Electric Partch

Jon S. wrote:
> You need to do more reading, because "pioneered the concept of
electronics" is a > bit of a stretch. IMHO.

Partch wrote in 1967 to Allen Strange (page 410 of Enclosures 3):
"The winter of 1937-38 I heard both electronic music and common sounds
music, recorded on acetate records, by a young man in Los Angeles (he later
became Schonberg's secretary). It was a new, fresh idea, and I was
enchanted. I think I can say flatly that I was the only musician who gave
the man any encouragement. But he got nowhere with his ideas. Eighteen
years later a group in Paris became famous from New York to California for
doing exactly the same thing, not as well, in my opinion. Then Columbia and
Princeton wanted to do something similar and went to Rockefeller. They did
not say: Los Angeles has done it, therefore it must be good. They said,
Paris and Milan and Cologne have done it, therefore it must be good. When I
am pointed out as the Anti Man I hope that someone will add that I am
probably the first musician in the United States of America to give solid
encouragement to both electronic music and common-sounds music. H.P. "

Since Otto Luening's introduction of electronic music on television in
1952 is being celebrated at Lincoln Center in its current electronic music
festival as the real start for electronic music, it seems increasingly
reasonable to consider Harry Partch a pioneer in electronic concepts. It
also may make one reconsider the use of an electronic "chromelodeon" in
contemporary performance, as well.

Elsewhere (p. 401 of Enclosures 3) Partch further amplified his thoughts
on the issue of electronics in a San Francisco publication "Truth-In-Music":
"I'm against total electronic music and I don't believe it will catch on
totally in the future. Philosophically, there is magic in anything you
touch, be it a string, a piece of bamboo or an electron tube."

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM