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Rating: A philosophic music-man seduced into carpentry. *
Make yourselves comfortable. I won't be brief.
What is that man doing, bent over sheets and strange scores, in the shipyard (abandoned since the end of the Second World War) that he has elected, illegitimately, as his home and workshop?
And what are the strange creatures surrounding him, those sculptures vaguely resembling unlikely instruments, which could have been conceived by the imagination of a Tinguely vacationing in the realms of sound?
The answer is simple: he is conducting a microtonal revolution of the scale, where the octave is divided into 43 intervals. **
And the machines surrounding him are the instruments that will allow him to apply it.
He started by making modifications to canonical traditional instruments. Then, by manipulating those from distant cultures, in space and time (Asia, Africa, ancient Greece). But the design, which the network of experiences and visions that crossed him was unfolding (broader than can be recounted in a few lines), needed to materialize as well. And so, over time, his musical instruments came to light. Which I recommend you look at and play.
Where does that man come from?
He comes from the streets, rather, from the tracks. From the wandering life of the hobo.
From one of the most sincerely American epics, made of routes that intersect following the railroad, of destinies that intersect fleetingly, of clandestine journeys within the vastness of a nation that is one and a hundred thousand.
Part of this life, of the dialogues gathered among others who, like him, "ride the rails" across America, will become substance of his work.
Not only as text, but also as sound. Because what he was actually erecting is an immense scenario, an inexhaustible sound theater, where even the "corporeal" resonance of the word, the voice, the spoken word, find a place.
He comes from a classical education and refers to it, but by introducing a very personal conception of the sonic experience as a bearer of history, elevating every sound to equal dignity, in a production ranging from short compositions to "music-dance drama" (King Oedipus - 1951), to film soundtracks, to “dance satire” (The Bewitched 1954-'55).
And he is seen as an author, instrument builder, and performer of his own music, surrounded by what would over time become a true community of musicians and collaborators willing to embark on an adventurous journey into the new American music.
In a constant hybridization of "high culture" with "pop" culture, even though he began his journey well before the Beat Generation myth made its appearance.
With an attention that was then unprecedented for Eastern musical cultures, vastly ahead of the so-called World Music trends. And also ahead of the minimalist school, which later drew from the same sources and whose exponents looked with serious interest at Partch's work.
Why talk about him?
Besides what has already been said, there is a sentimental reason, which for me is sufficient.
Such stubborn creation of a world can only arouse my interest, a fascination to which I willingly surrender.
But there is also an "ethical" reason.
In a "place" like this, thousands of records meet, often elevated to the rank of masterpieces, and in the whirlpool and voracious machinery of today's productions, the very amiable deeds of some youngster trying, in producing sounds, even with some unusual objects (besides the small guitar), are sometimes described as the new frontier of some avant-garde.
Now, the work of Harry Partch (which over 60 years ago started to incorporate the life, the organicity of sound) at the time opposed, mocked and snubbed by a certain academic world but also followed, cited and raided by many musicians and composers, must have at least a corner, among the thousands of pages of DeBaser, where to deposit a trace.
A trace that some passerby may want to follow, to get lost in the parallel world that Harry also arranged for us.
I encountered the sounds produced by those oversized marimbas, tubes, airplane tanks, and glass bells about ten years ago, by chance listening to a CD published by CRI, with the simple title "The Music of Harry Partch." A great compendium, for those who would like to approach his work, which I wished to suggest. Unfortunately, after an unfruitful search, I discovered it no longer exists. I then contacted New World Recording (which acquired the catalog of Composers Recordings) and the very courteous Mr. Paul M. Tai replied: "…the title you mention will not be reissued because the music it contained is included on the four discs listed above..."
So I'm listening to volume 2 of the series of 4 CDs that have been released and distributed in Italy by "info@silenzio-distribuzione.it" (15 €).
And listening confirms the memory, starting with the long track that opens the composition, an autobiographical work, a narrative through sound images, which includes spoken parts in the inflections typical of vagabonds met in the '40s, immersed in the almost expressionist atmosphere produced by the sound of some of the instruments invented by Partch, leading into brief sung parts, broken by the percussive rhythm of marimba or the whistle of a train, in a succession of voids and fullness, of changing scenes where now and then the uncertain pizzicato of some string emerges... To reach the last track, which contains part of a preparatory work for his drama "Delusion of the Fury", and where the experimentation on percussion, on the particular instrumental technique as an element of the very composition, takes shape in a work in progress that lasted a couple of years and allows us today to spend 35 minutes in a space dominated by the reverberations of sound, the timbres of the instruments, those funny sounding animals, that we can almost glimpse, among which a jew's-harp or perhaps its pachydermic "Partchian" version peeks out.
Inside Harry's "noise tunnel," I manage to listen to his "jokes" with an attitude resembling naivety, almost with the same amazement that those who crossed it many years ago must have felt.
And, as far as I'm concerned, that's not little.
After this unresolved attempt at apology, I have one last card left, to invite you to take a dive into the past, and the "future" it conceals, within Partch's work.
And I play it now, this last card. I know that the words of a funny gentleman, spoken by the hoarse voice that many here adore, will be much more convincing and effective.
So I leave the closing to him.
"...The new CD has been republished and the sound is excellent. An excellent introduction to his entire work. Start with Volume One, and you'll be hooked. He worked around, like a nomad, for half of his life, and he was among those transgressive academics who operate outside the norms. That's why they were afraid of him and pretended to admire him. Like most innovators, he became the gravel on the path most people tread. So he was the pioneer and was trampled by the crowd. But nobody has ever done since what he did. The idea of designing your own instruments, playing them, and then building them exactly to the desired size, creating your own musical system. It was incredible, especially for the period in which he was doing it. It was quite subversive. It is always fascinating to hear something that is not as perfect and evolved as a normal instrument. It's like striking a tractor or a junkyard door. Or like you're still in the kitchen. The music has that 'extra texture'..."
Tom Waits, taken from http://www.sonicrocket.com/beatstream/stardust/waits/
* "I am not an instrument-builder, but a philosophic music-man seduced into carpentry."
Harry Partch (1901-1974)
** Theories expressed in "Genesis of the Music" published in 1949.
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