TUNING digest 1525

Bill Alves wrote:

"Unfortunately, the unavailability of his scores and the difficulty of
rendering them in an easily-understood notation has made such analysis
infrequent, at least from what I've seen or heard about. Why doesn't
someone publish facsimilies of his scores, at least, with a guide to
reading them, so that we can just peruse his scores in libraries like eve=
ry
other major composer of this century?"

There are several interesting topics here. The first concerns availablity=

of the scores. Unfortunately, aside from _Petals_ in _Source_, _Barstow_ =
in
_Soundings_, and a few fragments here and there, Partch did not publish h=
is
scores. This is to a certain extent unsurprising, given that he thought o=
f
himself as a composer for the theatre and a meaningful 'publication' for
him was one with intended to create performances, something not likely fo=
r
several reasons. Further, as Gilmore's biography hints, after writing
_Genesis_, Partch largely gave up work as a theorist and he had little
interest in detailed analysis of his own music. Partch's heirs did not
forward the matter either, and several efforts to publish (notably by
Soundings and by Lingua) were thwarted by the situation. =


However, shortly after Partch's death a small group of friends of Partch
managed to have copies made of all the scores in ozalid ('onion skin')
format. Ben Johnston's set is at the U. of Illinois, Lou Harrison's at Sa=
n
Jose State and both are available to scholars. While in High School, I ha=
d
the fortune to have access to Erv Wilson's set, and as an undergraduate i=
n
Santa Cruz, made several trips over the hill to San Jose. In those days,
photocopying was either not possible or too expensive at special
collections in San Jose so I accumulated a set of pencil copies in my own=

analytic notation; this was time-consuming but certainly a rewarding,
traditional way of learning repertoire in detail.

The issue of the 'readability' of the notation is, I believe, a false one=
=2E
Having gone through the bulk of the scores in detail, I found that once o=
ne
gets into the rhythm, reading the scores and making analytic transcriptio=
ns
can be done practically at sight, with a set of charts for each instrumen=
t
to assist in the process. Memorizing the 43-tone scale and the diamond, a=
nd
being able to calculate ratios in the Partch style in your head are
essential first steps. =


I have heard that a major German publisher plans to handle Partch's score=
s
and am very curious to hear the details. If transcriptions are to be made=
,
let's hope that they will not be done in Ben Johnston's notation, for
reasons I have previously discussed elsewhere.

=