67 Facts About Harry Partch

Harry Partch was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments.

Harry Partch composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison.

Harry Partch built custom-made instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method behind his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music.

Harry Partch described his music as corporeal, and distinguished it from abstract music, which he perceived as the dominant trend in Western music since the time of Bach.

Harry Partch dropped out of the University of Southern California's School of Music in 1922, dissatisfied with the quality of his teachers.

Harry Partch took to self-study in San Francisco's libraries, where he discovered Hermann von Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone, which convinced him to devote himself to music based on scales tuned in just intonation.

Harry Partch was born on June 24,1901, in Oakland, California.

Harry Partch's parents were Virgil Franklin Partch and Jennie.

Harry Partch moved with his family to Arizona for his mother's health.

Harry Partch's father worked for the Immigration Service there, and they settled in the small town of Benson.

Harry Partch's mother sang to him in Mandarin Chinese, and he heard and sang songs in Spanish.

Harry Partch's mother encouraged her children to learn music, and he learned the mandolin, violin, piano, reed organ, and cornet.

The family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1913, where Harry Partch studied the piano seriously.

Harry Partch obtained work playing keyboards for silent films while he was in high school.

Harry Partch early found an interest in writing music for dramatic situations, and often cited the lost composition Death and the Desert as an early example.

Harry Partch enrolled in the University of Southern California's School of Music in 1920, but was dissatisfied with his teachers and left after the summer of 1922.

Harry Partch moved to San Francisco and studied books on music in the libraries there and continued to compose.

Harry Partch put his theories in words in May 1928 in the first draft for a book, then called Exposition of Monophony.

Harry Partch supported himself during this time doing a variety of jobs, including teaching piano, proofreading, and working as a sailor.

Harry Partch had a New Orleans violin maker build a viola with the fingerboard of a cello.

Harry Partch used this instrument, dubbed the Adapted Viola, to write music using a scale with twenty-nine tones to the octave.

In 1932, Harry Partch performed the music in San Francisco and Los Angeles with sopranos he had recruited.

Harry Partch unsuccessfully applied for Guggenheim grants in 1933 and 1934.

Harry Partch gave readings at the British Museum and traveled in Europe.

Harry Partch built a keyboard instrument, the Chromatic Organ, which used a scale with forty-three tones to the octave.

Harry Partch met musicologist Kathleen Schlesinger, who had recreated an ancient Greek kithara from images she found on a vase at the British Museum.

Harry Partch made sketches of the instrument in her home, and discussed ancient Greek music theory with her.

Harry Partch returned to the US in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression, and spent a transient nine years, often as a hobo, often picking up work or obtaining grants from organizations such as the Federal Writers' Project.

Harry Partch included notation on the speech inflections of people he met in his travels.

Harry Partch continued to compose music, build instruments, and develop his book and theories, and make his first recordings.

Harry Partch had alterations made by sculptor and designer friend Gordon Newell to the Kithara sketches he had made in England.

Harry Partch was staying on the eastern coast of the US when he was awarded a Guggenheim grant in March 1943 to construct instruments and complete a seven-part Monophonic Cycle.

Harry Partch left the university, as it never accepted him as a member of the permanent staff, and there was little space for his growing stock of instruments.

In 1949, pianist Gunnar Johansen allowed Harry Partch to convert a smithy on his ranch in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin into a studio.

Harry Partch worked there with support from the Guggenheim Foundation, and made recordings, primarily of his Eleven Intrusions.

Harry Partch was assisted for six months by composer Ben Johnston, who performed on Partch's recordings.

In early 1951, Harry Partch moved to Oakland for health reasons, and prepared for a production of King Oedipus at Mills College, with the support of designer Arch Lauterer.

In February 1953, Harry Partch founded a studio, named Gate 5, in an abandoned shipyard in Sausalito, California, where he composed, built instruments and staged performances.

In March 1957, with the help of Johnston and the Fromm Foundation, The Bewitched was performed at the University of Illinois, and later at Washington University in St Louis, though Harry Partch was displeased with choreographer Alwin Nikolais's interpretation.

Later in 1957, Harry Partch provided the music for Madeline Tourtelot's film Windsong, the first of six film collaborations between the two.

Harry Partch had support from several departments and organizations at the university, but continuing hostility from the music department convinced him to leave and return to California.

Harry Partch set up a studio in late 1962 in Petaluma, California, in a former chick hatchery.

Harry Partch left northern California in summer 1964, and spent his remaining decade in various cities in southern California.

Harry Partch rarely had university work during this period, and lived on grants, commissions, and record sales.

In 1970, the Harry Partch Foundation was founded to handle the expenses and administration of Partch's work.

Harry Partch's final completed work was the soundtrack to Betty Freeman's The Dreamer that Remains.

Harry Partch retired to San Diego in 1973, where he died after suffering a heart attack on September 3,1974.

Harry Partch was first cousins with gag cartoonist Virgil Harry Partch.

Harry Partch was sterile, probably due to childhood mumps, and he had a romantic relationship with the film actor Ramon Novarro.

Harry Partch's notation is an obstacle, as it mixes a sort of tablature with indications of pitch ratios.

In 1974, Harry Partch was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Percussive Arts Society, a music service organization promoting percussion education, research, performance and appreciation.

Harry Partch made public his theories in his book Genesis of a Music.

Harry Partch opens the book with an overview of music history, and argues that Western music began to suffer from the time of Bach, after which twelve-tone equal temperament was adopted to the exclusion of other tuning systems, and abstract, instrumental music became the norm.

Harry Partch sought to bring vocal music back to prominence, and adopted tunings and scales he believed more suitable to singing.

Harry Partch tuned his instruments using the overtone series, and extended it up to the eleventh partial.

Harry Partch's tuning is often classed as microtonality, as it allowed for intervals smaller than 100 cents, though Harry Partch did not conceive his tuning in such a context.

Harry Partch uses the terms Otonality and Utonality to describe chords whose pitch classes are the harmonics or subharmonics of a given fixed tone.

Harry Partch rejected the Western concert music tradition, saying that the music of composers such as Beethoven "has only the feeblest roots" in Western culture.

Harry Partch believed that Western music of the 20th century suffered from over-specialization.

Harry Partch objected to the theatre of the day, which he believed had divorced music and drama, and he strove to create complete, integrated theatre works, in which he expected each performer to sing, dance, play instruments, and take on speaking parts.

Harry Partch began in the 1920s using traditional instruments, and wrote a string quartet in just intonation.

Harry Partch described the theory and practice of his music in his book Genesis of a Music, which he had published first in 1947, and in an expanded edition in 1974.

Harry Partch partially supported himself with the sales of recordings, which he began making in the late 1930s.

Harry Partch published his recordings under the Gate 5 Records label beginning in 1953.

Harry Partch never used synthesized or computer-generated sounds, though he had access to such technology.

Harry Partch scored six films by Madeline Tourtelot, starting with 1957's Windsong.

Harry Partch has been the subject of a number of documentary films.