Odentities of 1, 5, 3. Each string of ratios between dotted lines (for example, 4:3, 8:5, 1:1) is a triad in Utonality; a tonality constructed with the Udentities of 1, 5, 3. The diamond shows that the same Identity classifications 1,5, 3 are found in both Otonality and Utonality, but their relationships to 1:1 are obviously different. Again, in the Otonality based on 1:1, the under numbers 1, 4 and 2 are doublings based on 1. They all share a 1 Udentity, which reveals a Numerary Nexus of 1. Since the 1:1 is the most fundamental Udentity in the string, it represents the Unity (or, tonic) of the given Otonality. The Odentities of the over numbers 1, 5, and 3 show the position of each ratio within the Otonality of 1. Note here that the 1, 5, and 3 are ratio identities, and not scale degrees (such as 1, 3, 5). In just intonation 5 represents the third scale degree of a chord (as in 5:4), and 3 represents the fifth (as in 3:2). With this in mind, placing standard interval names within the Tonality Diamond demonstrates how the 1:1 (unison), 5:4 (major third), and 3:2 (perfect fifth) 81 construct a major triad. Therefore, Otonality can be said to have the quality of a Major mode. Figure 2-2. 5-Limit Tonality Diamond using standard interval names. Like the preceding example the ratios 4:3 (perfect fourth), 8:5 (minor sixth), 1:1 (unison) share a Numerary Nexus of 1, but in this case the Nexus is found in the over number Odentities 4, 8, 1. The position of each ratio within the key is then designated by its Udentities 3, 5, 1. Notice that this triad is an inversion of its corresponding triad in Otonality, and that they pivot on the unison of this Otonality. Yet, rather than beginning from the unison and ascending in pitch, Utonality essentially descends from the unison into the lower octave. Since all the ratios used in Monophony are within a single octave, harmonies in Utonality must be read in reverse, with the 3 Identity now serving as the Unity. A Tonality Diamond altered with approximate standard pitch names helps to demonstrate this, and reveals the quality of Utonality as Minor. 82 Figure 2-3. 5-Limit Tonality Diamond using standard pitch names. Put succintly, Odentity and Udentity designate the relative scale degree of the ratio, and the Numerary Nexus designates the key. Otonality and Utonality are the two dominant modes (major and minor respectively). In order to determine what Partch calls the ‘tonality’ of a string of ratios, one needs to pay attention to the Numerary Nexus. An 11-limit Tonality Diamond can be constructed with superparticular ratios up to the integer 11. Partch refers to these as primary ratios, and to the twelve hexachords they create as primary tonalities. The additional identities of 7, 9, and 11 are interspersed within the 1, 5, 3 string in scale order: 1, 9, 5, 11, 3, 7 (for example, 1:1, 9:8, 5:4, 11:8, 3:2, 7:4). To create chords in thirds the identities must be reordered: 1, 5, 3, 7, 9, 11 (for example, 1:1, 5:4, 3:2, 7:4, 9:8, 11:8). By recognizing 2, 4, and 8 in the under numbers as geometric doublings in this example, the Numerary Nexus can be quickly identified, and the tonality determined as an Otonality with a Unity of 1:1. 83 Figure 2-4. 11-Limit Tonality Diamond. When working with the 5-limit Tonality Diamond it was obvious that the Unity of triads in Utonality was not the 1 Identity, but rather the 3 Identity. This is not so obvious when working with the 11-limit Tonality Diamond, nevertheless, the principle still holds. 70 The Utonality with a Numerary Nexus of 1 has the Unity 4:3, and the scale emanating from it accordingly is 4:3, 16:11, 8:5, 16:9, 1:1, 8:7. Here the concept of the Numerary Nexus begins to show its advantage over the concept of key. In standard terminology key implies a key tone, or tonic, to which all the other tones are related. The term nexus, on the other hand, states only that there is a connection between the tones. In this sense Partch’s concept is far more inclusive. What the Numerary Nexus reveals, and according to Partch what is most critical to understand about Monophonic tonality, is that Otonality and Utonality always coexist. This is equally true of major and minor, but the 84 fact of coexistence is less important for these terms because of the way each typically functions in Western music. Partch liked to say that in comparison to Otonality, the aural sensation of Utonality was akin to a visual sensation of a new moon. 71 Both the full moon and new moon are the same physical entity, but the latter is in shadow. He described Utonality more technically as a reverse harmonic series, and the inherent symmetry is a noteworthy aspect of Monophony as well. The forty-three tones that have become the calling card of Partch’s music were partly determined by the symmetrical structuring of Otonality and Utonality. Every primary and secondary ratio ascending from the 1:1 in the Monophonic scale is accompanied by its complement descending from the 2:1. Moving incrementally from both ends of the Monophonic scale the symmetry is apparent; 81:80 ascending is complemented by 160:81 descending, 33:32 ascending is complemented by 64:33 descending, and so on. Eventually these tones hinge on the twin tritones 10:7 and 7:5. Once Partch chose the primary ratios from within the 11-limit, the secondary ratios were achieved by multiplying some of the primary ratios together. For example 8:5 x 4:3 = 32:15, which when reduced within an octave is 16:15. All secondary ratios are multiples of primary ratios, and are therefore technically outside of the 11 limit. These are the three methods Partch used to construct his scale: first, the 11-limit superparticular ratios (primary ratios); second, the multiples of selected primary ratios (secondary ratios); and third, the reciprocal of every ratio included. 85 Table 2-2. Forty-three-tone Monophonic scale shown with standard interval names, and measurements in cents between each scale degree. 86 The plasticity of such an approach explains why Partch’s early drafts of his theory varied between the number of tones he employed. Many more tones could have easily been included, but he saw a need to establish boundaries for compositional and performance reasons. What was important for him was that these were self-imposed boundaries, and not boundaries passed on to him. He somewhat arbitrarily decided to limit his primary ratios to the number eleven. 72 Partch referred to the number eleven as arbitrary because he could have gone higher, but he also stated, somewhat ironically, that the 11-limit was advantageous for its fairly equal distribution of tones. 73 He then chose which of these ratios to multiply for his secondary ratios. The main purpose of secondary ratios was to equalize the distribution even further by subdividing the awkward gaps between primary ratio scale degrees. For instance, the distance between 1:1 and 11:10 (or 2:1 and 20:11) is larger than an equal-tempered minor second. Multiplication of 11- limit ratios provided numerous options for a smaller interval (36:35, 45:44, 49:48, 50:49, etc.). Partch’s choices of 81:80, 33:32, and 21:20 were based on specific criteria. To be consistent with his Monophonic principles, he chose ratios that were as simple as possible. In other words the ratios needed to have the smallest numbers possible, since small-number ratios are more consonant. Yet, these new tones also needed to be distant enough from the tones surrounding them to be distinct. Just how close tones could be to one another and retain their distinction was an issue often raised with respect to Partch’s forty-three tones. He considered this argument thoughtfully. He pointed to existing examples in India and the Near East that used even finer discriminations of tone than his, and he researched the phenomenon of ‘just noticeable differences’ between tones in acoustic theory. Carl Seashore’s Psychology of 87 Music (1938), a publication that included early work in the area of ‘just noticeable differences’, was among the works he referenced. Seashore’s experiments in the middle range of hearing and with a limited degree of timbre and intensity, found that average listeners could discern up to three hundred discriminations within an octave. If these three hundred discriminations are divided by the twelve hundred cents of an octave, the result is a just noticeable difference of approximately four cents. Partch recognized the clinical nature of how these experiments were conducted, and he knew not to push as far as four-cent intervals. The smallest interval in Monophony is 14.4 cents, between 12:11 and 10:11 ascending, and between 11:6 and 20:11 descending. The 14.4 cent ratio can be discovered by subtracting the larger ratio from the smaller in either pair: for example, 12:11 - 10:11 = 12:11 x 11:10 = 121:120. Even if Partch had used 121:120 as a basic unit for every scale step he would have quickly doubled the number of tones in the Monophonic scale. This fact presents Monophony as a relatively small subset of tones rather than an overwhelming array, as it was sometimes described. Six Otonalities and six Utonalities create the twelve primary tonalities of Monophony. The addition of secondary ratios provides sixteen secondary tonalities. In most cases the secondary tonalities have incomplete hexachords, thus, the secondary tonalities are not as clearly audible as the primary tonalities. Each one does contain a triad, however, and according to Partch’s thinking this qualified them to be considered distinct tonalities. 88 Eight Secondary Otonalities Unity 5 Odentity 3 Odentity 7 Odentity 9 Odentity 11 Odentity 3:2 15:8 9:8 21:16 27:16 33:32 6:5 3:2 9:5 21:20 27:20 9:5 9:8 27:20 81:80 16:15 4:3 8:5 6:5 32:21 40:21 8:7 4:3 12:7 32:27 40:27 16:9 4:3 7:5 7:4 21:20 27:20 27:16 81:80 Eight Secondary Utonalities Unity 5 Udentity 3 Udentity 7 Udentity 9 Udentity 11 Udentity 4:3 16:15 16:9 32:21 32:27 64:33 5:3 4:3 10:9 40:21 40:27 10:9 16:9 40:27 160:81 15:8 3:2 5:4 5:3 21:16 21:20 7:4 3:2 7:6 27:16 27:20 9:8 3:2 10:7 8:7 40:21 40:27 32:27 160:81 Table 2-3. Sixteen secondary tonalities in Monophony. An important question about Partch’s tonal theory is how it manifests within his compositions. The expedited answer to this is that tonality is an important factor, but not necessarily by design. A more thorough response must be sought through close analysis of his works. Very little is known about Partch’s compositional planning. He left only a few small sketches, and he always composed in complete isolation. 74 From the emphasis in his writings on intuition, it is likely that he approached composition in a freely associative manner, with one compositional figure leading to the next without premeditated organization. What can be observed through analysis is that ‘tonality’ for Partch often refers to only a single chord, and that the overriding influence of 1:1 tonality is constant. He mainly put forth the twenty-eight tonalities of Monophony to show the system’s potential. He felt it was important to explicate Monophony as more than a 89 system capable of fine sensitivity for Unison music. He also wanted to present it as a robust system that could contribute to a more developed form of Harmonic music. The foremost limitation of just intonation in comparison to equal temperament is just intonation’s inability to maintain clear relationships through tonal transposition and modulation. Partch did not dispute this as a limitation, but he did stress that Monophony is capable of real transpositions, and more importantly, novel modulations. Admittedly, modulations in Monophony are not likely to serve the same structuring function as they do in equal temperament. Dominants, secondary dominants, and leading tones are audible in Western music largely by convention. These components exist in Monophony, but they are mainly audible in the context of the Prime Unity (1:1). Partch actually saw this limitation as an advantage. Regardless of how complex the tonal relationships become in Monophony, they are always physically grounded by 1:1. His fourfold thesis of Monophony was predicated on the expression of just intervals as an expansion from a single source. 75 Peripheral benefits included increased chromatic potential, expanded options for tonal relationships, and greater variety in the quality of tonality. Notwithstanding the broader potential, the first principle of his thesis regarding the expansion of all tonal resources from 1:1 is the most critical in Partch’s application of Monophony. He liked to say that a musical tone is not a hermit. 76 It is always in relation to another tone, and no relationship between tones is more important than the relationship between a tone and its source. 90 The First Instrument to Realize His Musical Ideas A few weeks after completing the first draft of “Exposition of Monophony” Partch left San Francisco. For some months he taught piano and violin for a family in Santa Rosa in exchange for free rent, but before the year’s end his restlessness had once again become overwhelming. He described his state at the time as resentment for his “adventureless” existence. 77 He became a migrant laborer, following the availability of work harvesting fruit in central California. Because he had often camped as a teenager, living outdoors was not a major challenge for him. And unlike his later experiences during the Depression era, Partch’s life style at this time was completely self determined. Proofreading and copy editing jobs were easily available by his own admission. The decision to leave his job and residence was therefore mostly an extension of his youthful practice of setting out on his own. 78 It is not clear exactly what he carried with him. He might have brought at least one viola along, or stored all of his instruments with friends. The same might have been true for his manuscripts. While still in Santa Rosa he had begun marking carefully measured ratios on a cello fingerboard he would later use to construct his first completed instrument, and he might have carried this with him as well. Regardless of how much of his creative work he took with him, the timing of his departure was unusual. One would expect him to have taken the opportunity presented by the completion of his “Exposition of Monophony” to market his theory, but this was not the case. His eventual return to urban living brought still another incongruity; the music he began to compose was decidedly in a popular style. 91 Under the pseudonym Paul Pirate, Partch composed numerous popular songs, and for a short time composed a new song every day. 79 Some of the lyrics were trite, while others were obscene, but most were infused with influences from his migrant laborer experience. Partch either gained a greater affinity to folk and popular music living among laborers and hobos, or the experience simply rekindled a forgotten comfort with these styles. It is also possible that his popular songs were an attempt to secure a new form of income, and if so, one can only speculate about what his later music would have been like if he had been successful. Whatever his purpose was, his use of a pseudonym suggests that his intention was to make a distinction between his creative and popular work. A more significant indication of this is that only one of these songs has survived. The one that did, My Heart Keeps Beating Time, only survived Partch’s self censorship because it was published by Lloyd Campbell Publications in San Francisco. Figure 2-5. “My Heart Keeps Beating Time”; music by Paul Pirate (A. K. A., Harry Partch). 80 92 He had attempted to publish others, even one of the obscene ones, but this was the only one that was picked up. Even though the publisher brought in an experienced lyricist to revise Partch’s lyrics, the song never became popular. 81 Partch soon tired of these efforts, and never returned to popular writing again. His wanderings continued, however, and for a short time he even became an apprentice seaman. Still using his pseudonym, he registered for service in Philadelphia, but he likely shipped out of Oakland. In total his nautical career appear to have lasted less than a month. The next time he held a consistent address was in New Orleans in 1930. Partch’s stability in New Orleans was due in part to a copy-editing job at the Times-Picayune. It was also at this time that he returned to his creative work. He came to the city without contacts, and for no express purpose. 82 He apparently had little interest in participating in New Orleans’s thriving jazz community. The spontaneity of the music appealed to him, but he had little faith in improvisation as a means to truly break from traditional structures. He pointed out that, in general, jazz makes use of the same tuning, instruments, chords, and harmonic progressions as concert music. 83 He was therefore suspicious of the alleged freedom of jazz’s pattern-oriented improvisation, although he did recognize its vitality. He had great reverence for jazz’s rhythmic energy and its natural use of the voice in performance. 84 He also commended jazz musicians for their open minded approach to new sounds and new techniques. Partch even sought out jazz musicians for his performances for this reason. He began using jazz musicians during the preparation of Oedipus in the 1950’s when a clarinetist from the San Francisco Symphony had denounced the clarinet part as unplayable. A mutual friend introduced Partch to a jazz clarinetist who was not only 93 excited about experimenting with the instrument, he also expressed that the part was not very difficult. 85 Because of his recent venture into commercial music writing, it is reasonable to expect some connection between this and Partch’s move to New Orleans. He did see similarities between jazz and popular music, but he had given up all aspirations of any commercial success by this time. He was now completely dedicated to realizing his Monophonic theory with original compositions, and his resolve grew stronger with the completion of a new instrument he initially called the ‘monophone’. Partch still had the cello fingerboard he marked with ratios in Santa Rosa, and he took this to Edwin Benton, a New Orleans violin maker. Benton’s possible creative role in the effort is unknown. His known contribution was to attach the fingerboard to a viola body, and the result was a new instrument that Partch would eventually call the Adapted Viola. He stated that he would have preferred a violin, but the fingerboard is too short. He could also have made use of a cello without any more alterations than marking the fingerboard. The main disadvantage of cellos for Partch was that they were too large, and above all, he wanted an instrument that was easily portable. 86 The idea of creating or modifying instruments in order to play in just intonation was certainly a theme in Helmholtz’s book, and this was likely the source of Partch’s conception. Yet, Partch also had an affinity for wood working that he gained as a boy. His father always kept tools, and taught Partch how to use them. The experience would have helped to train his eye for the potential of materials, such as the cello fingerboard that he found discarded. In order to improve upon the paper coverings he used for his string quartet, Partch hammered tiny brad-head nails into the fingerboard to mark the ratios. He inserted the nails at the sides of the string lines instead of under them, so they would not interfere 94 with the playing area. By hammering nails into the fingerboard he was moving away from the idea of providing an aid for others to play his music on their personal instruments. He was creating a new instrument that would be permanently dedicated to his music. Figure 2-6. Adapted Viola fingerboard with ratios indicated. 87 Benton and Partch retained the use of cello tuning pegs, and used cello strings for all but the first string, which used either a violin or nylon guitar string. The lowest string was tuned a fourth below the lowest viola string, and a fifth above the lowest cello string. At 98hz, it was two octaves below the 392hz, ‘G’ above middle ‘C’. 88 Beginning on ‘G’ the strings were tuned in the typical Pythagorean pattern of successive fifths: 1:1 (G); 3:2 (D); 9:8 (A); 27:16 (E). The bridge was also flattened under the 9:8 and 27:16 strings in order to allow triple stops for playing triads. There are twenty-nine stops per octave marked on the fingerboard. With the advent of his Chromelodeon organ Partch would later make such markings by ear, but at this time he relied upon computations and measurements. The twenty-nine ratios on the Adapted Viola correspond with his theory at the time, but they were also due to the limitations of hammering nails within a small area. Ratios that fall outside the twenty-nine must be produced by comparative estimation. For instance the 9:8 is not marked, but can be obtained by stopping the midpoint between 95 10:9 and 8:7. This seems contradictory in respect to Partch’s interest for achieving pure intervals, but indeed the markings were only guide points. They were not intended to correct the natural imperfections of string technique. Partch’s preferred playing technique, in fact, highlighted the viola’s ability to move between tones over its ability to represent discrete pitches. Partch employed a one-finger playing technique in order to release, as he said, the “intrinsic spiritual character” of the instrument. 89 He felt that Western performance training negated this character by placing emphasis on tonal precision, and in doing so opposed the performer’s potential for individual expression. Much like natural speech, his one-finger technique resulted in additional sounds that accompanied the gliding movements as the finger moved from one note to the next. Gliding from, and toward, tones become part of the overall sound quality of the instrument even when glides are not called for. It has been suggested that his one-finger technique was inspired by a similar playing technique used for the Chinese erhu. 90 Partch himself compared it to the sound production to the vina from South India, but more important was his recognition of it as a historically documented and viable technique. A possible Chinese influence is made stronger, however, by the fact that his first compositions on this new instrument were setting of poems by the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Po. The Li Po settings, composed between 1930 and 1933, marked the beginning of Partch’s mature compositions. The fact that the composition of these pieces occurred immediately after the completion of the Adapted Viola reveals that the instrument was a primary inspiration behind them. 96 Figure 2-7. Partch playing Adapted Viola in 1954. 91 It was also around this time that Partch destroyed his early works. The exact date and location have varied with his retellings, and therefore cannot be substantiated. The dates reported vary by as much as four years, but the most consistent date is ostensibly 1929. One account of the event recalled by acoustician and Partch’s long-time friend, Erv Wilson, was that the idea to ceremoniously destroy his works appeared to Partch in a dream. In the dream the errors of his compositional ways were supposedly revealed, Wilson said, and the direction he was to take was made known to him. 92 A less poetic account was given by Partch later in his life, when he stated that the idea was the result of a long contemplative process. 93 According to Partch, if it had been a single event that provoked him to destroy his works it would have been much more difficult to do, and he would have regretted it afterwards. The idea occurred to him more than once over the years as he continued to accumulate more compositions while working out his theory. Ultimately, once the decision was made, there was reportedly a cathartic element to the 97 destruction. The ritualistic nature of how Partch accomplished this act prefigured the notion of ritualized performance he was beginning to develop. Now that he had the foundation of his theory documented, and a new instrument to realize it, he regretted his attempts at mainstream music. In the fire Partch did not even spare the microtonal music he composed in mainstream forms. By this time he was placing more value on the aesthetic intent behind his works than the actual sounds within them. The pieces he wrote as a teenager and during his early twenties, the symphonic poem he hoped would be performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the string quartet in just intonation, and the songs of Paul Pirate were all burnt to ashes. Partch referred to the act as his “adolescent auto-de-fé”. 94 More explicitly, it was a confession. It was a confession to himself that he had compromised his individualism in the attempt to make his way as a composer. In the years that followed he maintained a staunch dedication to his individualistic ideal—even at the expense of chances for wider success. Partch’s individualism was, in fact, the source of his theory. This would become even more evident when he moved in a new musical direction: Corporealism. 98 CHAPTER TWO ENDNOTES 1. Harry Partch, Genesis, ix. 2. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 30. 3. Connections between lonliness and creativity are found scattered through Partch’s essays. See, for example, “Some New and Old Thoughts After and Before The Bewitched (A Latter-Day Ritual Designed to Defertilize the Machine Age for a Period of Seventy-Five Minutes) [1955]” in Bitter Music, 230-238. 4. Letter from Harry Partch to David Bowmen, October 3, 1960. Reprinted in Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3: Harry Partch (Saint Paul: American Composers Forum, 1997) 287-8. 5. Author unknown, “Tone Declamation Sought Vs. New Musical Art,” Oakland Tribune (November 12, 1931) ?. Reprinted in Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3, 9. “The effect when heard is eerie, exotic, and unmodern”. 6. Selby Noel Mayfield, “Student Devises 29-Degree Octave Theory of Music”, New Orleans Times-Picayune (November 16, 1930) 25. Reprinted in Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3, 9. 7. Harry Partch interviewed by Vivian Perlis, San Diego, March 1974. Unpublished transcript: Oral History Project, American Music Series 24 a-f, Yale University School of Music, 23. 8. Betty Freeman interviewed by Brian Harlan, February 2000. 9. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 16. 10. Ibid., 21. Although Virgil Partch was hired based upon his ability to speak Mandarin, the majority of the Chinese in the area actually spoke Cantonese. 11. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 22. “Well, I never heard them argue about anything; there was nothing emotional. They slept in different beds through all their life that I can remember. There was nothing emotional. It was always religious; and I got sick of it.” 12. