Bitter Music

Ever since the MicroFest in LA I have been working on a Bitter Music score.
It seems to me that there is no reason to tune the piano to 12-tET. As has
been pointed out in Ben Johnston's notation, the basic notes used could
easily correspond to JI.

Also interesting is how many bits there are in Bitter Music that connect to
other Partch pieces, including USHighball, Barstow, My Heart Keeps Beating
Time, Mendota Night, A Dream (from the Li Po), and probably others.

And thirdly, I have fashioned a score made up exclusively of notated
music...little to no straight talking. No concert planned yet, but it will
be on the burner.

Johnny Reinhard

--- In tuning@y..., Afmmjr@a... wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21318.html#21318

> Also interesting is how many bits there are in Bitter Music
> that connect to other Partch pieces, including US Highball,
> Barstow, My Heart Keeps Beating Time, Mendota Night, A Dream
> (from the Li Po), and probably others.

It's interesting to me that (AFAIK) no-one has ever pointed
out the strong resemblance between the opening vocal phrase
of _My Heart Keeps Beating Time_ and the section of _Barstow_
(in the later version with Kithara, Boo, Diamond Marimba, and
Chromelodeon) where the voice says "I'm on my way... one half
of desert to the east". The "I'm on my way" is almost identical.

Johnny, keep us posted on the progress of your _Bitter Music_!
I know Partch thought it was destroyed (and wanted it that way),
but I love it and look forward to hearing you do it.

When I first read it, in my mind I could hear Harry's voice
intoning the whole thing, and I wanted to write a score of
*that*. Just never got around to it...

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"