Partch Tuning

I (Adam) said:
> > As Partch progressed through life, he became more inclined to
> >write dissonant, "mistuned" music which is based on his "Monophonic Scale,"
> >but is not necessarily in what would be purists would consider to be Just
> >Intonation.

And Lydia replied:

> It's a matter of opinion whether Partch wrote "mistuned" music. While
> he must have had some difficulty keeping the string instruments exactly
> in tune, he probably came as close as humanly possible. I don't agree
> that the intervals Partch used later in his life were "dissonant" either.
> The intervals continue to be "strange" for many people, but Partch himself
> considered them consonances, as indeed they are on at least some
> instruments...

I should have explained further, because it is _not a matter of opinion._
What I meant was that Partch's music
often avoids using strong, low-number ratio consonances. Strong
interval-ratios (like 1/1) are "well-tuned," and weaker interval ratios
in the same area of the "One-footed Bride" [see Genesis of a Music] (like
81/80) are "mis-tuned." It is my belief, and people may argue this
publicly or privately, that this is not cultural conditioning, but is
simply fact. It is also my belief that Harry knew this, too. He did say
that we can be conditioned to accept higher overtone-limits as consonant.
I agree.

Often Harry would "mistune" an "interval of power" (fifth or fourth) even
when the 3/2 or 4/3 is available on the instrument in use. It seems to me
that he liked beating. Dan Wolf recently commented on "Dark Brother,"
which includes extended passages of chords made rough by harmonic beats.
The coda in "Revelation" uses dissonance to portray Agave's shock at
finding Pentheus' head in her hands. These are extreme examples, but I
have found cases of less extreme yet intentional dissonances in every
piece that I have studied. If people want to explore this further, please
write me to ask for copies of my translations, (abs22@pantheon.yale.edu)
or read the score to "Daphne" in Glenn Hackbarth's dissertation.

The fact that Harry's instruments (and almost all other instruments) go
out of tune perhaps makes people overlook the subtle dissonances that are
written into the music intentionally. Perhaps if someone did a computer
realization with sine waves, the tuning issues would become more easily
aparrent.

While Harry Partch was a Just Intonation theorist, he was not always a JI
composer. A JI composer is someone who seeks the strongest, low-number
consonance musically required. Harry was a microtonalist who used a scale
which included Just-relationships, but instead of using a lattice-style
plan for viewing the consonance/dissonance continuum, he placed them
end-to-end chromatically and worked from there. He also had a keen ear
for creating the clanky and quirky sounds that he picked up on the road.

-Adam

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