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 24. 13. Ibid., 23. 14. Harry Partch, Genesis, 14-15. 99 15. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 27. 16. Harry Partch, Genesis, 29. 17. Harry Partch, Genesis, ix. 18. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 18-19. 19. Harry Partch, Genesis, ix. 20. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 25. Also referred to as “Death on the Dessert” in Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 26. See also, Harry Partch, Genesis, x. 21. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 34. 22. Bitter Music, which later became the foundation Partch’s The Wayward, was microfilmed and preserved by Lauriston C. Marshall apparently without Partch’s knowledge. See: Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 116. 23. See: Redfern Mason, “Music Gamut of Speech is Noted Down”, San Francisco Examiner (November 29, 1931) E-8. Reprinted in Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, 14, 469; author unknown, “Tone Declamation Sought Vs. New Musical Art”, Oakland Tribune (November 12, 1931). Reprinted in Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, 13, 469; Alexander Fried, “Declamation Music Given by Originator: Partch Plays Obbligato as Soprano Recites Classic Texts”, San Francisco Chronicle, (February 10, 1932) 9. Reprinted in Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, 15, 469. 24. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 12. 25. Ibid., 20. 26. Thomas McGeary, ed., Bitter Music, 250. 27. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 39. 28. Samuel Andrew Granade II, I Was a Bum Once Myself: Harry Partch , U.S. Hichball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illionois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005, 274. Grande states, “Monophony, and later Corporeality, were frankly Romantic notions of music’s role as an art in society”. See also: Ben Johnston, “The Corporealism of Harry Partch,” Perspectives of New Music 13/2 (Spring-Summer, 1975) 85-87. 29. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 26. 100 30. Partch’s attraction to Romantic music was probably based more on its harmonic language than any relationship to narrative. At a gathering of friends, while heavily intoxicated, Partch once sat down to a piano and began playing Chopin. Chopin’s commitment to intimacy in his compositions would have appealed to Partch, and would have been more important than narrative ideas realized, for example, through programmatic music. This point is the author’s speculation, but based on discussions with Danlee Mitchell in 1998. 31. This unpublished manuscript is held in the University Archives at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. See also: Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 41. 32. Harry Partch, Genesis, vi. 33. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 28. 34. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 39-40. 35. Ibid., 41, 48. Partch’s initial applications were to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1932 and 1933. Both are on file at the foundation in New York. 36. Harry Partch, Genesis, vii. 37. Richard M. Kassel, “The Evolution of Harry Partch’s Monophony”, Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1996, 37-37. 38. Bertha McCord Knisely, “Music”, (Los Angeles) Saturday Night, (February 25, 1933) 12. Reprinted in Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, 18, 470. 39. Richard M. Kassel, “Evolution of Harry Partch’s Monophony”, 37. 40. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 84. What Partch gained most from Cowell’s book was the concept of undertones, which Partch called Utonality. 41. Harry Partch, Genesis, vii. 42. Partch’s early notation systems were not included in Genesis, but a description of them was published as “Experiments in Notation” in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliot Schwartz and Barney Childs, (New York: Da Capo, 1978). 101 43. Selby Noel Mayfield, “Student Devises 29-Degree Octave Theory of Music”, New Orleans Times-Picayune (November 16, 1930) 25. Reprinted in Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3, 9; and Alexander Fried, “Declamation Music Given by Originator: Partch Plays Obbligato as Soprano Recites Classic Texts”, San Francisco Chronicle, (February 10, 1932) 9. Reprinted in Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, 15, 469. 44. Harry Partch, “A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations” [1967] in Bitter Music, 195. 45. Harry Partch, “Oedipus” [1954] in Bitter Music, 220. 46. For more on this relationship and the question of Genesis as the definitive statement of Partch’s theory, see: Gilmore, Harry Partch, 61. 47. Harry Partch, Genesis, 121, 185. See also: Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 28: “Musical structure is something that arises out of the necessity for writing music. I certainly don’t care whether I’m writing perfect counterpoint, or whether voices are moving in the way that I was taught to move them”. 48. Combinational tones are audible when two different pitches occur together loudly and continuously. The pitch of the resulting combinational tone is generally different from that of either the source tones, or their harmonics. There are two kinds of combinational tones: “difference tones”, where the resulting tones are the difference between the two source tones; and the less audible “summational tones”, where the resulting tones are the sum of the two source tones (summational tones were discovered by Helmholtz). See: Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological basis for the Theory of Music, edited by Alexander J. Ellis, second English edition (New York: Dover, 1954) 5, 152-3. 49. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 315. 50. Ibid., 319. 51. Ibid., 323. 52. Ibid., 2-4. 53. Gilmore, Harry Partch, 51. 54. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 24. 55. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 52. The Mandarin Theater opened in 1924, and Partch regularly attended performances there. 102 56. According to Ben Johnston, Partch was as critical of exoticism as he was with mainstream Western music. See: Ben Johnston “The Corporealism of Harry Partch,” Perspectives of New Music, 13/2 (Spring-Summer, 1975) 85-97. 57. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 56. 58. Rodney Oaks, “A Musician Seduced Into Carpentry: Harry Partch, 1901-1974,” Composer 16 (1976) 26-28. 59. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 58. 60. Henry Cowell, “43 Tone Minstrelsy”, Saturday Review, (November 26, 1945) 65. 61. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 236. 62. Ibid., 237. 63. Harry Partch, Genesis, 7. The seeming contradiction between this statement and Partch’s large-scale theatrical works is noted, and will be addressed in the next chapter. 64. Ibid., 86-94. See: “Basic Monophonic Concepts”. Partch put forth four primary monophonic concepts, which are here reduced to two. The first and fourth can be combined as they both describe the growth from consonance to dissonance. The second and third can also be combined since they both deal with tonality; Otonality and Utonality respectively. 65. Harry Partch, Genesis, 154. 66. Ibid., 88-89. 67. Brief definitions of all Partch’s terms can be found in Genesis, 67-75. 68. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 176-7. 69. Harry Partch, Genesis, 111. 70. Richard M. Kassel, “Evolution of Harry Partch’s Monophony”, 74. 71. Harry Partch, Genesis, 89. 72. Ibid., 120. 73. Harry Partch, “Resume of Exposition of Monophony”, 1933. This document was attached as part of Partch’s Guggenheim Fellowship application. Reprinted in Phillip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3, 27. 103 74. David Dunn, ed., Harry Partch: an Anthology of Critical Perspectives, Contemporary Music Studies 9 (The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000) 13. 75. Harry Partch, Genesis, 158. “The major contribution of Monophony as an intonational system”, he wrote, was “its realization of a subtle and acoustically precise interrelation of tonalities, all stemming or expanding from unity, 1/1.” 76. Ibid., 86. “A tone, in music, is not a hermit, divorced from the society of its fellows. It is always in relation to another tone, heard or implied. In other words it is a musical interval, the relation between two tones. This relation is continually mutable, to be sure, but it never ceases to exist.” 77. Letter from Harry Partch to David Bowmen, October 3, 1960. Reprinted in Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3: Harry Partch (Saint Paul: American Composers Forum, 1997) 287-8. 78. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 51. “[It was] a more down-to-earth life, a life of sleeping out on a river bank, cooking my own food. Oh, what a relief it was. Because I’d done a lot of camping as a child, and this was getting back to that. Then I experienced flophouses for twenty-five cents a night, even less sometimes. It was all so clean and beautiful to be close to nature.” 79. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 59. A possible source for this psueodonym may have been Partch’s brother, Paul Partch, who was a career officer in the U. S. Navy. 80. Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, 8 81. The lyricist was Ted Lewis (also known as Larry Yoell). As an example of Partch’s original lyrics: “I’ve gone away; away forever; away from tries and tears; away from loves, hates, thrills, fears; the stars above; the winds beneath me; in spreading sails; in hobo trails; where I’m bound away for Sacramento Jungle; for the joy o’living; I’m strumming, a strumming on my vocal chords a-tingle; while my heart keeps beating time…”. 82. Gilmore has speculated that Partch might have been attracted to a relative freedom for homosexuals, which was specific to New Orleans among American cities at the time. See: Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 72. 83. Harry Partch, “Monoliths in Music”, in Bitter Music, 194. 84. Harry Partch, “The Rhythmic Motivations of ‘Castor and Pollux’ and ‘Even Wild Horses’” [1952], in Bitter Music, 222. 104 85. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 33-34. 86. Ibid., 47. 87. Harry Partch, Genesis, 201. 88. Partch referred to “1/1-392” as a standard for his tuning similar to how A-440 concert pitch is used. See: Harry Partch, Genesis, 200. 89. Harry Partch, Genesis, 201. “In a sense, there has been a flat denial in the West for many centuries of the intrinsic spiritual character of both bowed strings and the human voice. Both have been forced, through intense discipline, to try to perform like pipe organs—in precise, discrete steps. Press a key—there is a tone; lift the finger—the tone ends. Yet these tonal means are entitled to their individualities, and it defeats the inner strength of both when the individuals concerned are forced into the molds of crypto- organists”. 90. Lydia Ayers, “The Chinese Connection: Harry Partch and the Li Po Settings,” 1/1: the Journals of the Just Intonation Network 9/2 (1995) 1-15. 91. Harry Partch, Enclosure 3, 324. 92. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 74. 93. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 50. 94. Harry Partch, Genesis, x. 105 CHAPTER THREE SPONTANEOUS MUSIC Musical Communication in the Twentieth Century In a 1974 interview with Vivian Perlis, Partch responded to a question about the relationship between Monophony and Corporealism with indifference. “Oh, I suppose in an abstruse way you could connect them”, he replied “but I don’t try to connect them; I don’t see any point in connecting them.” 1 The point, at least for the interests of Partch scholars, would be to resolve some of the perplexing contradictions between these two concepts and his music. In his theory he insisted on the intelligibility of words, for example, while at the same time he made use of nonsense syllables in a preponderance of pieces. He also claimed to strive for a universal quality in his music that was unbound by region or era, yet some of his most important pieces were documentary depictions of life in the United States in the 1930’s. And he emphatically called for an intimate presentation of concert music, while over the course of his career he continued to add more instruments to his ensemble, creating increasingly larger spectacles. These and other contradictions might easily lead one to believe that there are no clear correlations between Partch’s ideas and his music. Only a short time before the interview cited above took place, he upheld his continued belief in all of what he called his “dominant themes;” namely, Monophony and Corporeality. 2 A common thread does indeed bind these themes together with aspects of his compositional technique. 106 Furthermore, by revealing the connections between these conceptual themes and his music a holistic understanding of Partch’s work can be discovered. Monophony and Corporealism are connected by their common ground in Partch’s modernist notion of individualism. The theory of Monophony can be summarized as an amalgam of two primary notions. The first was based on his realization that a single tone is capable of generating all other tones within a harmonic series, and manifested in his use of just intonation. The other was his concept of ‘One Voice’, which insisted on the authority of the composer. Taken together, an intriguing analogy can be drawn between the generating tone and the individual artist. Partch expended considerable effort explaining both just intonation and One Voice, yet it will be argued here that the concept of One Voice is more fundamental. It provided the basis for his use of just intonation, and it was later developed into Corporealism. The One Voice concept did not stipulate that a composer must literally make use of his or her own voice (although Partch did compose many pieces for his own voice, and performed them as the leading vocalist). One Voice meant, more specifically, that a work was composed of “one mind”. 3 He had little patience for ideas such as indeterminate composition, or audience participation. A work of art, he believed, must be founded on the creative vision of a single artist. Partch was extremely insistent on this point, even to a detrimental degree in some instances. Ben Johnston, a composer who knew Partch and his music perhaps more intimately than any other, once stated that Partch’s single-most flaw as an artist was that he wanted to be the sole creator of every aspect of his works. 4 This became problematic in his theatrical works as he began to 107 include dance and drama. In Johnston’s opinion, Partch did not have the necessary knowledge or technique in these areas to be able to work alone. The effects of Partch’s unwillingness to release artistic control can be seen acutely in his 1957 collaboration with choreographer Alwin Nikolais on the production of The Bewitched-A Dance Satire. The work is a series of ten short scenes with a prologue. The music is continuous throughout the hour and a half performance, and the otherwise unrelated scenes were tied together by the dancer’s interaction with a benevolent witch. In each scene the omniscient witch encounters a situation that requires, as Partch put it, “a diametric reversal”. 5 Through her ability to facilitate visions, the witch is able to help those she encountered to overcome prejudice and individual limitations, and to reach catharsis. In terms of its subject matter and production style the work is a prime example of what came to be referred to as Partch’s Corporealism. Bewitched was designed to be analogous to an ancient lyric tragedy, but one in which the action was presented through dance. The musicians performed on stage with their instruments as part of the set, and also functioned as the chorus. In the introduction to the work Partch wrote that the chorus was a “corporeal part of the drama” in that the members visually play instruments, sing, whistle, and stamp their feet. 6 During the production, communication between Partch and Nikolais was exacerbated by the fact that preparations were completed from remote locations. Partch was working in Illinois and Nikolais was working in New York. Still, there was more to their disagreements than simple miscommunication. From Partch’s perspective the source of the problem was Nikolais’s intent on a poetic and non-linear rendition of Partch’s narrative. Partch had sent Nikolais instructions that laid out the scenarios to 108 follow, the dance style in each scene, some specific dramatic movements he wanted incorporated into the choreography, and even lighting and costuming ideas. Partch had stipulated that the witch be almost always near the front of the stage, for example, dressed in robes that reflected lights that changed color; the instruments were to be on risers connected by stairways, and the dancers were to jump over stairs—with feet together—on the beat; arms and eyes were never to be raised by a dancer simultaneously, except for satirical purposes; and so on. Table 3-1 shows the specificity Nikolais was asked to work with. Only the final scene was left open for negotiation. Nikolais was likely not accustomed to such explicit directions, and decided to set them aside altogether. Scene Titles Program Dance Style/Technique Prologue. The Lost Musicians Mix Magic A group of lost musicians happen upon an ensemble of instruments, on a stage, in front of an audience. They begin to play, and their music call forth the witch Witch appears with slow, rigid and dignified movements, but also with occasional quick and furious movements 1. Three Undergrads Become Transfigured in a Hong Kong Music Hall Through the influence of the chorus, the undergrads xenophobia is purged Imitation of Cantonese music hall 2. Exercises in Harmony and Counterpoint are Tried in a Court of Ancient Ritual The witch and chorus un-witches the bewitchment of modern music theory by placing it in the context of ancient musical knowledge as a whole Eighteenth-century formality, with satiric twentieth-century expressionism in some parts 3. The Romancing of a Pathological Liar Comes to an Inspired End A tragic coming of age story about a boy so obsessed by what he desires that it begins to control him. The witch and chorus attempt to help him take control, but it is too late East Indian, with some tumbling 4. A Soul Tormented by Contemporary Music Finds a Humanizing Alchemy A soul becomes so interested and immersed in the ideas of ancient times that it is no loner able to function in contemporary society. The Chorus facilitate the enculturation of the soul to modern times by use of slapstick comedy A formal solo, with modern dance farce at the end 5. Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room Through their failure a basketball team becomes feminized, and as women, realize the triviality of the defeat, and begin to dance in praise of Hermes Begins with slightly satiric expressionism Table 3-1. Scenes, programmatic reference, and dance styles originally stipulated by Partch for Bewitched. 109 Scene Titles Program Dance Style/Technique 6. Euphoria Descends a Sausalito Stairway An adolescent boy and girl display their love in dance, which becomes out of control through their athletic displays. The witch harnesses their energy and limits it to a back and forth motion on a stairway (to symbolize eternity) Satiric ballet, almost throughout 7. Two Detectives on the Trail of a Tricky Culprit Turn in Their badges A suspect being interrogated by two detectives cleverly evades their questioning until plead with him to honor the memory of his dead mother. The witch and chorus reveal the three- directional codependency between the detectives and the suspect, and they eventually pledge eternal cooperation Modern-dance comedy throughout 8. A Court in Its Own Contempt Rises to a Motherly Apotheosis The human male stands trial (in absentia) in a modern court. A female witness tells a tragic account, but the male-dominated court is unmoved. She becomes furious and indignant. The witch and chorus reveal that the court is based on the standards of an ancient matriarchy; the judge is unseated and replace with the witness Kabuki throughout 9. A Lost Political Soul Finds Himself among the Voteless Women of Paradise A politician moving between consciousness and unconsciousness dreams of paradise, yet his dream becomes a nightmare through a realization that the houris (virgin nymphs of Muslim paradise) surrounding him cannot take part in his election. The witch and chorus remove the reality of contemporary consciousness so that the politician can enjoy his dream Near East throughout 10. The Cognoscenti are Plunged into a Demonic Descent While at Cocktails The cognoscenti are the most difficult—if not impossible—to unwitch. Yet, through controlled and fierce magic the witch is able to penetrate their consciousness Open Table 3-1. Scenes, programmatic reference, and dance styles originally stipulated by Partch for Bewitched (continued). In the end it was Partch’s inability to allow the introduction of a secondary voice in his work that led him to publicly denounce Nikolais’s choreography. In a letter to Nikolais (never sent, but retained by Partch) he wrote: The idea and the music of The Bewitched are my creation. As I have repeatedly stated, and as is obvious in the score, they are one. To assume that being ‘free’ means that you may use a composer’s music and at the same time reject the dramatic motivation of that music, and without consulting him, is extraordinary indeed. 7 110 The letter actually sent was less inflammatory, but his point was consistent. Partch was insulted by the idea that his dramatic directions for the dancers were not followed faithfully without interpretation. In the program for the premier Partch even took pains to explain for the audience that none of the three elements of the piece (the programmatic references of the scene titles, the music, or the dance), should be presumed to “interpret” the other. 8 The performance itself was considered by many critics at the time as Partch’s most important and successful production. In Partch’s opinion, however, it was an unmitigated failure. 9 Despite the problems facing the production, Bewitched remains a pivotal work for Partch. It marked a drastic shift from his monadic songs for voice and a small number of instruments, to large-scale productions that integrated a sizable ensemble of musicians, dramatic narrative, and dance. The combination of these elements is one of the best- known characterizations of Partch’s work, and is an important aspect of his concept of Corporealism. On a superficial level the integration of dance, drama, and music in the production of Bewitched was a success. The reason Partch considered it a failure was because the integration was designed to be realized by a blending of the traditional roles of the dancer, actor, and musician. The dancer/actor/musical performer, like the “idea and the music” was intended to be one, and therefore Partch wanted the same performer to alternate between dancing, acting, and playing an instrument. Understanding this provides a more sympathetic view of Partch’s apparently uncompromising approach to his productions. Although the stipulation of his One Voice ideal does not necessarily justify his over-controlling behavior, it does bring greater clarity to his frame of mind. 111 Bewitched and his other theatrical productions are often described as Corporeal in terms of how the dance, drama, and music are integrated, but the integration process does not provide a complete picture of Corporealism. Partch himself said that any formula for “Corporealizing” music would eventually be as hackneyed as a sonata. 10 Importantly, then, Corporeal music cannot be defined simply by its elements. Corporealism was Partch’s term for his performance aesthetic that enabled a social connection between performers and audience members. It was not achieved in his work through the instructions he gave, but rather through the interaction between all those present at a given performance. Furthermore, Corporealism is more than tangentially related to Monophony in that it developed out of his Monophonic concept of One Voice. In fact, his initial definition of the term ‘Corporeal’ presented it as “a Monophonic concept”. 11 In that context Corporeal music was described as the “vocal and verbal music of the individual”. This notion of a ‘music of the individual’, which appears more than once in his writings about Corporealism, suggests that his individual-centered concept of One Voice was actually embedded within his concept Corporealism. 112 Figure 3-1. Bill Frank and Phyllis Lamhut rehearsing The Bewitched at the University of Illinois, 1957. 12 Many of Partch’s ideas can be traced back to another source, although they are typically repurposed to suit his own specific needs. This is true of his use of just intonation, monophonic texture, the ideas behind many of his instruments, and his integration of dance, drama, and music. The concept of One Voice, however, is relatively unique. It might be conceived as a return to Romantic notions of the composer/artist as hero, and such an argument can be quite useful. Yet the concept must also be considered within the context of twentieth-century culture and society. Partch believed that individualism in the arts was being suppressed in American society. This was due not only to an external system of social controls, but to self censorship as well. We unwittingly suppress our own individualism, he explained, because we are afraid of truly being our physical selves. Partch attacked what he called a “paralysis of individualism” in a variety of essays, and attempt to remedy it by example. 13 Accordingly, he described the direction of his life’s work as follows: 113 It would seem axiomatic that any music, whether it is that of a well-known writer of symphonies or that of an anonymous folk singer, reveals the philosophic attitude of its creator. It also seems self-evident that if his attitude is vigorous and individualistic, his practical requirements are not necessarily satisfied by the traditions he was born to; they may even require direct antitheses. Simple repetition does not, and cannot, fulfill the creative urges of such a person. He is living his life, a new life, and though he is a generated bundle of physical and mental similarities to millions of other entities, he is still a new being. Neither physically nor mentally is he a simple repetition. 