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U.S. Highball — A musical account of a transcontinental hobo trip (1943/55)
Notes
Bass & Diamond Marimbas ~ Boo ~ BloBoy ~ Castor & Pollux Canons ~ Chromelodeon ~ Kithara II ~ Surrogate Kithara ~ Spoils of War
“A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”
~ Harry Partch on The Wayward
Program note by John Schneider:
In 1957, Partch described this final version of U.S. Highball as, “…the most creative piece of music I ever wrote, and in the sense that it is less influenced by the forms and attitudes that I had grown up with as a child and experienced later in adult life, there can be no doubt of it.” The initial version was sketched out with guitar & solo voice, followed six months later by an expanded version for voice, guitar, kithara & chromelodeon. But he soon realized that the work really needed percussion instruments, and nine years later, he created the work you hear tonight. It describes his 1941 two-week freight-hopping, hitch-hiking & pot walloping journey from Carmel, California to Chicago in search of a new life and recognition of his music:
“It was the second day out of San Francisco that I began jotting down words in this notebook: fragments of conversations, remarks, writings on the sides of boxcars, signs in havens for derelicts, hitchhiker’s inscriptions, names of stations, thoughts…These fragments ARE the text of U.S. Highball… The work falls naturally into three parts: first, a long and jerky passage by drags to Little America, Wyoming: second, a slow dish-washing movement at Little America; third, a rhythmic allegro by highway to Chicago. The one word—Chicago—is the end of the text. Instrumentally, what follows implies a tremendous letdown from the obstinately compulsive exhilaration of getting to Chicago. It implies bewilderment, and that essentially dominant question in the life of the wanderer — what next?”
But the story doesn’t end there: following the 1958 release of the recording on Partch’s own Gate 5 label, he and filmmaker Madeline Tourtelot shot a studio performance of the work, and a decade later interspersed those black & white scenes with color footage of trains, roads, scenery traversed, and even abstract art. The 24-minute art house film still makes quite an impression, and is easily viewable online.
Partch Instruments:
Bass Marimba, Bloboy, Boo, Castor and Pollux, Chromelodeon, Diamond Marimba, Harmonic Canon, Kithara II, Spoils of War, Surrogate Kithara
The Letter — A depression message from a hobo friend (1943/55)
The Letter — A depression message from a hobo friend (1943/55)
Notes
PARTCH Ensemble performing Harry Partch’s San Francisco—A setting of the cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties at REDCAT on June 16-17, 2023.
“A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”
~ Harry Partch on The Wayward
Program note by John Schneider:
The text for The Letter comes from the composer’s long-lost hobo journal Bitter Music (1935-36) that he initially set to music in 1943 under the title “Letter From Hobo Pablo,” a friend whom he met at a Federal Shelter in Stockton. The 24-year old Pablo was, “… the one sensitive person I have met and the only one I can bear to talk to,” so when they are told that they must go to a work camp “…to work 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, tobacco & work clothes furnished, and $4 a month besides,” they both chose Harrington Ranch. Pablo only lasted three weeks, being expelled for drinking, but Partch was clearly pleased when he recounts the letter he received three months later, which he introduces as “Echoes from Mandolin-Face of the tooth-fretted Lips.
U.S. Highball — A musical account of a transcontinental hobo trip (1943/55)
Notes
Bass & Diamond Marimbas ~ Boo ~ BloBoy ~ Castor & Pollux Canons ~ Chromelodeon ~ Kithara II ~ Surrogate Kithara ~ Spoils of War
“A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”
~ Harry Partch on The Wayward
Program note by John Schneider:
In 1957, Partch described this final version of U.S. Highball as, “…the most creative piece of music I ever wrote, and in the sense that it is less influenced by the forms and attitudes that I had grown up with as a child and experienced later in adult life, there can be no doubt of it.” The initial version was sketched out with guitar & solo voice, followed six months later by an expanded version for voice, guitar, kithara & chromelodeon. But he soon realized that the work really needed percussion instruments, and nine years later, he created the work you hear tonight. It describes his 1941 two-week freight-hopping, hitch-hiking & pot walloping journey from Carmel, California to Chicago in search of a new life and recognition of his music:
“It was the second day out of San Francisco that I began jotting down words in this notebook: fragments of conversations, remarks, writings on the sides of boxcars, signs in havens for derelicts, hitchhiker’s inscriptions, names of stations, thoughts…These fragments ARE the text of U.S. Highball… The work falls naturally into three parts: first, a long and jerky passage by drags to Little America, Wyoming: second, a slow dish-washing movement at Little America; third, a rhythmic allegro by highway to Chicago. The one word—Chicago—is the end of the text. Instrumentally, what follows implies a tremendous letdown from the obstinately compulsive exhilaration of getting to Chicago. It implies bewilderment, and that essentially dominant question in the life of the wanderer — what next?”
But the story doesn’t end there: following the 1958 release of the recording on Partch’s own Gate 5 label, he and filmmaker Madeline Tourtelot shot a studio performance of the work, and a decade later interspersed those black & white scenes with color footage of trains, roads, scenery traversed, and even abstract art. The 24-minute art house film still makes quite an impression, and is easily viewable online.
Partch Instruments:
Bass Marimba, Bloboy, Boo, Castor and Pollux, Chromelodeon, Diamond Marimba, Harmonic Canon, Kithara II, Spoils of War, Surrogate Kithara
Bass Marimba, Bloboy, Boo, Castor and Pollux, Chromelodeon, Diamond Marimba, Harmonic Canon, Kithara II, Spoils of War, Surrogate Kithara
Cloud Chamber Music by Harry Partch
Notes
PARTCH Ensemble performing Harry Partch’s Cloud Chamber Music at REDCAT on June 16-17, 2023.
Program note by John Schneider:
Cloud Chamber Music (1950) opens with a sonorous carillon on four Cloud-Chamber Bowls, their distinctive bell-like tones yielding to a mournful microtonal lament on Adapted Viola and Adapted Guitar. Following this, in a faster tempo, the Viola introduces the melody of “Canción de los Muchachos” of the Isleta tribe of New Mexico (a tune Partch learned when transcribing it from an Edison cylinder recorded by Charles Lummis). This is then sung by all the musicians, accompanying themselves on their instruments, except the Kithara, whose player takes up a Native American deer-hoof rattle. This ritual provokes another outburst on the Cloud-Chamber Bowls. Ben Johnston has suggested a scenario implicit in this sequence of musical events: “Cloud-Chamber Music,” he writes, “begins as a depressed reaction to a false clarion, but then seizes American Indian incentives as a reinvigorating antidote.”
Partch instruments:
Adapted Guitar III, Adapted Viola, Bass Marimba, Cloud Chamber Bowls, Diamond Marimba, Kithara
Adapted Guitar III, Adapted Viola, Bass Marimba, Cloud Chamber Bowls, Diamond Marimba, Kithara