Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives (review)

To those who know the work of Harry Partch (1901-1974), he was one of the most unique creative artists of the twentieth century. Composer, performer, instrument builder (some say sculptor), iconoclast and creator of stage works that fully integrated music, movement, theater, text and stage design, Harry Partch assembled a musical experience representing his philosophy of total corporeality. Until recently, the only way to encounter his work was through the few available recordings and his book, Genesis of a Music. Now an increased interest in Partch and his music has generated new collections of his writings, such as Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives, which brings together a substantial set of essays about his music by those who worked most closely with him. This alone makes it a significant contribution to the Partch legacy.

The anthology presents reprints of important earlier articles, new essays on Partch's work by those who collaborated with him, photos chronicling his life and a CD, which includes an unedited interview for Voice of America and a somewhat extraneous edited interview capturing the accidental collapse of one of Partch's large instruments. Authors include Partch himself, Rudolf Rasch, Ben Johnston, Glenn Hackbarth, Elaine Barkin, Paul Earls, Lou Harrison and Kenneth Gaburo. There are also interviews between Danlee Mitchell and David Dunn and Mitchell and Henry Brant.

The material is collected into three categories, based on Partch's self-descriptive language: "Sound-Magic," "Visual Beauty" and "Experience-Ritual." As stated by the editor, this provides "general topic areas for organizational convenience" (p. xiv) but does not fully describe the essays themselves. In fact, only the second category is well represented, containing a wonderful collection of 15 black-and-white photographs provided by Betty Freeman and chronicling Partch's life from hobo to performer to instrument-builder to senior artist. These photos provide the perfect visual backdrop against which the essays can be understood.

The essays themselves might better be classified by the author's approach: technical description, personal recollection, comprehensive vision. Each of these categories contains texts of great value. In the first category, that of technical description, Rudolf Rasch's "A Word or Two on the Tuning of Harry Partch" gives a clear and insightful introduction to Partch's use of ratios in determining the tunings of the "Tonality Diamond" and in eventually determining the temperament of his 43-note scale. Paul Earls' essay "Verses in Preparation for Delusion of the Fury," written in 1967, provides a detailed look at the duets, quartets, sextets and octet of verses. Although at times repetitive (like Partch's music), Earls presents an analytical view of this material, including instrumentation, metrical structure, pitch structure and notation. Few of Partch's works have received so thorough an analysis.

The second category, personal recollection, is less successful. Recollections by friends and colleagues can often give a reader deep insights into the composer's thinking, placing the work clearly within the milieu of his or her time. Unfortunately, most of the personal recollections here are well meant but contribute little to a better understanding of Partch's world. The primary exception is a reprint of the 1988 essay "I Do Not Quite Understand You, Socrates," by the California composer Lou Harrison. In a succinct and poetic text, Harrison characterizes the various aspects of Partch's music and contributes a personal view, providing insights into both the man and the music.

In any discussion of Partch's work, a writer must at some point deal with his comprehensive vision of total integration and total corporeality. Nowhere has this been done more successfully than in the late Kenneth Gaburo's essay "In Search of Partch's Bewitched." As with much of Gaburo's writing, the essay itself is a creative expression of the ideas behind the text. Written in various typefaces and laid out as a

Reviews Panel:

Peter Anders, Fred Allan Andersson, Wilfred Arnold, Roy...