14 Corporealism was intended to be a social acknowledgement of our individual, physical selves gained through intuitive insight. As an artistic initiative the works Partch created using Corporeal techniques can be aligned with twentieth-century music theater. As a philosophical initiative, Corporealism can be loosely aligned with phenomenology. Corporealism is sometimes the most discussed aspect of Partch’s music, and at other times it is the most avoided. Authors who do approach the concept rarely define it without qualifications. This is understandable, since Partch’s own definition was vague from his earliest introduction of the term, and it became even more elusive over time. The term ‘Corporeal’ entered his writings in the early 1940’s. 15 It was crystallized in 1949 with the publication of Genesis, but he continued to add more layers of meaning in subsequent essays and introductions of new works. To its conceptual foundation as a verbal music with emphasis on physicality in performance, Partch added associations of non-verbal communication, ritual, and magic. His political stance about why such a musical style and production style were needed to oppose mainstream concert music eventually became part of the definition as well. As a result of attempting to accommodate all the different pieces of what Corporealism meant for Partch, the sophistication and reliability of scholarly 114 interpretations of the concept often vary. Some authors simply restate Partch’s definition (or portions of it) without modification. 16 Other authors focus on the techniques and devices used to achieve so called Corporeal works. 17 David Nicholls wrote that Corporealism is “almost impossible to define succinctly, but has to do fundamentally with the physical aspects of musical performance”. 18 Such a description is correct, but it does not fully articulate the concept. For Ben Johnston Corporealism was “a vehement protest against what he [Partch] considered the negation of the body and the bodily in our society. It resulted specifically in an attack on abstraction….He directed us to see people doing things”. 19 This definition is succinct, provocative, and accurate, but it is still incomplete. Many authors have followed Partch’s lead in defining Corporeal music with respect to what it was not, namely, Abstract music as classified by Partch. He believed that Western music became increasingly abstract through an expectation within the Catholic Church for congregations to be musically expressive as a group, rather than as individuals. The development of polyphony, instrumental-like uses of the voice, and an increasingly subordinate role of the text overtook secular music as well, according to Partch, and all of Western music thereafter became predominantly abstract. Corporeal music stood in direct opposition to this trend. In his own words Corporealism was “verbal,” “individual,” “physically allied” with its text or its dance, and “emotionally ‘tactile’”. In addition, Corporeal music was neither “mental” nor “spiritual”, nor grown from “pure form” in the way that Partch explained Abstract music was. 20 His quintessential example of Corporeal music was epic poetry performed as it was in ancient Greece with a musical type of speech. 115 Incidentally, he never claimed to be the first to point out a need for Corporeal music. He cited a number of historical and contemporaneous composers who had composed in this vein. Some of the composers he noted were: Vicenzo Galilei, Claudio Monteverdi, Jean Baptiste Lully, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Christoph von Gluck, Modest Moussorgsky, Leoš Janá ček, Hugo Wolf, Arnold Schönberg, Virgil Thomson, and Marc Blitzstein. 21 Still, much like his use of just intonation, Partch was unique as a composer in his singular dedication to Corporealism. Defining Partch’s Corporealism merely through its negation of Abstract music overlooks its positive aspect. A vital part of the inspiration and general purpose for Partch’s Corporeal music was centered on his concern for facilitating musical communication. This concern, stemming from his aspiration for individual expression, enables yet another Romantic interpretation of his music. 22 Indeed, in Partch’s era the notion that music was capable of communication was quaintly anachronistic. At the time much of the aesthetic justification behind more prominent musical movements such as neo-classicism, serialism, and indeterminism were founded on formalist rhetoric, which denied music’s ability to refer to anything beyond its sound and structure. Partch’s idea of musical communication did sometimes involve musical imagery or attempts to follow a program. Such was the case, for example, with The Bewitched. Yet, he was not so ingenuous to expect a specific emotional or psychological reaction from his audiences. Musical communication, in this context, should be understood as a composer/performer’s willingness to convey a personal statement, and a listener’s willingness to receive it, through intuitive means. As such, it describes the experiential aspect of all the participants involved as the music is performed. 23 The greatest fault of 116 Abstract music, in Partch’s view, was that it encouraged a passive experience. 24 Audiences could do no more than listen to Abstract music, therefore, they could not become deeply connected to the music and to the individuals performing it. What Partch put forth in his statements on communication as an active experiencing for all participants, was that a need existed within Western concert music for a more communal and ritualistic experience. The ritualistic quality of his music requires further explanation, but briefly it is interwoven with his idea of musical communication. Part of the value of ritual is its ability to condense complex sets of meaning beyond the ability of verbal communication. 25 This was an important part of what Partch was attempting to achieve in The Bewitched. In a pre-concert lecture he stated: Communication, if it functions at all, comes in many disguises: in plain words, or in artfully inflected words, or perhaps no words at all; perhaps telepathically or, according to some, as the result of trans-migratory souls recognizing each other from former lives. In any case, there is such a thing as extraverbal magic. And extraverbal magic is something I now wish to invoke. 26 Contradictions Between Monophony and Corporealism Beyond the confusion surrounding its definition, there are three primary contradictions that burden Partch’s concept of Corporeality, and in turn, the music he composed according to its ideals. These three contradictions can be summarized according to how they misrepresent his attitude toward meaningful words; a musical experience of here and now; and finally, individual expression and communication. All three contradictions are alluded to in Partch’s condemnation of hymns for their role in the development of Abstract music. 117 The hymn, a generic term that can be applied to all theistic adoration in music, was the inevitable musical vehicle to express the introspection and “faith” of the first converts, the zealots. And the hymn, like the philosophies that mother it, is a mass expression beyond the boundaries of the individual and the Corporeal, beyond this time and place (with ineludible exceptions), and it is not particularly important that the words be understood; they assert a pre-known transcendent belief, and they have no story to tell. 27 The grouping of these three ideas together provides a typical example of how his core ideas intermingled. If One Voice, Corporealism, and Monophony were taken as three discrete concepts the ideas presented in the statement could be aligned with them respectively. In other words, Monophony could be said to address his use of just intonation for depicting the subtle intonations of meaningful words, Corporealism to address bodily presence of a here and now experience, and One Voice to address individual expression. Yet, viewing these ideas discretely actually hinders understanding. Partch’s theory is more easily grasped when viewed holistically, with the concept of One Voice providing the foundation on which Monophony and Corporealism were built. Such a position is helpful particularly with respect to contradictions surrounding Partch’s insistence on meaningful words. He typically used monodic examples to aid in his explanations of Corporeal music. His earliest pieces fit neatly into a category of monodic works, and as such they helped to clarify his theory. Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po, for example, is a cycle of monodic songs for Adapted Viola and voice. In every setting the music is determined by the text, and the words are clearly articulated through intoned speech. The purpose of using such a simple musical style was to ensure that the text was not overshadowed by the music, or more pointedly, that the words were understood. 28 118 In an era before supertitles in opera houses, Partch was frustrated with the expectation that concert goers needed to know German, French or Italian, for instance, in order to fully appreciate the experience. This was also the essence of his complaint about the use of Latin in music by the Catholic Church. By presenting music with words that for many were unintelligible, he believed that these types of musical experiences made it impossible for an audience member to appreciate the emotional content of the work. The music in these experiences became abstract as a result, and audience members had no other alternative than to ascribe meaning to the music itself rather than the text. 29 In this sense Partch agreed with Helmholtz’s statement that words were vital to music as reference points for the feelings that music engendered, but could not represent alone. 30 With all his emphasis on the importance of meaningful words, it is reasonable to wonder at Partch’s frequent use of nonsense syllables in his texts. The use of such syllables is found in his earliest pieces. One of the Li Po settings, “In the Spring Time on the South Side of the Yangtze Kiang”, begins with ‘Ho—ho ho ho ho ho—M—m-m-m- m-m-m—Oh, Duh—duh-duh, the green spring…’. Another setting, “On the Ships of Spice”, builds to a section full of nonsense syllable, and ends with ‘Go-ah—Go-go-go- go, ho-ah!, ii—Eee—oh—Ah-ah—ii—ah, Oh—ah-ah—uh!’. Partch used nonsense syllables increasingly over the years, and they are a prevalent feature in all of in his major works. The excerpt from Revelation in the Courthouse Park below shows the extent to which he developed this technique. 31 119 DION: bu Ku bu (a) MOM and CHORUS OF EIGHT: K k k k k k k k k k DION: u bu (a) u bu b b b Sh—(a) Ku—(a) Ku—(a) b bu bu bu bu bu (a) K K K b bu (a) b bu (a) b bu (a) b bu bu bu bu bu K K b bu—ah—eewuh! bu bu bu bu b bu (a) bu bu bu b bu—ah—eewuh! CHORUS OF EIGHT: K k k k sh sh sh sh sh sh sh Ya uh—Ya uh--- Ya uh—oo--- Ish ku bu, Ish sh--- b bu a bu a oo hoo--- oo hoo--- oo oo—hoo--- Ya uh—hoo--- Ya uh--- Ish ku bu, Ish ku bu, Ish B bu a bu a, b bu a bu a, Hoo--- Hoo--- Kuh m m m m m m m m m m Ee--- Ku bu Ish ku bu Ish ku bu, B bu a bu a, b bu a bu a, Ku bu a Ya uh--- Ku bu a Ya uh--- Ish ku bu, Ish ku bu, B bu a bu a, b bu a bu a, b bu a bu a MOM and DION: O o o--- Ya uh--- Ya CHORUS OF EIGHT: K k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k In a discussion about the text of The Bewitched, furthermore, Partch once said “there’s not a single word that is recognizable, it’s all gibberish”. 32 The justification in this instance was that the text supported his goal of extra-verbal communication, yet ultimately Partch was forced to recognize that regardless of the goal it brought forth an abstract quality in the work. Unfortunately, he offered no further explanation with his recognition of this quality. One possible explanation is the influence of Native American music, which sometimes makes use of vocal sounds that carry no specific meaning. Partch’s interest in 120 Native American music came to maturity while he was working at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. Shortly after completing the Adapted Viola in New Orleans, Partch returned to San Francisco where he held his first performances with vocalist Rudolphine Radil. He then made his way south to Los Angeles and performed with another vocalist, Calista Rogers. Rogers introduced Partch to her circle of friends, and among them was the wife of the Southwest Museum’s director at the time. Partch was hired to transcribe Native American music from the Charles Fletcher Lummis Collection, which included works by numerous nations, such as: Cahuilla, Hupa, Isleta, Luiseno, Mono, Napa, Navajo, Objibwa, Papago, Pomo, and Serrano. 33 The experience marked his only demonstrable study of non-Western music, and can be considered an important part of his musical education. The songs he transcribed also had some impact on his compositional style. The melodies had a lasting influence, and he especially found the rhythmic complexity inspiring. His transcription of a Cahuilla dance appears in The Bewitched, for example, and his Cloud Chamber Music employs the melody of an Isleta song. Beyond this influence, it is known that Partch was aware of Native American usage of nonsense syllables in songs. He once recounted an instance when he had an opportunity to ask a group of Native Americans about the meaning of a song’s words. According to his account of the story, the group agreed that “once upon a time they meant something, but now they’re just syllables”. 34 There is no evidence about when this encounter might have taken place, however, and it should be stated that its importance in regards to Partch’s texts is no more than speculative. Furthermore, the type of text described by the Native American group he encountered, where words used to have meaning but no longer do, is 121 a blatant example of a “pre-known transcendent” text that Partch criticized as Abstract. To be sure, he criticized any use of meaningless “musicalized” words, stating that they were in direct opposition to his Corporeal ideal. 35 Helmholtz’s influence on how words should be used in music notwithstanding, Partch’s method of setting words to music can be largely attributed to William Butler Yeats. Partch used some of a $1,500 award from the Carnegie Corporation to visit Yeats in 1934, and in his application for the grant he described his intention of setting Yeat’s King Oedipus. The setting, he wrote, would preserve the “vitality of the spoken words”. 36 Yeats was known to be outspoken about the state of language in the theater at the turn of the twentieth century, and even attacked it as being too “abstract”. 37 By the time Partch became interested in his work Yeats had also experimented with microtonal music. His experimentations were attempts to better capture the inherent music within the words of his poems and plays. 38 Without exception Yeats proclaimed that whenever words and music appeared together, the music should always follow the words. These ideas, as well as the quality of Yeat’s version, attracted Partch to set King Oedipus himself. After their meeting Yeats not only introduced Partch to Arnold Dolmetcsh, the early music specialist who had designed the microtonal instrument and notation Yeats made use of, he also recited lines from King Oedipus while Partch notated his voice. Partch reported to Carnegie that before the end of his visit Yeats enthusiastically agreed to allow Partch to use his setting. Partch was not able to complete the work until 1951, however, due to numerous logistical problems after his return to the United States. Therefore, Oedipus did not become the calling card for speech-music in the 1930’s that he had hoped for. In his final 122 version Partch was also forced to develop his own text because of complications with the Yeats estate, which resulted from a lack of documentation on the agreement between Yeats and Partch. He decided to develop his own version based mainly on public domain sources. In that version Partch made use of the same technique of nonsense syllables he had already used in the Li Po lyrics, and in Bewitched. His use in Oedipus was limited to the chorus, and this could offer another possible key to his motivation. Partch apparently found the musical and dramatic role of the chorus in ancient Greek plays to be ineffective for his works. In its traditional form he believed the chorus was effective as contrasting material. Because of the function of the chorus in ancient Greek plays, its texts and how its texts were delivered tended to be less dramatic than the surrounding material. In most cases the chorus was outside of the narrative, and in Partch’s opinion this fact, plus the typical unison signing of the chorus members, drained any dramatic qualities it might have. “Even a mob is made up of individuals”, he wrote. “The chorus will cease to be ridiculous only when its sociological function is transformed or simplified”, he continued, “when it sings in meaningless syllables or short reiterated phases”. 39 Taken at face value, Partch’s use of nonsense syllables in Oedipus, Bewitched, and other works was intended very practically to provide increased musical and dramatic contrast from the main plot. In practice, nonsense syllables also provided an opportunity for melodic interludes of structural bridges between sections. Since the words did not need to be understood, these sections allowed his melodies a brief respite from the dominance of the text. Yeats also criticized modern theater for attempts at realism, and for the use of everyday subject matter. Based on the majority of themes in Partch’s works he seems to 123 have been sympathetic to this idea, and this highlights another contradiction in his theory. His gravitation to King Oedipus is only one example of his interest in texts from outside of his cultural and contemporary sphere. In the 1930’s he not only composed music for an eighth-century Chinese poet, he also set a scene from William Shakespeare, and two Psalms as well. In the 1960’s Partch adapted Revelation in the Courthouse Park from Euripides’s Bacchae, and Delusion of the Fury juxtaposed portions of a Japanese Noh drama with an Ethiopian folk tale. The intention of using historical and cross- cultural plots was to blur temporal and regional boundaries by presenting dramas with what he believed could be considered universal values. 40 Art was obligated, in his view, to transcend its own time and place in order to tap into the eternal mysteries of life. “Nothing could be more futile or downright idiotic than to express this age” he wrote, “or any other age.” 41 Similar to Yeats, Partch spoke against the twentieth-century fascination with subject matter aimed at representing modern life. Yet he contradicted this sentiment when he spoke against an American fascination with historical European artifacts. He referred to this European allure as a “disease”, caused by a disconnection with our own “time and place”. 42 His characterization of Corporeal music, furthermore, stated that it must be “vital to a time and place, a here and now”. 43 The incongruity of Partch’s search for a timeless universality through a local present has not gone unnoticed by scholars. 44 Attempting to find consistency within what constitutes Corporealism in his works is especially perplexing with The Wayward (1941- 1943). The Wayward is a collection of four pieces: “Barstow—Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California”, “U. S. Highball—A 124 Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip”, “San Francisco—A Setting of the Cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the ‘Twenties”, and “The Letter—A Depression Message from a Hobo Friend”. These pieces initially grew from Bitter Music, which was a work he developed from a diary he kept while living as a hobo. What ties these four pieces, and Bitter Music, together is their explicit description of life in America around the time of the Great Depression. In recognition of their nationalistic quality Partch himself described these works as part of his Americana period. 45 Based upon his definition of Corporeal music as vital to a time and place, these works might be considered more Corporeal than his later works with more universal themes. It is the later works such as Oedipus and Bewitched, however, that are more often presented as examples of Partch’s Corporeal music. This can be attributed to his later use of dance, which added an obvious corporeal element to productions. Perhaps his works might be said to be Corporeal in different ways in terms of their elements, but this sidesteps the issue of what Partch actually meant by music of a here and now. The emphasis on a here and now experience is a spatial/temporal element of Corporealism that comes from Partch’s reading of Oswald Spengler. In Decline of the West Spengler delineated cultures not by political regions, ethnicity, or even language, but instead by the way a given society perceived time and space. The Western preoccupation with the past and future, in Spengler’s idea, was opposed to the Classical preoccupation with the immediate present. He also described one of the main ontological problems for ancient Greeks as being the foundation of the phenomenal world. Historical temporality was not a primary concern, and in fact anything that was not immediately available to the senses was considered suspect. 46 125 Spengler defined Western culture as perceiving the world through temporal logic, as a secession of historical events. Classical society, in contrast, was defined as perceiving the world through spatial logic, as a body of quantifiable cause and effect relationships. 47 Through this orientation Classical representations of the world could be made through numbers. Spengler wrote: The most valuable thing in the Classical mathematic is its proposition that number is the essence of all things ‘perceptible to the senses.’ Defining number as a measure, it contains the whole world-feeling of a soul passionately devoted to a ‘here’ and ‘now.’ Measurement in this sense means the measurement of something near and corporeal. Consider the content of the Classical art-work, say the free-standing statue of a naked man; here every essential and important element of Being, its whole rhythm, is exhaustively rendered by surfaces, dimensions and the sensuous relations of the parts. The Pythagorean notion of the harmony of numbers, although it was probably deduced from music—a music, be it noted, that knew not polyphony or harmony, and formed its instruments to render single plump, almost fleshy, tones—seems to be the very mould for a sculpture that has this ideal. 48 As was explained in the first chapter, and according to Spengler as well, the Pythagoreans used music as a model for the representation of the world through numbers. Partch openly embraced this idea when he proclaimed that “tone is number”. 49 In addition, it was precisely these “single plump, almost fleshy, tones” that Partch was after in his Corporeal works. He did not have the benefit of truly knowing the sound of ancient Grecian poetry (even though he used it as his quintessential example of Corporeal music), so Spengler’s metaphorical descriptions of it made it possible for Partch to clarify what he was after. Spengler also described how a primary aesthetic value of Ancient Greek music was lost. At the dawn of Western culture, he explained, the sentiment for temporal rather than spatial symbols began to emerge. In music the effect was the introduction of an 126 unprecedented distinction between instrumental and vocal music. Voices began to be treated instrumentally, according to Spengler, and thematic devices were developed to extend forms ever further. As a result, instrumental technique eventually overtook vocal technique in terms of importance. This new music was excessively dynamic, and made use of extreme ranges. It was clearly an artifact of a new culture, now Western, and began to take on an abstract quality. In Spengler’s characterization, when music was transferred from Classical to Western culture it became “bodiless.” 50 Partch’s project to re-embody Western music was a direct response to Spengler’s claims. Partch pointed out, however, that Spengler neglected to consider the possibility of both a temporal and a spatial orientation existing simultaneously within a single culture. 51 In such a culture one orientation might dominate over the other, but not necessarily to its utter exclusion. Thus, Corporeal music could exist in Western culture— and did in Partch’s opinion—alongside Abstract music. He also objected to some of Spengler’s political ideas, and perhaps more importantly, to his relativistic concept of truth. Spengler forcefully denied any potential for eternal truth. 52 Philosophies could be true only in relation to a specific culture and era. There could be no eternal philosophies of music, for example, only histories of music philosophies. The implication was that ideas were somehow predetermined, and therefore limited by their adjacency to other ideas. Spengler proposed the idea that individuals have no choice; we think as we have to think. “Truth in the long run is to him [the philosopher] the picture of the world which was born at his birth.” 53 He described truth not as something discovered, but rather as something realized within one’s own mind. Following this idea, truth would need to be understood as a symbolic restatement of an 127 individual’s relation to the time and place he or she was born to. Truth in any philosophy, for Spengler, was a reiteration of a philosopher’s individual self; a repetition of him or herself. Partch agreed that truth was dynamic, but he disagreed with the idea that we were limited to the truth that we were born to. Indeed, for Partch, the creative individual could discover a new kind of truth through art, which was a subtext to his concept of One Voice. 54 Partch wrote, “Human beings carry within themselves at all times, in any art area, the potentialities of revolution and rebirth”. 55 Partch’s demur with Spengler was less about the nature of truth itself, and more about the power of an individual to create his or her own truth. He understood from his own experience that dominant cultural norms, political control, or sociological pressure could deter one from creating this new truth. Even so, such a situation could still be reconciled by the use of an individual’s intuition. 56 Individualism is a ubiquitous theme throughout his writings, but it often manifests in contradictory ways. On one hand, individualism for Partch has to do with an intimate approach to music. He attempted to demonstrate that a performer/composer could connect more directly with audience members in a performance if the music had a sense of intimacy. Intimacy here mainly refers to small forces and small venues, and preferably the composer would also be the performer. On the other hand, Partch’s notion of individualism is joined with his notion of intuition. In his writings intuition is described as an individual, procreative intuition that verges on mystical vision. Through individual intuition Partch believed one might connect with others nonverbally. This connection involved tapping into an eternal collective of truth that is otherwise inaccessible. He often claimed that he came to the core principles of his theory through intuition. 