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I've spent today reading a book called Bitter Music, which is a collection of the writings of the experimental composer Harry Partch. He is noted for, amongst various other things, developing a 42-tones to the octave temperment system (some stuff about that here, I think) and building various instruments to play with it. The thing I've been reading mostly today is a lengthy journal of Partch's hobo days. After spending a year in England researching ancient Greek tonal systems, trying to have a 42-tone "chromatic organ" built, and discussing with Yeats developing the latter's translation of Oedipus into a musical theatre event, he returned to the West Coast, in the midst of the Great Depression. Not being able to find work, he drifted from LA up to Washington and back south, working stints in WPA labor camps, sleeping in fields, in jails, wherever. He kept a journal in which he recorded, in wonderfully lyrical detail, the events of his wanderings. Not only does he transcribe conversations and expressions he encountered, but he scores them, attempting to capture the cadences of speech and the tonalities of expressions of the natural music of America. There's a wonderful passage, where he's transcribed the Born-Again come-on of a Filipino truck driver who's picked him up, allowing him freely to break into song, and recording in the bass register his own thoughts. Musical and litererary counterpoint simultaneously. Beautiful stuff.
Just wondering if anyone could tell me more about his music and his life. I'm broke right now, but if anyone could reccomend a good starting point in his discography, I'd be much obliged. |
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