Message from Harry

Folks:

In doing some work on the Harry Partch Web project which I mentioned on this
list recently, I began going through my collection of his Gate 5 recordings.
Issue D, Oedipus, contains a booklet, Photgraphs of Instruments Built by
Harry Partch and Heard in His Recorded Music.

As with many other people accessing this tuning list, I were a hat of many
colors, two of which are interests in tuning and computers. In reading the
statement by Harry on the front of this booklet I was amazed how these words
could just as easily be applied to those of us working in the computer media-
especially the first two paragraphs. So I thought I should share them with you.


Allen Strange

========================== Tear Here ========================================

It is inherent in the being of the creative art worker to know and
understand the materials he needs, and to create them where they do not
exist, to the best of his ability. In music, this characteristic must go far
beyond the mere competence to compose and analyze a score. It is more
difficult for the composer to create the colors of needed sound than it is for
the painter to create the colors of needed light, but it is no less important
that he find it possible to do so. The usual musical traditions are against
him in the effort, in our time they are recognizable as traditions only when
they have reached the comfortable plateau of academic security. But the
rebelliously creative act is also a tradition, and if our art of music is to be
anything more than a shadow of its past, the traditions in question must
periodically shake off dominant habits and excite themselves into palpable
growth.

If one must have the feeling of historical respectability beneath him in
order to function, our world provides it in myriad variety, beyond the
immediate local, before the immediate past. He does not need to become
an archeologist to realize that there is hardly an exotic line he could write,
a variant article he could create, or a singular idea he could brew, that
would be not felicitous in some tradition, at some point on the globe, at
some conjectured time in the cultural past. My instruments belong to
many traditions, especially including the present one: affirmation of
parentage provides the primary substance of rebellion.

There tuning is based on the 43-tone-to-the-octave system of acoustic---
not equal--- intonation, which is explained in by book, Genesis of a Music,
published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1949. A new range of
melodic resources, a new series of tonal relationships, and a new
perspective on consonance and dissonance are all implicit in the system..
Beyond these severely definable ideas is the music itself, elusive to words,
I call corporeal, because it roots itself with other arts necessary to
civilization, in a unity that is important to the whole being--- mind and
body. Even the visual element of seeing the instruments played is a vital
one.

I began designing and building instruments nearly forty years ago. Five of
those represented here are explained in my book. The other have been
built since the time of that publication. All have been built and rebuilt---
one of them seven times--- to improve quality. No two are exactly alike. I
am not an instrument builder, but a philosophic music-man seduced into
carpentry.
H.P.--- June, 1962

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>Whose music truly has tonal motion?
> Harry Partch's -no
> La Monte Young's -no
> James Tenney's -no

Wondering if you've heard Tenney's Harmonium #5 for string trio (on
ARRAYMUSIC's CD "Strange City/Ville Etrange", Artifact Records
(http://www.io.org/~artifac/).

I find this piece has fairly non-static harmonic motion.


- Marc Sabat



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Dear Adam,

If you define JI in 12 tones per octave and they are based on the the
better resultion of 12 ET than you should not be surprised if a listener
hears very little difference. My wife Mayumi uses only 12 notes in JI,
but they are all made up of ratios of the 13th harmonic. This provides
for the melodic angularity you are seeking, while enriching the harmony
with sure and meaningful relationships, and a fresh sound to boot.

Surely a restriction of only 12 keys is still a restriction and this can
be overcome by writing for another instrument (or more) playing with the
restricted keyboard. The additional instruments can play additional
microtones. Wyschnegradsky's *Meditation* has the cello (or in my case
bassoon) playing quartertones and sixthtones against a conventionally
tuned piano extremely effectively.

My belief is that 7-limit JI is to organically harmonic to provide the
melodic angularity wanted - everything blends. 11-limit is able to
present "grey" sounds, a quartertone dimension, and opens up directional
melody. But why stop there?

Johnny Reinhard
American Festival of Microtonal Music
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@ios.com


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