57 His point was not to lessen the 128 importance of the sources he drew upon, which he said allowed him to articulate and build on his intuitive ideas. Rather, intuition was a method of investigation for Partch that eventually led him in new compositional directions in an attempt to express his ideas more fully. Early works like Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po and The Wayward consistently reflect Partch’s demand for more intimacy in musical performance. “Any art calling for elaborate machinery to express it”, he contended in 1930, “is at heart false”. 58 And in 1949 he was still criticizing large productions when he asked, “can we take no pride in a human gathering of smaller proportions than would fill a stadium?”. 59 Such statements are confusing, nevertheless, when Partch’s body of work is viewed as a whole. His later productions began to take on increasingly larger proportions, and the venue sizes increased as needed. In the 1960’s his Delusion of the Fury called for an orchestra of his instruments and a troupe of dancers and singers. Yet, as with Bewitched, most of Partch’s larger productions were never to his complete satisfaction. This was due in part to the logistical need to rely on others to carry out his directions. Other ‘voices’ in the mounting of his later works distracted from the intimacy he was after, and ironically this was exactly what he warned against thirty years earlier. In his explication of One Voice, he made it clear that an attempt to have more than one individual expressing their ideas simultaneously within a work will have a transformative effect. The ‘identity’ of that work could no longer be said to belong to any one individual; the intimacy would be lost as a new group identity took hold. 60 What Partch felt was lost in this transformation was the one-to-one connection between the composer/performer and the audience member. This belief obviously had the potential to 129 cause tension in any collaborative effort. Since the practical aspects of mounting a large production required at least minimal collaboration with others, it raises a question as to why he would move his compositions in that direction. This question cannot be answered unequivocally. His larger productions were successful in terms of the response of music critics, and they brought him increasing acclaim with audiences. Even so, nearly all of his productions were accompanied with protests by Partch that one or more ideas were not implemented correctly by others. In Delusion of the Fury, for example, the numerous details of the production kept him so preoccupied that was he not aware of changes being made to the choreography and costuming until a few days before the performance. It was too late in the schedule to reverse the changes made, and he later wrote in a letter to Madeline Tourtelot, who had filmed the production, that the result was even worse than he expected. 61 By increasing the size of his productions his conceptual thinking and compositional process seem to have been working at cross purposes. Yet, his complaints about how these productions were carried out also reveal his aesthetic intentions. Even in Partch’s large-scale theatrical works, he strove to maintain his ideal of One Voice. This was impractical, and perhaps even naive, but his motivations were sincere. It was in the 1940’s that Partch decided he needed to include percussion instruments in his ensemble. 62 At the time he still had relatively few instruments, and the only percussion he had made use of was the body of his guitar. 63 During the years when Partch was working at the University of Madison in Wisconsin he met a research associate in medical electronics named Warren Gilson. Gilson had experience building his own instruments, and had an interest in recording. He made the first recording of U.S. 130 Highball, and helped Partch to promote it publicly. Upon analyzing that recording Partch became aware for the first time that he needed more spontaneous energy in his works, and he decided that including percussion might help. The idea of building percussion instruments may have been encourage by Gilson, who assisted Partch in building his Diamond Marimba. 64 Partch continued to add other percussion instruments, and the rhythmic element of his compositions was significantly impacted. His desire to involve dancers flowed from this new rhythmic element, but his original intention was to have the musicians themselves serve as the dancers. 65 This turned out to be rarely possible due to limitations in the abilities of most musicians. Thus he was forced to expand the size of the group, and the challenge to maintain a single identity in his works eventually became unmanageable. The contradiction between Partch’s demand for intimate presentations and the techniques he used to corporealize his music cannot be easily resolved. An exploration of the relationship between his demand for intimacy and his intuitive approach, however, can move us closer to such a resolution. A link between all these ideas can be traced back to Partch’s reading of D. H. Lawrence. 66 Lawrence took a stance on the history of Western art very similar to Spengler, but according to Partch, Lawrence noticed something that Spengler did not. Lawrence posited that there was actually a moral purpose behind the Western break with Classical culture. 67 He believed that fear of our sexual instincts began to shape Western culture in the sixteenth century. 68 Using drama as his example, Lawrence explained that the Classical plot of Oedipus presented no fear of sexuality, only of destiny. By the time of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, however, the most terrifying aspect of that plot was utterly sexual. Lawrence posited that the scourge of 131 syphilis had sent a shock wave through England that took on a moralizing tone. 69 This moralizing tone became the foundation of modern morality, according to Lawrence, engendering Puritanism, and even setting the stage for the establishment of the New World colonies. Combined with—or as an unconscious result of—the fear of syphilis, was a hatred of the instinctive, intuitional, and procreative body. Continuing with this idea, modern morality projected instinct and intuition as base functions because of their association with the body rather than the mind. These base functions needed to be suppressed in order to allow our mental and spiritual qualities to ascend. In Lawrence’s condemnation, finally, the dual forces of fear and hate caused Western culture to develop increasingly abstract forms of expression. Lawrence wrote: This, no doubt, is all in the course of the growth of the ‘spiritual-mental’ consciousness, at the expense of the instinctive-intuitive consciousness. Man came to have his own body in horror, especially in its sexual implications: and so began to suppress with all his might his instinctive-intuitive consciousness, which is so radical, so physical, so sexual. 70 In Lawrence’s view our most deep-seated instincts depend upon the sexual, procreative aspect of our being. This dependency, in turn, has a direct effect upon our intuitional awareness. From this perspective it is the awareness of our own bodily instincts that makes social awareness possible. “A deep instinct of kinship joins men together”, Lawrence wrote, “and the kinship of flesh-and-blood keeps the warm flow of intuitional awareness streaming between human being”. 71 By repressing our instincts we repress our intuition at the same time, and thus limit our ability to fully know others, and ourselves. More to Lawrence’s point, repression of what he called instinctive-intuitive consciousness interfered with a vital connection between artist and audience, and the 132 artifacts we produce as a result, exhibit this disconnection by the abstract quality of their design. “Ancient Magic” as Performance Aesthetic The move from a culture that produced corporeal art to one that produced abstract art is a consistent depiction of Western culture in the writings of Lawrence and Spengler. Partch picked up on this, and followed with his own interpretation. In his words, the Classical attitude toward the body was “fearless”, yet it was repressed by Western culture on moral grounds through control of the voice. 72 Partch described instinctive-intuitive consciousness as an understanding of human experience. 73 Without it, he wrote, there is no possibility of communication between composer and audience. It is important to note that an underlying connection between human beings, what he referred to as “a deep and abiding tie with peoples removed both in time and space”, did exist in his view. 74 In order to access it, he advised, we need to resuscitate our intuitive awareness by emancipating our physical selves. All of Partch’s works were aimed at this goal. His later works made use of different techniques to achieve the same aim, but beyond this there is no reason to draw a sharp distinction between them. Categorizing his later works as “Corporeal” works not only obscures their connection to his Monophonic theory as a whole, there is an easier way to give recognition to their unique traits. 75 Much of the compositional techniques Partch made use of in his later works can be captured within the genre of twentieth- century music theater. In fact, historians have recognized Partch as a leading figure in the origin of the genre. 76 Other American examples include John Cage’s multi-media 133 ‘happenings’, Robert Ashley’s use of technology, and Alvin Lucier’s sonic environments. Additionally, composers in Europe include György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Hans Henze, and Maxwell Davis. The motivations of these American and European composers were typically either political or economical. They were reacting in some cases against conservative programming within established opera houses, and in others cases against the high cost of mounting a full-scale operatic production. Partch was probably not alone in reacting against both. In terms of techniques, the supporting role of music within a drama, the synthesizing of various performance arts, and the incorporation of both historical and non-Western influences were all typical components of music theater. The term music theater is often associated with works beginning in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, however, its broad definition makes it difficult to resign the genre to a specific era. Early twentieth-century examples can easily be noted. Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat (1918) is one that was designed to be read, played, and danced. In addition, L’histoire du soldat was based partly on Russian folk materials, and also attempted to cross national boundaries by including references to Spanish pasodoble, Argentinean tango, and American ragtime. A more remote example can be found with Claudio Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624), where some of the dramatic action is depicted by the orchestra, and the story is told in spoken voice. This remote example from the seventeenth century suggests that music theater can be viewed generally as a reassessment of musical-dramatic practices that can reappear in different cultural contexts. As such, the twentieth-century movement might be understood as an operatic reform akin to Baroque, Classical, and Romantic reforms. 134 Richard Wagner’s music dramas ostensibly fit this model as well, yet in many ways Wagner’s music dramas equally symbolized what twentieth-century music theater composers were retaliating against. Partch, for one, applauded Wager’s condemnation of Italian and French opera, and his condemnation of ‘absolute’ music for its lack of connection to speech and dance. He was particularly attracted to Wagner’s endeavor to create works that fused poetry, music, and visual spectacle. Yet he was not convinced by Wagner’s operas. Wagner’s use of a large orchestra and the great importance he placed on harmony gave his music obvious predominance over the dramatic action. 77 A key feature of music theater was that the music was secondary to the drama. The technique of having music serve a supporting role within a drama is very ancient and widespread throughout the world. Music theater composers looked to these ancient and non-Western sources for inspiration in an attempt to regain a certain efficacy in the performance experience they believed no longer existed in the West. One scholar of the genre, Anthony Sheppard, has put it this way: “music theater was perhaps more often radical (in the etymological sense) than revolutionary, in that many prominent works sought to restore theatrical performance to its legendary roots, to a time when all forms were one”. 78 Such a statement reflects the ideals behind Partch’s Corporeal works as well as any statement made by Partch himself. Sheppard went further to say that the attempt to recoup lost aesthetic values through new art was a “primary feature” of twentieth-century modernism. 79 In this light, it is clear that music theater composers did not simply integrate ancient and non-Western techniques into their music for the sake of unusual forms or sounds. They did so for the purpose of reclaiming forgotten values, what Partch referred to as “ancient magic”. 80 135 Figure 3-2. The1969 production of Delusion of the Fury. 81 A core value that was lacking in Western music for Partch was a “whole- experience reaction”, or an experience of corporeal engagement, for performers and audiences alike. He described a work that could achieve this in the following way: …a work that would not exclude any area of response—visual, aural, verbal—in any combination, in order to engage the whole person, either as performer or as observer. Experience does not exclude, because the eye, the ear, the body, and the mind register, react, store away, and therefore evolve consciously or otherwise. The mind does not put its reactions into little locked rooms to be opened laboriously, one at a time. Under appropriate stimulus they unlock without conscious effort, instantly and simultaneously. 82 Such an experience would capitalize upon the capacity of our senses to respond to multiple stimuli at the same time, and enable corporeal engagement. The role of the performer for all music theater composers was profoundly affected as a result of using 136 such varied performance media. In many cases, and certainly for Partch’s idealistic expectations, the demands on the performer were high. Musicians were asked to go beyond their primary music training and dance, act, or recite poetry. And in Partch’s ensembles musicians were also asked to master newly-invented, microtonal instruments through unconventional and idiosyncratic notations. This required an unusual amount of dedication from his performers. In a sense, Partch’s mucisians became devotees of Monophony, who were first required to be initiated into the process by the composer himself. 83 To be sure, the dedication of the performers energized his performances, and helped to create the ritual-like experiences he was after. Building on the idea of a whole-experience reaction, Partch compared his approach to what he imagined a prehistoric approach might have been; one that made use of “magical sounds”, “visual form”, and “experience-ritual”. 84 In his explanation he suggested that prehistoric cultures brought visual and sonic forms together in order to create a ritualized and spiritual experience. The ritualistic quality of Partch’s later works has been commented on by a number of writers, but it remains somewhat elusive. Wilfred Mellers, for example, wrote that Partch’s theatrical works were designed to affect “communal discourse”, 85 and that, like ancient Greek drama and Japanese Kabuki, his works had “social-religious” ends. 86 According to Bob Gilmore, the complex elements of Partch’s theatrical works were intended to disorient audiences for the purpose of preparing them for an experience “parallel to that undergone in ritual”. 87 In a 1954 radio broadcast of Oedipus, Partch stated that he purposefully brought in other performing arts in order to increase the work’s “power of communication”, and its “power to give meaning to our existence”. “The germ of theater”, he professed, “had 137 its beginnings in prehistoric festivals and rituals”. 88 Such claims are in fact supported in anthropological and sociological literature. Victor Turner, for instance, wrote that in its most typical form ritual synchronizes a variety of performing arts, and structures this amalgam through a dramatic plot. And Elizabeth Tolbert has stated that in cross-cultural studies of music, ritual is the most consistent context in which music appears. Furthermore, writes Tolbert, a significant difference between Western and most non- Western cultures is that music is valued highly in the latter for its extra-musical meanings. 89 Partch and other music theater composers did strive to create ritualistic performances, but they varied in degree as to how seriously they took their role. It is apparent in his essays and public addresses that Partch took his role quite seriously. Yet, he understood that in order for a ritual practice to be engaging his performers and audiences must first be open to the experience. He asked his audiences specifically to be as keenly receptive as a patient undergoing hypnosis. 90 He was also aware that a ritual devoid of tradition would be equally devoid of any forceful affect. “Meaningfulness”, as he put it, “must have roots”. 91 Yet the roots he referred to were not bound by culture. Willing participants could find his works meaningful by intuitively leaping over Western tradition, in a sense, and mining his performances for their ancient aesthetic of ritual. Importantly, however, the distinctions between audience, performer, and author were never blurred as is often the case in ritual practices. Partch sought to maintain that distinction, which might seem to undermine the ritualistic features in his works. Yet, some forms such as Japanese Noh also maintain this distinction. 92 It can be argued further that such a distinction is important to shamanistic rituals, where the shaman must 138 retain overall authority for the healing process. It is also inherent in Vodun rituals, where drummers perform while gods take over the bodies of the participants, but the drummers themselves must never become possessed. Rituals are certainly a social phenomenon, as the catharsis that occurs takes place in a communal setting. Nevertheless, Partch reminded us that societies are made up of individuals, and that the integrity of individual expression need not be suppressed in order to sustain a social bond. Considering the substantial overlap between Partch’s Corporealism and music theater in general, Corporealism does not really require exclusive treatment as its own genre. Nor are there any stylistic or sonic limitations within music theater that would justify creating a sub genre for microtonal music theater works. Oedipus, Bewitched, Delusion of the Fury, and other works fit soundly within the genre of music theater, but Partch’s stance on the authority of the composer does suggest a difference. A work like John Cage’s Musicircus (1967), which included photographic slides, films, pantomime and dance, was intended to create a space where audiences and performers could mingle together. For Cage nearly all conventional distinctions were in some way questionable. Partch was not that extreme. He still wanted to retain ultimate control over his works, and he believed that authority was a critical component to the definition of art. Intra-Corporealism As Ben Johnston explained, Partch directed audiences to see people ‘doing things’. By doing things, the things that are done are embodied, and this is an important aspect of ritual as well. It has been purported that rituals embody the knowledge of the 139 participants. 93 To know something, in this sense, means to know how to do it. The techniques we apply in doing provide further insight into the historical and cultural context in which we are acting. Because of this, rituals can be used to either reinforce our relationship to our historical and cultural context, or to dissent in opposition. Thus our participation in ritual—or in ritual-like experiences—is exceedingly personal. The rituals we participate in, and the way in which we participate, can be said to embody our orientation to the world we live in. Movement, which is an important concern in ritual, was also an important concern in music theater. 94 This manifests as increased movement in some cases, and restricted movement in others. Since the movements of musicians are somewhat determined by the sounds requested by the composer/performer, their visual display becomes very utilitarian. For Partch, mainstream concert experiences lacked spontaneity because of this, and his attempt to re-embody music was largely focused on bringing more movement into the concert experience. His use of dance can obviously be attributed to this pursuit, but in his performances movement was not limited to the dancers. His instruments also required increased movement in their playing technique, and some have been described as demanding a three-dimensional technique. Such a technique is basic to multi-instrument percussion ensembles, but Partch had reportedly designed the technique “into” his instruments. 95 140 Figure 3-3. Spoils of War (1950-1965). 96 The Spoils of War (1950-1965), for instance, which combined a variety of sound sources including metal, wood, glass, and bamboo; the Cloud Chamber Bowls (1950), consisting of fourteen, twelve-gallon hanging Pyrex bottles, each fourteen inches in diameter; and Boo I (1955), a sixty-four section bamboo marimba with a six-foot expanse, were all constructed to inspire athletic and dance-like performance. His experiments into extreme low tones also resulted in unusually large instruments. The Marimba Eroica, for example, requires four-pound mallets and a performer with an appropriate physique. Partch specified that the Marimba Eroica performer should strive for a visual dimension within the playing technique. “In exciting and furious passages”, he explained, the player must “convey the vision of Ben Hur in his chariot, charging around the last curve of the final lap”. 97 141 Figure 3-4. Elizabeth Brunswick playing the Cloud Chamber Bowls in the 1952 production of Oedipus. 98 The visual quality of the musicians was enhanced by having his instruments on stage in his theatrical productions. This is a practice Partch began with the first performance of Oedipus, and thereafter it became a regular component of his staging. 99 Although the musicians could not always be the dancers he wanted, they entered the dance through their movements, and contributed to the spontaneity of the overall experience. In his use of the term spontaneity Partch referred to both a naturalness of delivery, and the resulting musical communication between the performers and audiences. 100 He stated that spontaneity was the “essence of music connected to the human body, through the mouth, the ears, and the emotions.” 101 Spontaneity, in this context, had nothing to do with improvisation, embellishments, or free interpretations of his music. Partch expected musicians to follow his score. Yet, ideally, he also expected 142 them to perform his music as if they had composed the work themselves. Put differently, he wanted to be able to project himself into each role on stage. He made no secret about his awareness of how difficult it would be to achieve this, but he insisted that it was possible. One factor for assessing the spontaneity of a given performance was the response of the audience. A spontaneous performance might be captured in a recording, but the affect could never be the same for a secondary listener. For a time Partch vacillated on this point, since he realized the value of recordings for composers to archive and disseminate their works. He particularly praised the virtues of recordings because they allowed composers the ability to bypass other interpretive agents. The composer could perform the work him or herself, and thus preserve the most spontaneous version possible. He later recanted this and placed more emphasis on the phenomenological aspect of a presumed ritual-like performance. 102 The term Corporeal eventually came to imply a present and engaged audience of a spontaneous performance. Although reviews of Partch’s performances by music critics were always mixed, even contradictory, audience reactions were typically positive. One example was a 1944 performance at the Carnegie Chamber Music Hall sponsored by the League of Composers. The performance included US Highball, Barstow, San Francisco, and Y. D. Fantasy. The New York Times stated that the performance might have been considered the season’s most sophisticated, boring, or comical depending on one’s perspective. Most reviewers focused on the importance given to the texts, even calling them literary, but did so at the expense of their descriptions of the music. In Modern Music Lou Harrison wrote that although the sounds were often intriguing, the music itself was not 143 significant. The response of the audience, on the other hand, was apparently more than enthusiastic. Y. D. Fantasy was even encored. Y. D. Fantasy was a piece written for Henry Brant, who helped Partch find performers suitable for the concert. Brant was a Julliard-trained composer, and worked in experimental genres. He had an affinity toward new instruments, since he built and performed on them as a child, and was also an accomplished tin whistle player. The piece is a set of variations on “Yankee Doodle” scored for soprano, two tin whistles, tin oboe (a tin whistle with an oboe reed, invented by Brant), Partch’s Chromelodeon organ, and flexatone (a hand-held percussion instrument with a metal vibrating piece that produces a high wavering sound). The encore did much to further impress the audience. Paul Bowles wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune that Y. D. Fantasy, “which had given one the impression of being an inspired improvisation by a group of maniacs, impossible to reperform, was repeated as exactly as if it had been a playback”. 