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Edited by David Dunn.
Contemporary Music Studies vol. 19,
Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2000.
195 pp., illus., compact disk included. Trade, $51.00.
ISBN: 90-5755-065-2.
Reviewed by Robert Coburn, Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA. 95211, U.S.A. E-mail: rcoburn@uop.edu


To those who know his work, Harry Partch (1901-1974) is one of the most unique creative artists in the 20th century. Composer, performer, instrument builder (some say sculptor), iconoclast, and creator of stage works that fully integrate 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 some new collections of his writings. Harry Partch: an anthology of critical perspectives 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 the large instruments. Authors include Partch himself, Rudolf Rasch, Ben Johnston, Glenn Hackbarth, Elaine Barkin, Paul Earls, Lou Harrison, Kenneth Gaburo, and interviews between Danlee Mitchell and David Dunn, and Mitchell and Henry Brant.

The material is collected into 3 categories based on Partch's self-descriptive language: "sound-magic, visual beauty, experience-ritual." As stated by the editor this provides "general topic areas for organizational convenience" (Dunn, pg. xiv) but does not fully describe the essays themselves. Only the second category is best represented. It contains 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 Rudolf Rasch's "A Word or Two on the Tuning of Harry Parch" gives a clear and insightful introduction to Partch's use of ratios in determining the tunings of the "Tonality Diamond" and eventually the temperament of the 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 is less successful. Recollections by friends and colleagues can 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 in this collection 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 Lou 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 labyrinth of text material, the essay traces Gaburo's personal understanding of Partch's ideas from physicality to complete theatrical integration. Although challenging, this text is by far the most insightful and revealing essay written to date about Partch's much discussed concept of "corporeality."

Harry Partch's work embodies the integration of mathematics, technology, and the arts. His music and instrumental design are based on a personal vision of the natural way in which ratios determine intervallic tunings and temperaments. In the service of his musical vision he employed the technology of bamboo, wood, glass, and the discarded objects of his modern time: pyrex carbouys, liberated from the trash bins of the Radiation Labs of the University of California, Berkeley, were transformed into Cloud Chamber Bowls; carefully tuned lengths of bamboo became the Boo; an altered reed organ became the Chromelodeon; miscellaneous objects from army surplus became the Spoils of War. Through his art he integrated all of this into a complete theater in which no divisions existed between instrumentalist, dancer, singer, and actor. His philosophy of a "total corporeality" permeated all that he created resulting in a magical experience unique within the 20th century. With the addition of Harry Partch: an anthology of critical perspectives to Partch's own Genesis of a Music, a much wider understanding of the contributions of this remarkable artistic figure is now possible.

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