103 Brant’s skill as a performer no doubt played an important part in the success of Y. D. Fantasy’s performance, and it is unfortunate that more of Partch’s music was not performed with musicians of that caliber. Even so, the ability of the encore to reproduce a similar response in an audience member provides an empirical measure of the spontaneous feel written into the piece. A concept of spontaneity has also been considered by dance theorists, and Sondra Fraleigh suggests that it represents the dancer’s proportion of effort to intention. Effort that appears to be disproportionately strained or awkward makes both the performer and the audience conscious of it. In such an experience the embodied actions of the performer move from a subjective realm into a more objective one. Within this objective 144 space, one might say that the doing overshadows the embodiment. The body-object, as Fraleigh refers to non-spontaneous effort, becomes known through an awareness of the doing, and only the body-subject can fully embody a performance. Fraleigh’s body- subject describes movement within a moment of pre-reflective consciousness. “It refers to all that I am”, she writes, “as I live my body spontaneously in the present moment”. 104 According to her theory a dancer’s efforts might be either veiled or made obvious. In either case all movements are purposeful because dance is purposeful movement, and the dancer learns to control this. In Fraleigh’s words: “I realize my freedom when I move as I intend. Then I experience my movement powers as personal powers….Those dances that become second nature return me to nature—to the spontaneous and graceful arising of my body through nature. Then I move freely”. 105 Here Fraleigh has put a new spin on the ability of dance to express a dancer’s intuitive nature, and at the same time reveals its power to create new possibilities, new truths. 106 And what is more, these new possibilities can spring from an individual’s personal power. In order for spontaneity in performance to occur, however, the individual’s movements must be executed proportionately between effort and intent; or, if one may, the ratio between them must be just. Fraleigh referred to this state as lived-body, but the concept can easily be equated with Partch’s concept of spontaneity, and both refer back to Classical aesthetic values. In this sense Partch’s concept of spontaneity in music is the essence of Corporeality. The term Corporeal has misled many writers to align the concept with the various aspects of how Partch aimed to achieve spontaneity. What Partch meant by Corporeal music, in 145 fact, is better stated as spontaneous music. This must be the case, otherwise it is impossible to reconcile how Partch could apply the concept of Corporealism to works of music theater and epic chant at the same time. Indeed, all of Partch’s works are intended to be Corporeal; from his two monodic settings of sections of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (1944), to his dance suite Plectra and the Percussion Dances (1949-1952); from his chant-like setting of the twenty-third psalm The Lord is My Shepherd (1931), to his music for an exhibition of gymnasts, Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961). All these works can be considered Corporeal not because they integrate other performing arts, but because they have the potential to embody the voice of the composer/performer and communicate spontaneously in performance. Corporealism can thus be subsumed within Partch’s concept of One Voice. Techniques such as intoned voice, monophonic texture, dance, and dramatic narrative are used exclusively in some cases and interchangeably in others. In all cases what Partch was trying to achieve were performances with a spontaneous character, which might also be expressed as performances that embodied the emotional content of a musical idea. Finally, this embodiment was designed to be performed, and therefore, the emotional content was intended to be communicated. Partch’s works are not only Corporeal, they are inter-corporeal in that they require a shared state between the composer/performer and the members of the audience. Such a shared state does not imply that the emotional responses to a performance will be the same, only that they concur. 107 He sought this state through both intimate monodic works and ritual-like theatrical works, yet in order for it to be fully achieved, all participants were required to make use of their intuition. 146 With intuition as his methodology, Partch strove for a public harmonization of his individual feelings by incorporating his voice into his productions. 147 CHAPTER THREE ENDNOTES 1. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 64. 2. Genesis, vii. The preface to the second edition was written between 1969 and 1972, in which partch states, “…I subscribe wholly to every dominant theme that I expressed in 1947 [the original edition]”. 3. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 30. “A work of art is of one mind; it’s got to be of one mind…” 4. Ben Johnston, “The Corporealism of Harry Partch,” Perspectives of New Music, 13/2 (Spring-Summer, 1975) 85-97. 5. Harry Partch, “Introduction [to Bewitched]”, reproduced from the 1955 typescript scenario, in Bitter Music, 307. 6. Ibid., 308. 7. Bob Gilmore, “‘A Soul Tormented’: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch’s The Bewitched,” Musical Quarterly 79/1 (Spring, 1995) 80-107. 8. Harry Partch, “Scenario [to Bewitched]”, reproduced from the program of the 1957 premier, in Bitter Music, 310. 9. Bob Gilmore, “‘A Soul Tormented’: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch’s The Bewitched,”. Partch stated that it was “the greatest failure of my career”. 10. Harry Partch, Genesis, 36. 11. Ibid., 8. 12. Bob Gilmore, “‘A Soul Tormented’: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch’s The Bewitched,” Musical Quarterly 79/1 (Spring, 1995) 80-107. 13. Ibid., 57. Partch described the situation in music as “a general paralysis of individuality.” He cited Scudder Mekeel, “Race Relations” in Mental Hygiene 29 (April 1945), 185. Mekeel wrote, “by the very way in which we train our children, we make certain that they can never really carry individualism very far, or take full advantage of being themselves. This is the crux of our particular system of social control.” 14. Ibid., 3. 148 15. Samuel Andrew Granade II, “I Was a Bum Once Myself: Harry Partch , U.S. Highball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illionois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005, 27. 16. See: Mina Yang, “New Directions in California Music: Constructions of a Pacific Rim Cultural Identity, 1925-1945,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 2001. 17. See: Will Salmon, “The Influence of Noh on Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury,” Perspectives of New Music, 22/1-2; and Wilfrid Mellers, “An American Aboriginal,” Tempo 64 (Spring, 1963) 2-6. 18. David Nicholls, “Transethnicism and the American Experimental Tradition,” Musical Quarterly, 80/4 (Winter, 1996) 569-594. 19. Ben Johnston, “The Corporealism of Harry Partch,” Perspectives of New Music, 13/2 (Spring-Summer, 1975) 85-97. 20. Harry Partch, Genesis, 8. 21. Ibid., 36. 22. See, for example: Samuel Andrew Granade II, I Was a Bum Once Myself: Harry Partch , U.S. Hichball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illionois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005. 274. 23. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” (1952), reprinted in Bitter Music, 181-182. “Without understanding of human experience there is nothing. No interpretation, therefore no communication. No at-oneness, therefore no universality.” 24. Harry Partch, Genesis, 17. 25. Nick Crossley, “Ritual, Body Technique, and (Inter)subjectivity,” in Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Kevin Schilbrack (New York: Routledge, 2004) 39. 26. Harry Partch, “A Soul Tormented by Contemporary Music Looks for a Humanizing Alchemy: The Bewitched ” (1957), reprinted in Bitter Music, 238. 27. Harry Partch, Genesis, 14. 28. Ibid., 9. “An important distinction, then, as regards the Corporeal and the Abstract, is between an individual’s vocalized words, intended to convey meaning, and musicalized words that convey no meaning…”. 149 29. Ibid., 19. 30. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 251. Helmholtz’s idea grew from his agreement with Hanslick about an inappropriate level of importance placed on the meaning of the music itself. The fact that Partch followed Helmholtz on this point also supports a distinction between Partch’s idea of ‘meaningful words’, and ‘communication’. 31. Harry Partch, Revelation in the Courthouse Park, published in Bitter Music, 354-355. 32. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 12. 33. Richard Kassel, “Harry Partch in the Field,” Musicworks, 51 (Autumn, 1991) 6-15. 34. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 36. 35. Harry Partch, Genesis, 9. 36. Harry Partch, Bitter Music, 23. 37. W. B. Yeats, Plays and Controversies, London: MacMillian and Co., 1923, 119. 38. W. B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil, London: A. H. Bullen, 1914, 17. 39. Harry Partch, Genesis, 46. 40. Ibid., 332. In his “Statement of Intention” printed in the program of the first performance of Oedipus, Partch wrote, “I have not consciously linked the ancient Greece of Sophocles and this conception of his drama—twenty-four hundred years later. The work is presented as a human value.” 41. Harry Partch, “Some New and Old Thoughts After and Before The Bewitched: A Latter-Day Ritual Designed to Defertilize the Machine Age for a Period of Seventy-Five Minutes (1955), reprinted in Bitter Music, 233. See also “The Ancient Magic” (1959), reprinted in Bitter Music, 184. 42. Harry Partch, “The Rhythmic Motivations of Castor and Pollux and Even Wild Horses (1952)” reprinted in Bitter Music, 222. See also the unpublished essay, “The Umbilical Cord Still Vibrates”, in Enclosure 3, 149-157. And, among others, “A Somewhat Spoof” (1960), reprinted in Bitter Music, 188-190; where he cynically writes, “If Europe can fart, by golly we not only can, we must!” 43. Harry Partch, 8. 150 44. See: Samuel Andrew Granade II, I Was a Bum Once Myself: Harry Partch , U.S. Hichball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illionois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005, 299. And, Wilfrid Mellers, “Percussion in the New-Old World,” Musical Times 133/1795 (September, 1992) 445-447. 45. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”,11. 46. Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, Volume 1, translated by Charles Atkinson, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926, 176-177. “The Classical universe, the Cosmos or well-ordered aggregate of all near and completely viewable things, is concluded by the corporeal vault of heaven. More there is not. The need that is in us to think of “space” as being behind as well as being before this shell was wholly absent fro the Classical world-feeling. The Stoics went so far as to treat even properties and relations of things as ‘bodies.’ For Chrysippus, the Devine Pneuma is a ‘body,’ for Democritus, seeing consists in our being penetrated by material particles of the things seen. The State is a body which is made up of the bodies of its citizens, the law knows only corporeal persons and materials things. And the feeling finds its last and noblest expression in the stone body of the Classical temple.” 47. Ibid., 6-7. 48. Ibid., 63. 49. Harry Partch, Genesis, 76. 50. Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West, 231. 51. Harry Partch, Genesis, 16 (n24). 52. Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West, 46. 53. Ibid., xiii. 54. Harry Partch, Genesis, xvi. 55. Harry Partch, “Some New and Old Thoughts After and Before The Bewitched” (1955), reprinted in Bitter Music, 234. 56. Ibid., 3. “When this man cannot modify the ways that have been bequeathed to him…he has only one sure recourse; intuition…”. 57. See, among other places: Harry Partch, Genesis, 5, and 60. 151 58. Selby Noel Mayfield, “Student Devises 29-Degree Octave Theory of Music”, New Orleans Times-Picayune (November 16, 1930) 25. Reprinted in Philip Blackburn, ed. Enclosure 3, 9. 59. Harry Partch, Genesis, 53. 60. Ibid., 7. It is interesting to note a potential analogy between a group identity and a combinational tone, where the new pitch is different than either of the source pitches. Partch never mentioned such an analogy, but it is unlikely that he failed to notice it. 61. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 351. Harry Partch to Madeline Tourtelot, January 21, 1972. 62. Ronald V. Wiecki, “Relieving ‘12-Tone Paralysis’: Harry Partch in Madison, Wisconsin, 1944-1947,” American Music 9/1 (Spring, 1991) 43-66. 63. Harry Partch, “Some New and Old Thoughts After and Before The Bewitched” (1955), reprinted in Bitter Music, 235. See also “Appendix VI” in Genesis for a chronological list of Partch’s instruments. 64. The Diamond Marimba was one of four marimba-like instruments Partch constructed with standard rectangular keys (including the Quadrangularis Reversum, Bass Marimba, and Marimba Eroica). It had a near three-octave range, and its blocks were arranged in a pattern similar to his Tonality Diamond. 65. Bob Gilmore, “‘A Soul Tormented’: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch’s The Bewitched,” Musical Quarterly 79/1 (Spring, 1995) 80-107. Gilmore suggests that the early stages of Partch’s corporealizing techniques can be seen around 1948 in his notes on a never completed work Mendota Night, which made distinctions between the movements of the dancers and the movements of the musicians. 66. Henry Cowell might be the only writer that has thus far pointed out Lawrence’s influence on Partch. Cowell stated it in his review of Genesis, but Partch might have also mentioned it to Cowell personally in one of their encounters. See: Henry Cowell, “43 Tone Minstrelsy”, Saturday Review, (November 26, 1945) 65. 67. Harry Partch, Genesis, 16. 68. See: D. H. Lawrence, “Introduction to These Paintings,” in Phoenix: the Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Edward D. McDonald, New York: Viking Press, 1936. 69. Ibid., 552. Ironically, there is some evidence that Partch himself had syphilis. See: Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 125. 152 70. Ibid., 552. 71. Ibid., 556. 72. Harry Partch, Genesis, 16. 73. Harry Partch, “No Barriers”, in Bitter Music, 181. 74. Ibid., 182. 75. Bob Gilmore once described The Bewitched as “the first fully achieved manifestations of the aesthetic Partch termed corporeality”. See: Bob Gilmore, “‘A Soul Tormented’: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch’s The Bewitched,” Musical Quarterly 79/1 (Spring, 1995) 80-107. 76. Andrew Clements, “Music Theater”, Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press (Accessed June 23, 2006), <grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?section=music.19452>. . 77. Harry Partch “Oedipus” (1954), reprinted in Bitter Music, 219. “In the wrestling match between Wagner’s music drama and his symphony orchestra, Wagner’s symphony orchestra (with yeoman help from his arias) gets both shoulders of Wagner’s music dramas on the floor within five minutes after the curtain rises and for the following two or three hours jumps up and down on the unconscious form.” 78. W. Anthony Sheppard. Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, 4, 79. Ibid., 14. 80. See: Harry Partch, “The Ancient Magic” (1959), reprinted in Bitter Music, 184-187. 81. Harry Partch, Enclosure 3, 419. 82. Harry Partch, “No Barriers” (1952), reprinted in Bitter Music, 181-182. 83. W. Anthony Sheppard. Revealing Masks, 20. Sheppard described the role of a performer in music theater as “a devout servant of the performance”. 84. Harry Partch, “A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonation” (1967), reprinted in Bitter Music, 196. 153 85. Wilfrid Mellers, “Percussion in the New-Old World,” Musical Times 133/1795 (September, 1992) 445-447. 86. Wilfrid Mellers, “An American Aboriginal,” Tempo 64 (Spring, 1963) 2-6. 87. Bob Gilmore, “‘A Soul Tormented’: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch’s The Bewitched,” Musical Quarterly 79/1 (Spring, 1995) 80-107. 88. Harry Partch, “Oedipus” (1954), transcribed in Bitter Music, 218. The original recording from which the printed version was transcribed is held in the Harry Partch Archive at the University of Illinois. 89. See: Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theater (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), and Elizabeth Tolbert, “Music and Meaning: an Evolutionary Story,” Psychology of Music 29/1 (2001) 84-94. 90. Harry Partch, “Oedipus” (1954), transcribed in Bitter Music, 220. “I can only hope that my listeners will relax into a tolerant and receptive state, like a patient under hypnosis…”. 91. Harry Partch “A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonation” (1967), reprinted in Bitter Music. 92. W. Anthony Sheppard. Revealing Masks, 18. 93. Nick Crossley, “Ritual, Body Technique, and (Inter)subjectivity,” in Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Kevin Schilbrack (New York: Routledge, 2004), 31. Crossley combined ideas from Mauss and Merleau-Ponty to state that rituals are a form of “embodied practical reason”. See also: Marcel Mauss, Sociology and Psychology (London: Routledge, 1979), and M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 1962. 94. W. Anthony Sheppard. Revealing Masks, 21. See also: Tom F. Driver, The Magic of Ritual (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 83. Drive states that “the ritual mode of performance is characterized by deliberate, disciplined use of the body. In this mode, ‘performance’ is realized in the most literal way: specific, finite, identifiable actions are carried out bodily at a definite time and place. Although a ritual includes pretending, the ritual performance itself is no pretense, but an actual, here and now doing.” 95. Johnston, Ben. “The Corporeality of Harry Partch.” Perspectives of New Music Summer-Spring (1975): 85-97. 96. Harry Partch Enclosure 3, 349. 154 97. Harry Partch, Genesis, 282. 98. Harry Partch, Enclosure 3, 143. 99. It is possible that the idea to put the instrument on stage came from Arch Lauterer, a professor of speech and drama at Mills College in Oakland. This was one of Partch’s few successful collaborative efforts. He apparently allowed Lauterer considerable leeway in lighting and set design decisions. See: Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 201. 100. Harry Partch, Genesis, 14, 44. 101. Ibid., 44. 102. The former statements were made in the original “Author’s Preface” of Genesis, Partch makes the latter remarks in the “Preface to the Second Edition”. 103. Harry Partch, Enclosure 3, 76. Reviews are reprinted from: R. L., The New York Times (April 23, 1944); Lou Harrison, Modern Music, May-June (1944); and Paul Bowles, New York Herald-Tribune (April 23, 1944). 104. Sondra Horton Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 14. Fraleigh joins the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sarte with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to develop a concept of “lived-body”. 105. Ibid., 20. 106. Elizabeth Tolbert has proposed that music be understood as a “vehicle for cultural truth”. See: Elizabeth Tolbert, “Music and Meaning: an Evolutionary Story,” Psychology of Music 29/1 (2001) 84-94. 107. John Blacking suggested that individuals have a common repertoire of “somatic states” that could be shared in social setting, mainly through rituals. See: John Blacking, “Toward an Anthropology of the Body,” in The Anthropology of the Body, edited by John Blacking (New York: Academic Press, 1977). 155 CHAPTER FOUR ANALYZING PARTCH Can Partch’s Music be Analyzed? Any attempt at analyzing Partch’s music is inevitably presented with a paradox. The crux of this paradox revolves around the ability of formal analysis to articulate Partch’s experience-based aesthetics. If, as T. W. Adorno put it, analysis conjures up an image of all that is dead and sterile, how can the analytical process be applied to music that aims to create an intuitive and emotional connection between the composer/performer and audience member? 1 One of the strongest criticisms of musical analysis is that it is a reductive process. Musical form, in this case, serves as a construct for musical experience as a whole, and reduces that experience down to a static, two- dimensional representation. It has also been argued that formal analysis in music is not an analysis of the musical experience itself, but rather only of the score. Leonard Meyer made such a claim by explaining that the relationships between musical events are more important in critical analysis than listener responses. 2 One might also add that in the analysis of music from oral traditions, the first step for the analyst in many cases is to transcribe the aural experience on to paper. Much like the difficulty in describing an experience through language, the restatement of a musical experience through a mode of analytical discourse does indeed have its limitations. The phenomenon of difference tones alone is enough to show that we hear more as individuals than can be objectively transcribed. 3 The limitations of 156 musical analysis do not altogether discount the value of its results, yet they do present enough of an obstacle in the case of Partch’s compositions that any methodology used must be justified. Partch was, above all, a composer, and therefore his music should be addressed directly. He once stated that musical theories are valid only by virtue of the music they generate. 4 Although the analysis of his music is challenged with difficulties, there are clear indications that his music was written with the possibility of it being analyzed in mind. He wrote about his desire to develop a common ratio notation, for example, for the singular purpose of analyzing his scores. Results would certainly be more immediate and might well be more rational as a whole if there were a separate notation for each type of instrument, based entirely upon its individuality, and in addition, a common denominator notation based upon ratios or clearly implying ratios. And students of the instruments would know both notations—the one for playing the music of a particular instrument, the other for studying and analyzing the total result. 5 Unfortunately this common-denominator notation was never realized, since after he established his theory most of his non-compositional efforts were targeted toward building instruments or securing performances. What a common-denominator notation would have achieved would have been the ability to create full scores of his works where all the parts could be integrated. As it stands, only the separate tablature notations for each instrument described in the passage above exist. The absence of such a common- denominator notation, along with his open hostility toward academia, might lead some to conclude that a close analysis of his scores would be a misuse of them. Few published analyses of Partch’s music exist to be sure, and consequently there is little understanding of his compositional process. By including this missing piece in the context of his theory 157 his ideas can be supplemented with concrete examples of how they were applied. This is the central purpose of analyzing Partch. Quite simply, the objective is to treat him as a composer. Considerable preparation is needed before a proper analysis can begin. A working knowledge of just intonation, Monophony and corporealizing techniques are all prerequisites to a meaningful interpretation of his scores, as is some familiarity with his instruments and their tablature notation. These unique aspects of his music should be met with an equally unique methodology. In developing an individualized method there is a risk, however, of defining Partch solely through his own language, and thus providing an overly subjective analysis. The methodology that will be presented in this chapter does employ Partch’s terminology and concepts, but an effort has been made to reveal their continuity with mainstream terminology and concepts. Nicolas Ruwet once wrote that music can be described at the level of its elements (tuning systems, scales, etc.), and at the level of its rules (pitch resolution, harmonic movement, etc.). 6 Differences among the world’s musics, to follow this idea, are mainly found between the elements rather than the rules of how the elements are combined. Therefore, attention to the rules in analysis can provide a more dynamic and universal understanding. It is difficult to ignore the elements of Partch’s music on the whole. Yet, by placing them somewhat in the background, the relatively straightforward textures and structures within his works can be brought to the surface. As was explained in the Chapter One, Partch’s Monophonic theory is a paradigmatic example of tonality. He conceived Monophony as an analog to the harmonic series, where 1:1 is both the well-spring and the final resting place of all its 158 tonal resources. The melodic, harmonic, and even metrical developments within his music are all governed by their fundamental relationship to the 1:1. It is no surprise then that the analysis of Partch’s music clearly presents him as a tonal composer who made use of strong cadences and prepared modulations. In addition, his predilection for Romanticism can be seen in his use of leitmotifs, word painting, and programmatic narratives, while at the same time his use of extended chromaticism and chord clusters show that he was versed in twentieth-century compositional techniques as well. These are broad claims that cannot be supported by the analysis of a single piece, and therefore, examples from existing analysis will also be referenced. Even so, until the analysis of Partch’s music is commonplace such claims will need to be continuously tested. The purpose of the analysis presented here will not be to unequivocally position Partch into one compositional camp or another, although some conclusions will be drawn in the context of all the analysis that will be discussed. The primary goal is study the application of his ideas, but in doing so a plain and repeatable methodology will be established to enable students and scholars to analyze the remainder of his works. Existing Analytical Literature At present, published analyses of Partch’s music are exceedingly rare. The three most notable are Glenn Allen Hackbarth’s 1978 dissertation on Daphne of the Dunes (1967), Bob Gilmore’s 1992 article on Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po (1930-1933), and Richard Kassel’s 2000 critical edition of Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California (1941). 7 These three publications essentially constitute the extant body of analytic literature on Partch. Each addresses its own set of problems, 159 and each is constructed with a different purpose in mind. Hackbarth’s analysis explores Partch’s use of thematic and motivic material to depict the myth of Daphne and Apollo. Since the music was originally used as the soundtrack to a short film by Madeline Tourtelot, Hackbarth also looks at how the music supports the visual images. Gilmore’s analysis of Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po focuses mainly on pitch content. The texture of this work is generally polyphonic or monophonic, and the text is almost entirely delivered in non-metrical verses. Thus, the dimension of pitch was Partch’s main vehicle for articulating the emotional content of the poems. Kassel’s critical edition was mainly intended to facilitate performances, but he included extensive explanations of how the parts coalesce. Kassel also charted the harmonic movement, and the overall form of the piece. The one area where these three investigations intersect is in how Partch’s notation is transcribed. Each author uses a variation of standard notation. Hackbarth and Kassel used a model for microtonal notation developed by Ben Johnston, which makes use of four pairs of accidentals to represent all the tones within Monophony, and more. Table 4-1. Accidentals used in Ben Johnston’s microtonal notation. 160 Using this system the parts of Partch’s music can be integrated into a full score. This is important because following a score is otherwise impossible with Partch’s tablature notation. Partch’s tablature was designed solely for the purpose of performing his works. Although he recognized the virtues of standard notation, and was somewhat irritated by the numerous notation systems that sprung up in the twentieth century, his forty-three tones per octave posed a problem for the conventional staff. His intention, he said, was to “make the notation conform to the physical body of the playing area…to achieve some tie between the note and what the player actually does.” 8 The result of this corporeal approach to notation was that each of his instruments employed a different type of tablature. Consequently, any attempt to identify pitch and harmonic content in real time in his scores is futile. An integrated notation to represent Partch’s work for the purpose of analysis is therefore needed, and Johnston’s model provides a relatively concise solution to the problem. One disadvantage of applying Johnston’s model to Partch’s music is that, during complex passages, the subtle microtonal movement is difficult to track among all the symbols that serve to alter the notes. Although it is a helpful method for learning the music, when used for analysis it requires a return transcription back into the language of ratios in order to visualize the music. Partch’s call for a common-denominator notation specified that it should either be based on ratios, or clearly imply those ratios. Johnston’s accidentals do represent ratios, but graphically they are based on microtones rather than just intervals. Thus, when Johnston’s model is used in the analysis of Partch’s music it is often supplemented with ratios as well, as is the case with the examples mentioned. 161 In his analysis of Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po, Gilmore used standard notation for both the voice and viola parts. He then added the ratios referenced in a figure above the note, with their remainder presented in between them in cent values. Although Gilmore’s approach provides a clear representation of the pitch content, it is no less difficult than Johnston’s to follow in complex passages. It works well in simple pieces that make use of only two lines. As the number of instruments increase, however, the ability of a reader to follow the score in real time becomes challenging. There is perhaps no ideal solution for integrating Partch’s notation. Before yet another alternative is proposed here, it will be useful to review the results of the analysis already cited. _____________________________________________________ Figure 4-1. Excerpt of “The Long-Departed Lover” from Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po. 162 “Long-Departed Lover” was the first Li Po setting, and according to Gilmore is one of the foremost examples of Partch’s use of intoned voice. 9 The text receives pitch material at the level of the syllable, but the pacing and rhythmic delivery is completely undetermined. It is intended to be performed in the spontaneous rhythm of spoken word, and Partch’s literal use of monophony is blatant. The Adapted Viola and voice play in unison almost exclusively. They move in a range limited to a major sixth, but within that range there is a high degree of chromaticism. Gilmore interprets the overall contour of the pitch movement to be evocative of a sigh; supporting the sentiment in the line ‘I sigh—the yellow leaves fall from the branch’. The text is also supported with an occasional use of major and minor thirds, which were intervals that Partch associated with emotion. Finally, Gilmore noted that the climax of the pitch range coincides with the only appearance of a perfect fifth on the word ‘you’ in the context of ‘where are you, Beloved?’. As would be expected from his theory, a close connection between tone and word is a common feature of Partch’s music. In Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po he employed it not only with single tones, but also with chords. The pieces “On the City Streets” and “The Intruder” both use specific chords to depict opposing sentiments. The tension between those opposing sentiments is revealed through the harmonic movement. Gilmore also pointed out another compositional technique that was frequently utilized; one that Partch called Tonality Flux. 10 To grasp the concept of Tonality Flux, it should be recalled from the second chapter that when Partch speaks of ‘tonality’ he is often referring to a single chord, or more precisely, to the 1, 5, and 3 ratio identities of that chord. Thus, ‘modulation’ in Partch’s music is more often simply harmonic movement within the 163 overarching tonality of 1:1. This generalization can be debated, but it is one that proves to be reliable. The technique of Tonality Flux as he defined it refers to a modulation between tonalities (in other words, a linking between chords), where the movement is based on proximity rather than pivoting on shared tones. Partch uses both Tonality Flux and pivot ‘modulation’ in his harmonic movement, but the Flux method produces a characteristic and recognizable sliding sound. The following excerpt from “On Seeing off Meng Hao-jan” provides an example of Tonality Flux between the last two chords. And incidentally, it is precisely this type of subtle movement that reveals the limitation of using a variant of standard notation for Partch’s music. 1 st Tone Resolving Distance 2 nd Tone 5:4 45:44 [38.9 cents] 11:9 1:1 56:55 [31.2 cents] 56:55 10:7 56:55 [31.2 cents] 16:11 5:3 40:39 [48.7 cents] 12:7 Figure 4-2. Example of tonality flux in “On Seeing Off Meng Hao-jan” from Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po. Note that a semitone is 100 cents. 164 Another common practice of Partch in his music was to re-orchestrate his works with the advent of new instruments. Barstow, for example, went through seven versions from its initial inception in 1941 to the version he was finally satisfied with in 1968. As stated in the previous chapter, Barstow was a piece within a larger work that marked a compositional milestone in Partch’s career. 11 Unlike the literary settings he composed leading up to the 1940’s, Barstow was a setting of graffiti that he found while hitchhiking. It came after five years of no compositional activity, and it brought with it some of the cynicism and edgy humor he encountered while living as a hobo during those years. It also brought with it his new found recognition of what he called an inherent poetry within American vernacular speech. Barstow was originally composed for Adapted Guitar and voice, and if it had remained as a work using a single justly-tuned instrument and voice it would have been a continuation of the style of his preceding compositions. In addition, at that time American folk music had begun to impress Partch so much that he was pointing to Leadbelly and Woody Gutherie as sources of inspiration. 12 Apart from adding more instruments to “Barstow”, for the first time in his compositions Partch also included references to non-Western music. The folk-inspired character, along with the content of the graffiti texts and the non-Western references, made Barstow a truly unusual piece. It should also be noted that the idea of using found text was equally innovative. The eight brief texts ranged from fragments, to stream-of-conscious rants. 13 Apart from being found on the same highway railing the graffiti texts were mostly unrelated. In his analysis Kassel explained that Partch strung the texts together through unifying devices such as repetition, and a recurring ending phrase that provided harmonic consistency. 14 The eight sections of the 165 piece were determined by the eight inscriptions, which were used verbatim in most cases. Partch opened each section with an number identifying the inscription (for example, ‘Number one’; ‘Number two’, etc). He then expanded the original texts by repeating words, lines, or the entire text, and by adding nonsense syllables. Surprisingly, the references to non-Western music that Kassel highlighted were not always relevant to the text. According to Kassel he made references to Cantonese opera in inscriptions three, four, and eight by using pentatonicism and clapper-like sounds. There is a structural function to these musical references, however, since they connected the only two related texts (three and four, which were between a man and a woman on the subject of matrimony) and the final text. Partch also referenced Native American chant in inscription six while satirically juxtaposing it with the text “Jesus was God in the flesh”. 166 Inscription Tonality Central Text One 16:15 (O) Its January 26. I’m freezing. Ed Fitzgerald. Age 19. Five feet, ten inches. Black hair, brown eyes. Going home to Boston Massachusetts. Its 4:00, and I’m hungry and broke. I wish I was dead. But today I am a man. Two 1:1 (O) | 3:2 (U) | 1:1 (O) | 8:5 (O) Gentleman: Go to 530 East Lemon Avenue, Monrovia, California, for an easy handout. Three 5:4 (U) | 3:2 (U) | 5:4 (U) Marie Blackwell, age 19. Brown eyes, brown hair. Considered Pretty. 118 East Ventura Street, Las Vegas, Nevada. Object: Matrimony. Four 1:1 (O) | 3:2 (U) Dear Marie: A very good idea you have there. I too am on the lookout for a suitable mate. Five 5:4 (U) Possible rides: January 16 th , 58. January 17 th , 76. January 18 th , 19. January 19 th , 6. January 20 th , 11. To hell with it. I’m going to walk. Six 8:5 (O) + 6:5 (U) Jesus was God in the Flesh. Seven 3:2 (U) + 1:1 (U) | 1:1 (U) Looking for millionaire wife. Good looking, very handsome, Intelligent, Good bull thrower, Etcetera. All you have to do is find me, you lucky women. Name’s George. Eight 16:9 (O) | 4:3 (O) | 11:8 (U) | 8:7 (O) | 9:8 (U) | 6:5 (U) | 1:1 (U) | 15:8 (U) | 4:3 (O) | 1:1 (U) | 4:3 (O) | 1:1 (U) | 16:9 (O) + 5:3 (U) | 16:15 (U) | Chord Cluster [“1:1”] Here’s wishing all who read this, if they can get a lift, and the best of luck to you. Why in hell did you come, anyway? Damn it anyhow, here I am stuck in the cold. I’ve come 2700 miles from Chi, Illinois. Slept along the highway. Slept in open box car without top. Went hungry for two days (Raining, too). But they say there’s a hell, What the hell do they think this is? I’m on my way, One half of dessert to the east, Then back to El-lay to try once more Car just passed by—make that two more— three more. Do not think they’ll let me finish my story. Here she comes, a truck, not a fuck, but a truck. Hoping to get the hell out, here’s my name, Johnnie Reinwald, 915 South Westlake Avenue, Los Angeles. Table 4-2. Harmonic movement in Barstow. Note that (O) refers to Otonality or major tonality, and (U) refers to Utonality or minor tonality. Note also that the final “1:1” is actually a chromatic cluster. 167 Kassel’s harmonic analysis shows relatively simple harmonic movement, as well as an abundant use of primary chords. Such simplicity was no doubt an effort to reinforce the piece’s folk-like quality. If Partch had maintained the original instrumentation of guitar and voice that folk quality would have been highlighted more, but even with added instruments the simplicity of its fundamental character remains. Barstow is framed with harmonic instability, however, and this is intended to support the anxious sensibility of the inscriptions. The initial inscription begins on a 16:15, a semitone above the tonic, and the final inscription ends with a chromatic chord cluster. Kassel functionally presents this concluding cluster as “1:1”, mainly as a consequent of the harmonic direction that precedes it. Between this unstable frame the harmony generally moves in dominant-to-tonic relations while fluctuating between major and minor tonalities. The final measures consist of a thoroughly prepared subdominant to tonic cadence. And the melodic passages, where the text is sung rather than intoned, are diatonic as well. On the whole, Kassel’s analysis demonstrates how this complex piece (with respect the unusual combination of microtonality and found text, as well as how it depicts the angst-ridden content of the text) was put forth through fairly simple harmonic and melodic means. The harmonic and melodic aspects of Daphne of the Dunes, as analyzed by Hackbarth, are at first glance far more complicated. By overlapping chords and sustaining chromatic lines, Partch produced polytonal blurring effects at structural points in the work. Yet even among these intricacies, a stable harmonic framework was upheld by use of pedal points and ostinati. Daphne was originally scored in 1958 for a film entitled Windsong. Somewhat unsatisfied with the film version, Partch revised the score 168 in 1967 to include his most recent instruments at the time, but with little changes to the actual music. 15 The work is a drama told without text; first through music and images, and later through music and dance. His analysis of the musical imagery takes both versions into account. For example, some of the musical support for images in the film that were retained in the dance version included gulls in flight, and snakes in the sand. In the film these images served a similar narrative function as their accompanying music in telling the myth; the gulls represented Daphne’s flight from Apollo, and the snakes represented Apollo’s pursuit. As Daphne was the daughter of the river god Peneus, the river received it own motive as well. It is not difficult to understand why the myth would have appealed to Partch. It is the tale of a forest nymph who is determined never to marry, but then is pursued by the god of music under Cupid’s spell. To avoid capture she calls for her father’s help, who turns her into a large tree. Distraught by the transformation, but still in love, Apollo promises to make harps from her limbs. Hackbarth explains that the form of the work is completely dictated by the dramatic presentation of the myth. It begins with character introductions by assigning motives to each. This opening section is then followed by the pursuit, the seduction, and the transformation. As with Barstow Partch used a device to frame the piece, but in Daphne he accomplished this with similar material at the opening and closing. In addition, the conflict between Apollo and Daphne is depicted by a tonal conflict much like what was seen in the Li Po settings. In this case, however, the resulting harmony of this presumed conflict is a consonant minor third: Apollo’s motive is centered on a 16:9 chord (a whole tone below 1:1), while Daphne’s is centered on a 3:2 (perfect fifth). Apollo’s character is 169 further distinguished through aggressive rhythms and tempos, and through the use of specific percussion instruments. His motive is also consistent throughout, revealing his purposefulness and determination. Daphne, in contrast, is depicted through two different motives, and percussion is limited to string instruments. Both of Daphne’s motives, furthermore, withstand considerable change. These melodic alterations reveal the changes in her disposition as she becomes aware of Apollo’s intentions, and ultimately the change in her form. Hackbarth posits that assigning motives to the characters in order to musically narrate the myth is a manifestation of Corporealism. 16 According to this view, by presenting the action of the characters through music the music, itself becomes personified, and thus corporeal. Although Corporealism should more accurately be understood as a product of performance, it is obvious why Hackbarth made this claim. Daphne is one of only a few works that Partch composed without voice. If his emphasis on voice for Corporeal music could be extended to include instrumental works, then Hackbarth’s analysis is one way of doing this. Yet even as Hackbarth showed, the motives in Daphne are not limited to corporeal entities. Motives are also employed to portray the suspense of Apollo’s pursuit and seduction of Daphne, as well as Daphne’s reluctant feelings toward Apollo. Furthermore, the process of Daphne’s transformation into a tree also receives its own motive to depict the symbolic imagery of the event. Perhaps the music’s ability to convey these aspects of the myth were included by Hackbarth in his interpretation of the concept of Corporealism. Ultimately, however, these are really only Corporealizing techniques, and cannot ensure a Corporeal performance in and of themselves. Regardless, what is most interesting in terms of the 170 analysis is that such mainstream compositional devices were used. Leitmotifs to portray a program, as well as madrigalism, could almost be considered clichés by the mid twentieth century. Partch’s reliance on them was not due to an unawareness of this fact, but rather to his dedication to upholding the drama over the music. Proposed Methodology The first step in analyzing Partch music is, quite simply, obtaining a score. Only a handful of his scores have been published, although there are facsimiles held at a few libraries around the country. The definitive collection of scores is held in the Harry Partch Archive at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Once the instruments used in the score are identified their tablature notation must be learned. The notations used for each of his instruments are explained in Genesis, yet not every change to the construction or tuning of the instruments was tracked by the time of his final edition. Supplemental resources include Toshie Kakinuma’s 1989 dissertation on Partch’s instruments, as well as the Harry Partch Institute at Montclair State University in New Jersey where the instruments currently reside. Once the tablature notations have been deciphered, in order to visualize the tonal relationships, melodic shapes, and overall development of the piece, the parts should then be transcribed into ratio values. Here one might elect to use the Johnston model, or create a new manner of representation. A graphic transcription has been developed for the method proposed here. The process for creating this involves plotting the ratios used within a matrix defined by the total range of pitch content, and the number of instrumental voices. 17 The benefits of this ratio-based matrix approach include the ability 171 to easily isolate measures or sections in need of deeper analysis, and to quickly create graphs or calculations. Melodic and harmonic subtleties, a core aspect of Monophony, and relations between parts are also much easier to follow in the resulting graphic display. For the analysis there are two primary relationships that require attention: the relationship of all tones to 1:1, and the relationship between the music and the text. These relationships can be investigated using standard analytical taxonomies—even Shenkerian analysis could be applied to explain the tonal relationships. The present method proposes to use tools provided by Partch, and to support these with standard terms and concepts. Relationships within Partch’s music can first be addressed with the assistance of his writing on pitch resolution. His thoughts on the topic, which are applicable to tonic resolution as well as internal modulations, were expressed in three observations. 18 Partch wrote that these observations should not be taken as rules to determine one’s compositional process. If they are not determining factors, however, they are at least highly relevant for describing his music. The first observation was that in any given tonality all tones have a propensity to resolve to 1:1, the Prime Unity. In the case of a modulation, the new tonal center could serve as a temporary Unity, but the propensity of tones to resolve to it would be in an inverse proportion to its distance to the fundamental 1:1. For example, a modulation to a tonal center of 5:4 would produce a temporary Unity with a fifth as much power as 1:1 to pull tones toward resolution. His observation essentially quantified the hierarchical structure of a tonal system, where the tonic exerts the strongest pull of all tones in the scale. The second observation was that the intensity of a listener’s psychological need 172 for tones to be resolved is in direct proportion to a tone’s proximity to the Unity; either Prime or temporary. This is another way of articulating the leading tone phenomenon. Accordingly, both for equal temperament and just intonation, small distances between tones produce a sensation that the two tones should fuse as one. This particular observation is also pertinent to Partch’s Tonality Flux technique. The final observation stated that the intensity of a listener’s psychological need for a tone to be resolved is directly related to how large the ratio numbers are. This last observation supports the first. Since number size increases according to the harmonic series as tones emerge from 1:1 (for example, 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, etc.), the larger the number, the less intense would be the listener’s desire to hear them resolve. Again, each of these observations can be said to be true for a tone’s relationship to a Prime Unity as well a temporary Unity achieved through modulation. Partch defined modulation as a move from one “effect of magnetism” to another; or the move from the “feeling” of one tonality to another. 19 He used the magnetism metaphor in order to side- step the subjective nature of articulating a listener’s psychological need for resolution. All tones are potential magnets, he explained, but the intensity of their magnetic field is determined by the three observations above. The analysis presented thus far has shown that Partch used both pivot-tone and Tonality Flux techniques to modulate from one tonal center to another. New tonal centers were not typically established though cadences in the new tonality, as often occurs in equal-tempered tonal modulations. In Partch’s music new tonal centers were more typically established by reinforcing tones through repetition, or sometimes by sheer duration. He explained modulation as a three-step process that he labeled: perfection, imperfection, and new perfection. 20 A new perfection (or temporary 173 Unity), however, was considered arbitrary compared to the perfection of the Prime Unity. The magnetic field of a new perfection, and hence the psychological need for tones to resolve to it, were also considered arbitrary simply because this new perfection was only temporary. Modulation in this sense is an artifice fabricated by the composer for purely musical purposes. The only objectively true perfection, for Partch, was the Prime Unity, 1:1. Relationships in Partch’s works can also be explored with the assistance of his One-Footed Bride graph. This is one of the oldest graphic representations of his theory. It was first presented in the 1930’s in an early version of “Exposition of Monophony”, and later appeared in Genesis. 21 The graph was principally designed to show the comparative consonances of his 43-tone scale, but in doing so he created a counterpart to his three observations on pitch resolution. Yet, rather than describe a tone’s magnetic field the One-Footed Bride graphed a tone’s influence on other tones by the nature of its comparative consonance. In a sense these are different perspectives on the same phenomena, and the overall result is very similar. For instance, the One-Footed Bride reaffirmed that the Prime Unity is the most influential of all tones, and that the influence of a tone decreases as its ratio numbers increase (2:1, 3:2, 4:3, etc.). There is indeed a correlation between a tone’s magnetic field and its comparative consonance, yet the One- Footed Bride’s resulting principles were not aimed at describing the movement between tones. Rather, they were intended to take into account the harmonic relationships between intervals. The way Partch approached this was to assign a psychological character to each interval. These characters were admittedly subjective, but he grounded them in his idea of comparative consonance. 174 Figure 4-3. One-Footed Bride graph; showing Partch’s 43-tone scale, primary and secondary ratios, and psychological classifications of intervals. 22 In his terminology, all consonances were expressed as comparative consonances since they were always heard in relation to the supreme consonance, 1:1. Partch considered these relationships to hold generally true regardless of the octave or timbre, although he did recognize the effects of register and harmonic content on the perception of consonance. 23 The One-Footed Bride allows one to visualize a tone’s comparative 175 consonance according to this primary relationship. Partch’s continuum from consonance to dissonance, of course, followed the natural sequence of superparticular ratios in a harmonic series. On the graph the most consonant intervals were depicted with longer protruding horizontal planes from the center. Immediately, the comparative consonance of the first superparticular ratios (1:1, 2:1, 3:2, 4:3) is evident. These first intervals (unison, octave, fifth and fourth) were presented as the Intervals of Power. Partch placed the ratios in two vertical rows, with each connected by a dotted line to its reciprocal interval. His 43-tone octave was thus split into symmetrical halves; the left side ascending from 1:1, and the right side descending to 2:1. At the top of the graph, the bride’s veil was delineated by six tri-tone intervals. These are the Intervals of Suspense. The second and seventh intervals were deemed the Intervals of Approach, and finally the third and sixth intervals were deemed the Intervals of Emotion. He limited the classifications to his core forty-three intervals, but he insisted that they could be extended to include Monophony’s full potential of three hundred and forty intervals. 24 Certainly any number of intervals could be included when guided by a general diatonic outline as they are here. The classifications themselves are equally general, and referencing them as a tool to understand links between music and text should be undertaken with caution. Writers who have made use of the classifications in their analysis, such as Gilmore, do not place heavy emphasis on them. Rather they cite examples almost as a side note. The vagueness of the classifications (Power, Suspense, Approach, and Emotion) ostensibly precludes any serious conclusions. As Partch noted, however, finer classifications of the tones would have become absurd. Furthermore, as 176 with his observations on resolution, he did not develop the classifications to assist him in composition. He reportedly took an intuitive approach to composition, and would never have consulted interval classifications while setting a text to music. Still, for analytical purposes the classifications can serve to provide insights into the function of their respective intervals. For example, Intervals of Power might signal a cadence or other structural marking; Intervals of Emotion might support the harmonic foundation; Intervals of Approach might serve as leading tones; and Intervals of Suspense might serve as irresolute dissonances. Analyzed based on their function, the classifications do serve to uncover functional relationships, and they also can be mapped to the overall sentiments of the piece. By the Rivers of Babylon The piece chosen to test this analytical method is “By the Rivers of Babylon”, one of Partch’s earliest extant pieces. “Babylon” was composed in 1931 at the same time he was working on the Li Po settings. It was originally composed for voice and Adapted Viola 25 , and part of a two-piece work entitled Two Psalms (Psalm 23, “The Lord is My Shepherd”; and Psalm 137, “By the Rivers of Babylon”). It was during this time that Partch had taken up the practice of transcribing spoken voice in an attempt to capture its true intonation. In search of a Hebraic intonation of these psalms, his field work took him to Emanu-El in San Francisco to transcribe the voice of Cantor Reuben Rinder. 26 Only “The Lord is my Sheppard” was composed directly from the transcription, however, and “Babylon” was based on that model. Yet only “Babylon” was revised in 1941 to include his Chromelodeon organ and Kithara II. In 1955 this revision of “Babylon” was 177 also grouped with other short pieces under the new title Summer 1955, which included Shakespeare’s “Potion Scene”, two settings of Lewis Carroll poems, and a percussion piece entitled “Ulysses Departs from the Edge of the World”. 27 Consistent with his practice at the time, the voice part for “Babylon” was notated almost entirely with standard notation. When he had an intonational need for the voice to extend into other Monophonic intervals Partch stated the exact ratio above the approximate note. The same process of stating the exact ratio was used for all notes in the Adapted Viola part. Standard note heads and rhythmic values where used for both the voice and Adapted Viola, and thus no tablature needed to be developed. Consequently, in order to begin the analysis of “Babylon” only the Chromelodeon and the Kithara II tablature notations need to be transcribed. His use of tablature, again, was in large part an attempt to facilitate learning his instruments, yet its fitness within his overall theory should not go unnoticed. He once wrote about his notation stating that “notes should represent, for the player, physical acts upon the strings, levers, wood blocks, or whatever vibratory bodies he has before him”. 28 Although any notation system will result in a physical act, standard Western notation is more of a symbolic cue than a direct representation. Tablature has the benefit of a closer one-to-one relationship between the note and the movement needed to obtain the desired tone. With that said, Chromelodeon notation provides a new twist on the tablature concept: standard notation itself is used as the tablature. The Chromelodeon was based on experiments with a melodeon (hence, the name combines color/chromatic-melodeon), but was actually an adapted harmonium. The first of these instruments was first adapted to his 43-tone scale in 1941 using reeds from the 178 poorly constructed organ he had built in London. A larger six-octave harmonium, the instrument used in “Babylon”, was adapted in 1945 and called Chromelodeon I to differentiate it from Chromelodeon II adapted in 1946. Unlike his first attempts at developing a justly-tuned organ, the Chromelodeons made use of their original keyboards. By using standard notation, a performer familiar with playing a keyboard would not need to learn anything new. Yet, the resulting tones will no longer be what the player expects. The low 1:1, a ‘G’ at 196 Hz in Monophony, is found at D2 on Chromelodeon I, and the Monophonic 2:1 stretches three and a half keyboard octaves up to A5. The standard notation then becomes meaningless according to its intended purpose, and functions as a tablature that indicates which keys to hold down. Figure 4-4. A Monophonic ‘octave’ on the Chromelodeon (10:7 is middle C). The only additional knowledge the performer needs to master regards the five stops that control the 146 keys. These stops are labeled on the instrument AL, AR, Z, X, and 6:5, and work as follows. Both AL (A-Left) and AR (A-Right) must be open in order to play on the entire keyboard. Z can only be used with AL, and X can only be used with AR. If Z is used alone, the tone will sound an octave below; if used together with AL, the 179 tone will be doubled an octave below. Similarly, if X is used alone, the tone will sound an octave above; if used together with AR, the tone will be doubled an octave above. 29 AL (A-Left) controls the lower region of the primary 43-tone scale AR (A-Right) controls the higher region of the primary 43-tone scale Z controls the octave below A-Left X controls octave above A-Right 6:5 reinforces either A-Left or A-Right with an approximate 6:5 above the original tone Table 4-3. Chromelodeon stops. The Kitharas Partch built were based on the ancient Greek instrument of the same name. He was inspired to create his first Kithara after meeting Kathleen Schlesinger while on fellowship study in Europe. Schlesinger was an English musicologist who specialized in ancient Greece. She had reconstructed a kithara from an image on an ancient vase in the British Museum. At their meeting in her home, she allowed Partch time to study it, and to make his own measurements and sketches. He later took the sketches to Gordon Newell, a sculptor and friend, who made alterations to make its design scalable. Schlesinger’s instrument was authentic in its dimensions of thirty-two inches high and twenty-two inches wide. Yet Partch wanted his Kithara to be an instrument that the ancient Greeks “would have evolved themselves” had their culture continued in tact to contemporary times. 30 The result was an instrument more than twice the size; seventy-one inches high and forty-three inches wide. He was able to build it in Los Angeles High School’s woodshop by enrolling in an adult education class in 1938. Like the Chromelodeon, the Kithara was rebuilt and retuned multiple times, and spurred 180 the development of similar instruments, New Kithara I, and Kithara II (or Bass Kithara). The instrument used in “Babylon” is Kithara II. All three Kitharas have the same design of seventy-two strings that are organized into twelve groups of six strings. Once again standard note types on a standard staff are used as the tablature. The score first indicates which of the twelve six-string groups are to be played with a number inside a square. It then indicates which specific notes to be played with empty note heads on a blank staff. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 10:7 11:7 11:9 9:7 20:11 7:4 5:3 8:5 6:5 10:7 11:8 3:2 9:7 11:8 10:9 9:5 14:11 7:5 7:6 16:11 11:10 1:1 5:4 6:5 1:1 11:10 1:1 18:11 1:1 7:6 11:6 8:7 1:1 20:11 9:8 1:1 12:7 11:7 14:9 3:2 18:11 14:9 3:2 16:9 9:5 5:3 3:2 12:7 10:7 11:6 16:9 9:8 12:11 1:1 1:1 1:1 7:5 5:4 1:1 3:2 8:7 11:8 4:3 3:2 16:11 7:5 4:3 4:3 8:5 5:3 5:3 6:5 Table 4-4. Kithara notation and tuning guide. Bolded ratios are in the middle octave of a three-octave range; ratios above those bolded are in the octave above, and ratios below those bolded are in the octave below. 31 Each of the six-string groupings leans toward a central tonality, but they are not full hexachords. Even so, in “Babylon” and other works the Kithara often provides harmonic accompaniment based on the chords in the twelve groupings. It is a plucked instrument, so these chords must be obtained by a quick succession of notes away from the player (ascending), or toward the player (descending). Pyrex rods are also used for some groups 181 to slide their notes to a desired pitch. The effect is much like that of a steel guitar, but Partch typically used it harmonically rather than melodically. With the codes to the tablatures at hand, transcribing the notes to ratios is a purely mechanical process. A full ratio score can make Partch’s pieces immediately comprehensible to the analyst, and in the case of “Babylon” it reveals unrecognized complexities and undiscovered simplicities at the same time. The piece is organized into three main sections. As was seen in Barstow and Daphne Partch uses a framing device to open and close the piece. Also, similar to Barstow and Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po the overall form is structured by the Psalm text, and a section of melodic nonsense syllables has been added to the original text. The nonsense syllables (which are guttural, vowel- like sounds) are also hand written in the score, while the Psalm text is in type. This may have been to draw the performer’s attention to the different character of that section, or it is also possible that it was composed along with the new instrumentation he added later. In either respect, the middle section sharply contrasts the others as it is the most metrically consistent and harmonically clear section of the piece. 182 Section Subsection Pacing Tonality Introduction (mes. 1-6) None Metrical 3:2 (U) A (mes. 7-20) A1. a | a' | b (mes. 7-12) A2. a" | a'" | b' (mes. 13-17) A3. c | d (mes. 18-20) Rhapsodic 3:2 (U) B (mes. 21-48) B1. (mes. 21-28) B2. (mes. 30-36) B3. (mes. 37-44) Transition (mes. 45-48) Metrical 1:1 (O) 5:4 (U) 5:4 (U) 1:1 (U) C (mes. 49-60) C1. e | f | f' (mes. 49-54) C2. e" | f"' | f"'' (mes. 55-60) Polymetric, increased tempo 1:1 (U)/Flux Closing (mes. 61-63) None Metrical 1:1 (U) Table 4-5. Formal structure of “By the Rivers of Babylon”; (O) denotes Otonality, or major; (U) denotes Utonality, or minor. “Babylon” begins, and nearly ends, in a state of tonal flux. In the Introduction a low 15:8 (F#) in the Chromelodeon initiates a subtle ascent and comes to rest on a dominant 3:2. As the voice enters Partch creates a sense of spontaneity by allowing the vocalist to set the pace. He indicates this in the score with a zero for the meter. 32 These non-metrical measures of text alternate with metrical measures of pauses after each line of text. In addition, the alternating metrical pattern is also found at a higher structural level. The introduction, section B, and the final cadence are all in strict 4/4 (a metrical analog to 1:1, perhaps), and are interspersed with rhapsodic sections. Section C does not use the same alternation between metrical and non-metrical measures as found in section A, however, but rather a syncopated alternation between 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4. This initial phrasing in section A is grouped 3+3+2 (aab+aab+cd). The first two complete phrases (A.1 and A.2) follow a similar pattern, where line a begins on 9:8, and 183 line b begins on 1:1. In his attempt to imitate the intonation of Hebraic chanting, nearly every line hovers around a central pitch and drops off at the end. Figure 4-5a. Excerpt from “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript; introduction and section A.A1 (measures 1-12). Numbers within the diamonds indicate meter; “0” indicates at non-metrical measures with text recited the pace of the vocalist. 33 184 27:16 5:3 27:16 40:27 2:1 7:4 9:5 8:5 3:2 1:1 16:15 7:6 16:11 11:8 27:20 9:7 9:8 15:8 3:2 10:7 5:4 40:21 5:3 9:5 4:3 9:8 6:5 10:7 7:5 By There we rivers of the Ba by lon sat down Yea we wept when we re mem bered Zion Figure 4-5b. Excerpt from “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis; introduction and section A.A1 (measures 1-12); vocal line is in blue; Chromelodeon lines are in red. 34 Although the texture is primarily polyphonic, the movement is almost always parallel. Throughout the piece both the Adapted Viola and the Chromelodeon could be better described as heterophonic in their relationship to the voice. The Kithara II functions mainly as bass, but also provides some homophonic accompaniment. In a sense, “Babylon” can be described as a monophonic piece with heterophonic embellishments. Each instrumental line is determined by the movement of the voice throughout even through they do receive some independence in the final section. And the vocal line, as already stated, is determined by the natural rhythm of the chanted text. The vocal line is also diatonic, and this has an affect on the tonality of the piece. 185 Similar to what was seen in the analyses of Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po, Barstow, and Daphne, Partch made use of a high degree of chromaticism in “Babylon”, yet in most instances these are passing tones used to produce the effect of Tonality Flux. Indeed, intricate secondary and tertiary tonal relationships abound in this piece, but the primary tonal development is folk-like in its simplicity. “Babylon” begins in the dominant minor (D Minor/3:2 Utonality). It remains in this tonality for the first section, and then resolves to the tonic (G Major/1:1 Otonality) to start the second section. Section B modulates to the mediant (B Minor/5:4 Utonality), and then returns to the tonic. In the return of the tonic, however, the piece moves to G Minor/1:1 Utonality, and remains in this tonality until the closing. These tonalities are exceedingly clear in most cases, yet they are sometimes blurred by Partch’s use of extreme chromaticism. An examination of how chromaticism is used in “Babylon” re-confirms Kassel’s observation that Partch did not always use the Tonality Flux technique the way he originally defined it. 35 In “Babylon”, Tonality Flux is employed in two ways: as a technique for resolving important cadences; and as a harmonic clouding technique for heightening the drama of the text. The clouding effect is the tonal equivalent of a slowly evolving chord cluster. This occurs most noticeably in the final section, where the full emotion of the piece reaches its climax. It is interesting to note that in order to produce the clouding effect Parch uses figures on the Chromelodeon that would be common to any keyboardist. The basic shape of the figures is an octave stretch. In some instance, these figures are exact octaves (for example in measures 48-49), but in most cases they are near octaves. The result of moving a single 186 tone up or down on the Chromelodeon has a far more intensely dissonant quality than it would on an equally-tempered keyboard, and Partch uses this to his advantage. Figure 4-6a. Example of Tonality Flux as a clouding effect in “By the Rivers of Babylon” manuscript (measures 49-51). 187 9:5 7:4 12:7 5:3 8:5 14:9 3:2 27:20 9:7 11:8 21:16 7:5 4:3 3:2 3:2 10:7 27:20 6:5 11:8 16:11 3:2 12:7 5:3 40:27 10:7 7:5 27:20 21:16 14:11 10:9 9:8 16:15 16:15 8:7 11:10 14:9 12:7 7:5 11:7 27:16 6:5 5:3 4:3 1:1 3:2 12:7 Figure 4-6b. Example of Tonality Flux as a clouding effect in “By the Rivers of Babylon” matrix analysis; section C1 (measures 49-51); Chromelodeon lines are in red. When used as a clouding effect the Tonality Flux of the Chromelodeon ostensibly wanders aimlessly, as if composed without any prior planning. When viewed within the context of the entire section it becomes clear that the Chromelodeon’s meandering is highly purposeful, and under the control of the viola part. The function of the Tonality Flux in this case changes as the piece comes to a close. The viola, which maintains a pedal point on the tonic throughout the final section, brings its top voice down to 3:2 in measure 59. In the final four measures (60-63) the viola holds a perfect fifth drone between 1:1 and 3:2, and squeezes the Chromelodeon lines to a minor third between 1:1 and 6:5 to resolve the piece on a G Minor triad. 188 Figure 4-6c. Example of Tonality Flux in the final cadence of “By the Rivers of Babylon” (measures 59- 63). 3:2 3:2 1:1 11:8 4:3 9:7 5:4 6:5 Figure 4-6d. Example of Tonality Flux in the final cadence of “By the Rivers of Babylon” (measures 59- 63); vocal line is in blue; Adapted Viola lines are in green; Chromelodeon lines are in red, and Kithara II lines are in dotted black. 189 Partch’s treatment of the text is consistent with his other works, yet the choice of setting a Psalm is somewhat out of character. Like his father after he renounced his ministry, Partch was a borderline atheist. He once posted a sing on his front door to deter proselytizing Christians which read, “Alleged Christians Risk Decapitation at this Door”. 36 He set no other religious texts, and in most of his works his references to religion were usually sardonic. Yet, the sentiment of his setting of Psalm 137 is quite sincere. In the 1930’s he was drawn to serious texts, and in his early career he may have thought that a Psalm setting would help project him as a serious composer. The emotional intensity of this particular Psalm is also self evident, and Partch was no doubt attracted to it because of its dramatic potential. It should also be recalled that one of Partch’s earliest influential musical experiences was listening to Hebrew chant on Edison cylinders when he was around ten years old. This particular text, or at least the sound of similar texts being chanted clearly had a profound effect on him at a young age. Based on his personality and on his pattern in choosing other texts, even if not disclosed, some kind of a personal connection to the text can be expected. Psalm 137 describes a scene of a group of Israelis who have been exiled to Babylon. At a resting point along the river the captors ask the Israelis to entertain them with a joyful song about their god. To be separated from the holy land was to be separated from God, and to be asked to sing joyfully by their captors was an unbearable torture. Below is Psalm 137 as set by Partch; including his nonsense syllables. 190 By the Rivers of Babylon There we sat down Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion Upon the willows in the midst there we hung our harps For there they that led us captive asked of us a song And our tormentors required of us mirth, saying: “Sing us one of the songs of Zion” How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? Ah--------Ah--------Ah------Oh Ah--------Oh------Oh Oh------Oh--Oh----Ah--Oh--Ah--Oh--Ah Oh-------Ü--Ü--------------------- Ü--------------Ü-----Ü------------ Oh----------Oh----------Oh----------Oh If I forget thee O Jerusalem Let my right hand be forgotten Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth If I remember thee not If I set not Jerusalem Above my chief joy The nonsense syllables have more than a musical function; they assist in the narration of the story. Rather than sing a joyful song, the Israelis sing a haunting lament using these syllables. This lament turns to anger in the final lines of the text, and the transition between these two states is depicted musically by a unique figure in the voice and viola lines. It is one of the few times in the piece where these lines cross, and in this instance they even appear to knot together. The modulation from 5:4 to 1:1, in this sense is musical support for the exiled Israelis modulation from grief to anger. 191 Figure 4-7a. Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; modulation from grief to anger, (measures 35-37). 5:3 8:5 7:5 3:2 2:1 4:3 6:5 Oh Ah Oh Ah Ü Figure 4-7b. Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; modulation from grief to anger, (measures 35-37); vocal line is in blue; Adapted Viola line is in green. Another instance where lines cross is between the voice and the Chromelodeon when the narrator mocks the voice of his captor. The line ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion’ is the only line that is quoted as if said by another character. Although not marked in the score, in the performance of the piece Partch directed the vocalist to use a different vocal quality for this line to depict the imitation of a new character. 192 Figure 4-8a. Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; change of speaking characters, (measures 16-17). 11:10 12:11 21:20 2:1 33:32 16:15 5:3 3:2 16:9 9:5 11:6 7:5 5:4 4:3 12:11 6:5 33:32 21:20 10:9 5:4 1:1 16:15 9:8 9:5 9:8 Sing us one of songs of Zi on 5:3 Figure 4-8b. Example of musical support for the text in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; change of speaking characters, (measures 16-17); vocal line is in blue; Chromelodeon lines are in red. This example also shows his treatment of the word ‘Zion’, which appears only twice in the text. In both appearances, here and in measure 11, Patch scored four voices for the Chromelodeon. At all other times the Chromelodeon was limited to two voices, even during the tonal clouding of the final section. Apart from the four-voice chord, in both instances the word ‘Zion’ also receives its own motivic shape. The motif is a Z-like figure crossing over 1:1, moving from 9:8 (A) to 5:3 (E) in measure 17. The absence of 193 1:1 in this important motif might be said to symbolize to void the Israelis felt in the absence of their God. Other notable uses of madrigalism in the piece include a step-wise descending perfect fourth on the words ‘sat down’ in measure 9, and the repetition of a procession- like phrase in the lament of section B in measures 37-40. Kassel showed in Barstow that Partch sometimes embeds subtle puns within his music, and in “Babylon” an example of such a pun can be found in measure 52 in the line ‘Let my right hand be forgotten’. The meaning of the line in the Psalm is that the narrator would be willing to lose the skill of his writing hand if he ever forgets his God. 37 In section C the text is metrical and nearly every syllable receives a quarter-note in duration. By treating the last two syllables of the word ‘forgotten’ with two eighth notes Partch made reference to an American folk lament for another homeland, Dixie. Finally, a purely statistical analysis of the frequency of each interval type described in the One-Footed Bride has an intriguing result. Surprising even for a tonal piece, the Intervals of Power have a frequency rate of 41%. Intervals of Emotion have the next most frequent occurrence at 31%. Intervals of Approach follow with 22%, and Intervals of Suspense occur only 6% of the time. 38 The occurrence rate of each category of intervals in this piece ostensibly supports the Pythagorean observation noted in the first chapter that the first four intervals are the most primal. Partch carried this idea forward through his One-Footed Bride graph, and when these percentages are graphed the result is similar to what he delineated on that graph; namely, the Intervals of Power protrude the furthest, followed by the Intervals of Emotion, then the Intervals of Approach, and finally the Intervals of Suspense. 194 793 429 602 108 Power Approach Emotion Suspense Figure 4-9. Frequency of One-Footed Bride interval types in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; the shape is similar to Partch’s original, hand-drawn One-Footed Bride graph. Since the Intervals of Power are comprised of only three of the forty-three tones in his Monophonic scale, “Babylon” is highly grounded on this tonality. And in accordance with the design of Monophony, the piece is therefore highly grounded on the foundation of the harmonic series. Much of this grounding is accomplished in the original lines of the voice and viola, and is purposefully obscured to for dramatic effect by the voices of the Chromelodeon and Kithara II. Even so, the grounding is easily audible, and in many cases overpowers the obscurities. Beyond the mere frequency of interval types, their relationship with the text is equally interesting. The Intervals of Suspense do not play an important role in “Babylon” as they did, for example, in Partch’s Daphne of the Dunes. There is certainly a great deal of tension between the Israelis and their captors, but the events themselves are not suspenseful. Intervals of Approach, which are abundant in Section A, decline rapidly in 195 the more consonant Section B, and never regain their prominence. A picturesque interpretation of this trailing off might be to imagine the procession of captives walking to Babylon stopping for a while by the river, and then slowly beginning to proceed again. Although the Intervals of Power are the most frequent overall, they occur less than the Intervals of Approach and Emotion in Section A. The emotion of the piece is high from the start, and the frequency of the Intervals of Emotion is the highest in Section A and the first half of Section B. It is in Section B where the anger of the captives overshadows their grief. And at the point where this modulation occurs, the Intervals of Power immediately ascend through the Intervals of Emotion and maintain a dominant position for the remainder of the piece. AB C Power Emotion Approach Suspense Figure 4-10. Frequency of One-Footed bride interval types by section in “By the Rivers of Babylon”; point of modulation between grief and anger is circled in red. 196 The supposition about the value of a close One-Footed bride interval analysis by those who have analyzed Partch’s music is corroborated in “Babylon”. As alluring as this method is for a way to discern one-to-one relationships between word and tone, it does not provide significant insight into the piece. The word “wept’, for example, is treated with an Interval of Approach (9:5), where one might expect it to be treated with an Interval of Emotion. Even the ‘Zion’ motive is not compelling in this regard. It maintains its Z-like shape in both occurrences, and it also maintains its movement from an Interval of Approach to an Interval of Emotion. Yet, to be consistent with the overriding sentiment of the piece one would expect a minimum of one Interval of Power in the motif. Such a statement can be debated, but on the whole there is little evidence that the One-Footed Bride interval types are highly correlated with the text at the level of the word. This is mainly because Partch was attempting to capture the essence of Hebraic chanting, and this effort took priority over specific interval choices. He only departed from this pattern when he wanted to highlight a word through madrigalism, or in his melodic use of nonsense syllables. Still, the One-Footed Bride interval types are telling when mapped to the structure of “Babylon” in its entirety, and therefore this approach should not be overlooked when investigating this work. The analysis of “By the Rivers of Babylon” demonstrates that Partch’s music could be true to his conceptual ideas. In this little piece he was able to balance his Monophonic principles with corporealizing techniques. His use of just intonation allowed him to represent the natural inflections of a speaking voice, and to provide greater harmonic subtlety. His analogy between Monophony and the harmonic series is upheld as well by the predominance of Intervals of Power, and the ultimate return of all 197 tones to 1:1. In terms of Corporeal techniques, he brought the Psalm to life by taking liberties with the narrative and casting the vocalist to act the part of an Isaelite, and by adding new text for the lament. The notion that section B is in fact a lament, furthermore, was unspoken, as was his individual connection to the text. With some understanding of Partch’s life one can see how he used this piece to project himself through it, and to inspire a non-verbal connection with all who might be willing to share his expression. For Partch, the feeling of being in a foreign place was a common experience, and equally common was the frustration of containing his true feelings. Throughout his adult life he was constantly separated from loved ones; through distance, and through death. And furthermore, although he lived through an era of increasing homosexual pride, Partch was born to a generation of secret romance and censored desire. He had no intimate long-time companions. Everyone who knew him, knew only a small part of him. Like any other piece he composed, “Babylon” can only manifest its Corporeal qualities through performance. There is no doubt, nevertheless, that Partch’s intent was to communicate something about himself through its words and tones. The piece therefore provides one more example in his corpus of music of One Voice. Based on the body of analytical literature surrounding his music that is now beginning to grow, evidence suggests that future analysis will result in further confirmations of Partch’s ability to apply his theory in music. 198 CHAPTER FOUR ENDNOTES 1. T.W. Adorno, “On the Problem of Musical Analysis”, Musical Analysis, 1/2 (July, 1982) 169-187. 2. Leonard B. Meyer, “On the Nature and Limits of Critical Analysis” in Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 4. 3. For more on this particular argument, see: Philip Batstone, “Musical Analysis as Phenomenology” Perspectives of New Music, 7/2 (Spring-Summer, 1969) 94-110. 4. Harry Partch, Genesis, 194. 5. Harry Partch, “On the Horns of Dilemma” in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 211. 6. See: Nicolas Ruwet, “Methods of Analysis in Musicology” (1966), reprinted in Musical Analysis, 6/1-2 (1987) 11-36. 7. Glenn Allen Hackbarth, “An Analysis of Harry Partch’s Daphne of the Dunes,” D.M.A. Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1978. Bob Gilmore, “On Harry Partch’s Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po” Perspectives of New Music, 30/2 (Summer, 1992) 22-58. Harry Partch, Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California [1968 Version], edited by Richard Kassel, Recent Researches in American Music 39, Music of the United States of America 9 (Madison: A-R Editions, 2000). 8. Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 31. See also: Harry Partch, “On the Horns of Dilemma” in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 211: “Notes should represent, for the player, physical acts upon the strings, levers, wood blocks, or whatever vibratory bodies he has before him”. 9. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 77. See also: Bob Gilmore, “On Harry Partch’s Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po” Perspectives of New Music, 30/2 (Summer, 1992) 22-58. 10. Harry Partch, Genesis, 188. 11. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 134. Gilmore stated that “Barstow ushers in a new phase of his [Partch’s] creative career”. 199 12. Samuel Andrew Granade II, I Was a Bum Once Myself: Harry Partch , U.S. Hichball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illionois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005, 288-289. 13. Partch explained how he found the inscriptions in a brief article for the Carmel Pine Cone; see: Harry Partch, “Barstow” (1941) reprinted in Bitter Music. “I look off to the northeast. Yes, it’s a mighty long stretch from hear to Needles, or to Las Vegas, and nothing more than a few filling stations to break it. Barstow from the west is easy. But east it turns into a hitchhiker’s bottleneck. Which in itself explains the strange inscriptions. What better to do than sit here, as the cars pass you by, telling the world your story, your desires, letting your unconscious flow?” 14. Harry Partch, Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California [1968 Version], edited by Richard Kassel, ixii. 15. In an interview with Vivian Perlis, Partch was asked about the film Daphne. Partch said, “did you see it?”, and Perlis replied “no”. Partch continued, “then don’t see it, because it’s very bad. It really is bad. Conceptually its bad…except for the nature scenes. Those were good”. Partch commented that the people in the story should have been “streakers”. See: Vivian Perlis, “Harry Partch Interview”, 39. 16. Glenn Allen Hackbarth, “An Analysis of Harry Partch’s Daphne of the Dunes”, 122. 17. The process for creating a matrix analysis is further explained in the Appendix. 18. Harry Partch, Genesis, 181-194. Partch’s “observations” were based on Helmholtz’s “Laws of the Progression of Parts” in On the Sensations of Tone, 350-353. 19. Ibid., 181. Partch made use of two metaphors to explain modulation; one was magnetism, the other was gravity. The gravity metaphor is in some ways more poetic because of its imagery of moving bodies, yet the magnetism metaphor is clearer. Regardless of which one is preferred by the reader, Partch’s alternating use of them in Genesis can be confusing. Therefore only the magnetism metaphor is presented here. 20. Helmholtz similarly suggested: preparation, suspension, resolution. See: Herman von Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 354. 21. Bob Gilmore, “On Harry Partch’s Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po” Perspectives of New Music. 22. Harry Partch, Genesis, 155. 200 23. Ibid., 153. Regarding the determination of a consonance Partch stated, “I strongly contend that for general determinations of musical theory it is the ratio itself in any given register which is of prime significance”. 24. Ibid., 156. 25. The score calls for cello, but Partch gave Adapted Viola in his list of works. See: “Appendix III” in Harry Partch, Genesis, 468. 26. Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch, 86. He took this approach in setting and excerpt of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with vocalist Rudolphine Radil. 27. Ibid, 236, 436n59. The grouping is not thematic, and the pieces were never performed together as a complete work. Gilmore suggested that Partch only grouped in order to facilitate copyrighting them. 28. Harry Partch, “On the Horns of Dilemma” in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 211. 29. Partch’s explanation about the stops on Chromelodeon are not entirely clear in Genesis. A better explanation is found in Toshie Kakinuma, “The Musical Instruments of Harry Partch as an Apparatus of Production in Musical Theatre,” 148-149. 30. Harry Partch, “The Kithara” reprinted in Bitter Music, 170. 31. Harry Partch, Genesis, 229-230. 32. Partch used standard metrical signs, but placed them within a diamond in order to avoid confusion with pitch ratios. 33. Harry Partch, “By the Rivers of Babylon” (unpublished score), 1931-1955. 34. The Appendix contains a graphic analysis of the entire score. 35. Harry Partch, Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California [1968 Version], edited by Richard Kassel, lxvii. 36. Harry Partch, Enclosure 3: Harry Partch, edited by Philip Blackburn, 524. 37. Marshall Shelly, ed., Quest Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 853. 201 38. Frequency is based on the eighth note, which is the smallest rhythmic unit. Occurrences were not weighted with respect to location. In other words, downbeats were scored the same as all other location within a measure. Using a weighting algorithm would produce an equally interesting result, but the blurring of meter within the piece makes the approach questionable in this case. 202 CONCLUSION 2:1 This study aimed to resolve some of the contradictions between two of Partch’s most cited ideas: Monophony and Corporealism. The path to resolution before now has been convoluted by semantic contradictions within the definitions of these terms, and by a plethora of other new terms and concepts that have to be sorted through along the way. In general, complications are due to misunderstandings of his sometimes vague definitions and explanations. There also seems to be a tendency among sympathetic writers to take the novelty of Partch’s concepts at face value, without questioning their relationship to preexisting ideas. The resulting tangle of his theories, a condition that Partch himself can be held accountable for, was unknotted in this dissertation through a clarification of his terms, and a reorganization of his concepts under the rubric of One Voice. Separating his aesthetic ideas from his compositional techniques was also critical to the effort. And finally, an analysis of his music was considered along with existing analysis to confirm how he applied his theory in his compositions. What was revealed through this approach was a theory and practice that remained consistent over time, rather than a fragmented succession of unrelated theoretical and musical works, which is how they initially appear to be. First and foremost, it is important to understand Parch’s political agenda. He was adamantly opposed to limitations upon creativity, and felt that Western culture as a whole had taken on a moralistic ideology that stifled the flow of individual expression. His call for social bonding through ritualistic performances did not run counter to this idea, 203 because he felt that individual expression was only meaningful when shared. In this sense he made a distinction between participating in a group expression (for example in the ritual of Catholic Mass) and sharing an individual expression in a group setting. He was decidedly uninterested in group expression, which he believed was being thrust upon modern society. And his effort to liberate individual expression was carried through all of his life’s work. It lies at the foundation of One Voice, most importantly, out of which Monophony and Corporealism developed. His notion of One Voice can be succinctly explained as communication of the self through performance. Here the concept of self means everything that makes an individual up emotionally, or as Partch put it, “his experiences, his genesis, and his milieu”. 1 Motivated by this political stance, One Voice became Partch’s all-encompassing artistic goal. Monophony and Corporealism were then the co-dependent parts of how he realized this goal. For the sake of clarity, his Monophonic principles can be overlooked as restatements of the qualities of just intonation. Briefly his four principles were that: 1) the natural sequence of musical intervals begins with “absolute consonance” and infinitely progresses into dissonance; 2) major tonality is an “immutable faculty” of just intervals, and of human hearing; 3) minor tonality is also an immutable faculty of just intervals, and of human hearing; and 4) the use of musical intervals from the earliest times has followed principle one, beginning with pure consonance and gradually including more and more dissonance. 2 Theses principles are not specific to his theory, and in the end, Monophony is simply a term Partch used for the scale he created out of just intervals. His Monophonic resources, as he called this scale, were arbitrarily comprised of forty-three tones by limiting the ratios he used to the integer 11. My intent 204 here is not to over simplify or to dilute his theory, but rather to demystify his terminology. It is easier to understand that Monophony was a means to another end when it is presented as a mere scale. The same demystification is necessary for his concept of Corporealism, which is often touted as a concept that is independent from Monophony. It was evident through this research that what is often called Corporealism in Partch scholarship is really only a performance technique within the genre of music theater. The use of dramatic narrative, dance, and ritual-like theatrics, all of which were used by other music theater composers, were some of the techniques Partch used to corporealize his works. Yet properly understood Corporealism is actually a product of performance, not one of the elements that make it up. Drawing upon the aesthetics of dance and ritual studies is useful to assess what he was really after with Corporealism; both involve bodily movement at a fundamental level. Partch wanted his performances to have an unplanned—yet not unstructured—feel. In dance the performer must maintain a pure proportion between effort and intent to achieve a release of individual freedom. And similarly in ritual, although the procedures of movement are strictly followed by the initiate, the results for the individual at each ritual event are unique. With emphasis on bodily movement and the phenomenological structuring of the performance/event, the term spontaneity was used by Partch almost interchangeably with Corporealism to describe this. And ultimately Corporealism was no more a goal than Monophony. It was only another tool to help Partch achieve One Voice. There are multiple metaphors in Partch’s theory that support his notion of One Voice. What he described as the absolute consonance of 1:1 is an obvious example, and 205 of course, the elemental influence of 1:1 on all other tones. His desire for an integration of a musician, dancer, and actor into a single performer was another example, as was his use of tablature notation for a one-to-one relationship between the musical notes and the physical acts required to manifest them. A closer metaphor can be found in the way he ensured One Voice by rejecting other voices in the production of his works. One of the most poetic metaphors, however, is tonality itself. Partch’s use of simple— often triadic—tonality is an important aspect of his music, and a clear support for his theory. If his compositions were highly atonal, or minimal, or if he made use of serial or chance procedures, there would be an untenable disconnect between his music and his theory. What we find, however, is exactly what we expect. Without putting too fine a point on it, Partch’s compositional technique was fairly rudimentary. This was partly due to his lack of training as a composer, but he was clearly aware of the contemporary compositional options. He never tried to emulate other styles, nor did he purposefully try to emulate other composers. Because of this Partch has often been described as an extreme independent. This does not imply, however, that his music was elitist. In fact, according to Ben Johnston his music had a profound appeal on popular audiences. In an interview shortly after Partch died, Johnston told of rock and jazz musicians who sought Partch out in reverence, and how John Cage once referred to Partch as a “folk” composer. 3 Although he was influenced by a diversity of ideas, Johnston said, Partch was not an eclectic composer as a result. Johnston stated many times that Partch’s music had certain “directness” about it: 206 “He was really willing to be as direct and as simple and as ‘corny’ if you like, as people are when they aren’t trying to be concert artists. But they’re making something for their house, or they’re doing something for their friends”. 4 It was this type of spontaneous sensibility that Partch was after through his music, regardless of the compositional techniques he used. Moreover, it was this type of intimacy he was generally after through his aesthetic of One Voice From a new perspective that places One Voice at the root of his ideas, Partch’s work can be readdressed holistically. Admittedly, the holistic view presented here was generated by interpreting his ideas in the context of their sources. Partch was ostensibly satisfied with dualistic interpretations of his theory, and found no need to search for a connection between Monophony and Corporealism. The undercurrent that connected these theories and all of his life’s work was his criticism about modern society in Western culture. His convictions about the hegemony of individual repression can be seen not only in his essays, but also in his musical works. Hence more investigation of his music will help to support this view. The proposed methodology for analyzing his music shows that his notation need not be an intimidating deterrent. Matrix analysis can be further refined, and possible automated, but even in its current state it provides a straight-forward way to integrate his tablatures. Furthermore, Partch’s compositions are strikingly simple, and even more so when considered among the complexity of other twentieth-century music. Perhaps this is what made his music so direct in its ability to communicate. Like the harmonic series itself, the purity of Partch’s compositional design allowed it the stability to generate infinite meaning. 207 CONCLUSION ENDNOTES 1. Harry Partch, letter to Lauriston Marshall, January 14, 1950. 2. Harry Partch, Genesis, 87-94. 3. Walter Zimmerman, “Ben Johnston about Harry Partch” in Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Musicians (Vancouver: Aesthetic Research Center of Canada, 1976). 4. 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Chalmers, John H., Jr. Divisions of the Tetrachord: A Prolegomenon to the Construction of Musical Scales. Hanover, New Hampshire: Frog Peak Music, 1993. Clements, Andrew. “Music Theater.” Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press (Accessed June 23, 2006), <grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?section=music.19452>. Cowell, Henry “43 Tone Minstrelsy.” Saturday Review (November 26, 1945). Crossley, Nick. “Ritual, Body Technique, and (Inter)subjectivity.” In Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives. Edited by Kevin Schilbrack. New York: Routledge, 2004. Doty, David B. Just Intonation Primer: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Just Intonation. Third edition. San Francisco: Just Intonation Network, 2002. Driver, Tom F. The Magic of Ritual. San Francisco: Harper, 1991. 209 Dunn, David, ed. Harry Partch: an Anthology of Critical Perspectives. Contemporary Music Studies 9. The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. 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Wiecki, Ronald V. “Relieving ‘12-Tone Paralysis’: Harry Partch in Madison, Wisconsin, 1944-1947.” American Music 9/1 (Spring, 1991). Yang, Mina. “New Directions in California Music: Constructions of a Pacific Rim Cultural Identity, 1925-1945.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 2001. Yeats, William Butler. Plays and Controversies. London: MacMillian and Co., 1923. ____. Ideas of Good and Evil. London: A. H. Bullen, 1914. Zimmerman, Walter. Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Musicians. Vancouver: Aesthetic Research Center of Canada, 1976. 207 APPENDIX: MATRIX ANALYSIS OF “BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON” All charts were prepared using Microsoft Excel with a smooth line graph. A three-octave range of Partch’s forty-three Monophonic ratios were each assigned a numerical key value. The eighth note was used as the default rhythmic unit for each field since it is the smallest note unit found in the piece. The records for the charts were the instrumental voices; the Kithara II required six records, the Chromelodeon required four, the Adapted Viola required two, and the vocal line required one. Each voice received a key value when the instrument sounded, and the field was left empty when the instrument rested. 27 9:8 26 10:9 25 11:10 24 12:11 23 16:15 22 21:20 21 33:32 20 81:80 19 1:1 18 L160:81 17 L64:33 16 L40:21 15 L15:8 Table Appendix-1. Example numerical key values (in red) assigned to ratios. 208 48 49 Kith II 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 Kith II 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 Kith II 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 Kith II 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 Kith II 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 Kith II 91 91 87 87 5 5 1 1 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 Chrom 44 56 55 67 39 42 44 31 38 41 44 Chrom 31 43 35 48 40 47 51 52 40 46 50 52 Viola 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 Viola 74 74 44 44 48 48 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 Voice 84 84 84 84 84 84 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 50 51 90 90 95 95 95 95 95 95 90 90 82 82 87 87 87 87 87 87 82 82 68 68 74 74 74 74 74 74 68 68 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 14 14 44 44 44 44 44 44 14 14 -5 -5 44 44 44 44 44 44 31 31 31 31 31 31 -5 -5 44 44 31 37 40 44 31 36 39 44 31 35 38 44 46 48 50 52 53 55 19 25 28 31 19 23 27 31 19 23 26 31 34 36 38 40 41 43 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 93 93 74 74 74 74 80 80 80 80 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 95 95 95 95 52 53 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 95 90 90 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 87 82 82 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 68 68 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 62 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 44 14 14 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 -5 -5 44 44 44 44 44 44 56 57 58 60 62 66 67 68 69 70 37 44 47 50 44 50 53 54 44 45 46 48 50 54 55 56 57 25 32 35 37 32 38 41 44 74 74 62 62 44 44 74 74 74 74 80 80 80 80 80 80 87 87 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 87 87 74 74 62 44 87 87 87 87 95 95 95 95 95 95 97 97 Table Appendix-2. Example instrumental voice records with numerical key values (measures 48-53). Note that measure 51-52 are in 5/4, while the others are in 4/4. 209 Measure 56 57 58 Meter 3/4 4/4 4/4 Text not If I set not Je Ru sa lem H11:6 H20:11 1 1 1 1 H9:5 H16:9 1 1 H7:4 H12:7 1 1 1 1 1 1 H27:16 H5:3 1 1 H18:11 H8:5 H11:7 H14:9 1 1 H32:21 H3:2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 H40:27 H16:11 1 1 H10:7 1 1 1 1 H7:5 H11:8 H27:20 H4:3 H21:16 H9:7 H14:11 H5:4 1 1 1 1 1 1 H11:9 H6:5 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 H32:27 H7:6 H8:7 H9:8 H10:9 H11:10 H12:11 1 1 1 1 1 H16:15 1 H21:20 H33:32 1 H81:80 1 2:1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 Table Appendix-3. Example of ratio plots within the matrix (measure 56-58). Each field (or column) is an eighth note value. The number 1, indicates one occurrence of ratio; voice is represented in blue, Adapted Viola is in green, Chromelodeon is in red, and Kithara is in black. 210 3:2 Figure Appendix-1. Matrix analysis excerpt of “By the Rivers of Babylon” (Section A, measures 1-20); Voice is represented in blue, Adapted Viola is in green, Chromelodeon is in red, and Kithara is in dotted black. 211 5:4 2:1 1:1 Figure Appendix-2. Matrix analysis excerpt of “By the Rivers of Babylon” (Section B, measures 21-44); Voice is represented in blue, Adapted Viola is in green, and Kithara is in dotted black. 212 1:1 Figure Appendix-3. Matrix analysis excerpt of “By the Rivers of Babylon” (Section C, measures 45-63); Voice is represented in blue, Adapted Viola is in green, Chromelodeon is in red, and Kithara is in dotted black.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The study of American, microtonal composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) is complicated by specious autobiographical accounts, contradictory theoretical positions, and a methodology predicated on a vague concept of intuition. These complications are exacerbated by his use of a forty-three-tone scale, non-Western sources of inspiration, novel terms for preexisting ideas, and an integration of music, drama, and dance. In addition, his use of ratios to represent pitch, and the unique tablature notations for his nearly forty invented instruments create a seemingly insurmountable barrier to the analysis of his music. Yet while these complexities are initially overwhelming, they actually work to obscure the simplicity of Partch's core ideas and compositional technique. At the foundation of all his ideas was an individualistic concept he called One Voice. One Voice was the process by which Partch projected his self image through his works. In doing so, he created a model that aimed to inspire others toward individual expression and artistic investigation. The concept of One Voice is often treated as a byproduct of Partch's more well-known theories, namely Monophony (his intonation scheme), and Corporealism (his performance aesthetic). On closer examination, however, it can be shown that One Voice was in fact his most fundamental theory.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Harlan, Brian Timothy (author)

Core Title One voice: a reconciliation of Harry Partch's disparate theories

School Thornton School of Music

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Music History

Publication Date 06/07/2007

Defense Date 03/29/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag corporealism,Harry Partch,just intonation,microtonal,modernism,music theater,OAI-PMH Harvest,Propaganda, American,twentieth century

Place Name USA (countries)

Language English

Advisor Demers, Joanna (committee chair), Chew, Elaine (committee member), Moore, Robert S. (committee member), Ongaro, Giulio M. (committee member)

Creator Email harlan@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m521

Unique identifier UC1119715

Identifier etd-Harlan-20070607 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-505028 (legacy record id),usctheses-m521 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Harlan-20070607.pdf

Dmrecord 505028

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Harlan, Brian Timothy

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu