San Francisco — A setting of the cries of two newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties ~ (1943/55)

Videos

  • San Francisco (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:

    Setting the gliding contours of real human voices had partly inspired Partch’s famed microtonal scale, and the opening viola lines of San Francisco do, in fact, wordlessly depict the curbside sales pitch with uncanny accuracy. So accurate, in fact, that when reviewing the 1944 Carnegie Hall premiere for the New York Tribune, Lou Harrison wrote, “Mr. Partch has woven a spell of about the foggiest and dampest music I have ever heard. I got homesick”.

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    Additional Instruments:
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Performances

Recordings

No recordings (yet…)

Related Pieces

Composer

The Letter — A depression message from a hobo friend (1943/55)

Videos

  • 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.

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    Additional Instruments:
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Performances

Recordings

No recordings (yet…)

Related Pieces

Composer

Scenes from Huxley’s Last Trip, live at REDCAT, June 2024

Notes

“LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip,” an opera with music by Anne LeBaron and a libretto by Gerd Stern, Ed Rosenfeld, and Anne LeBaron, charts the powerful cultural, political, and spiritual forces ignited by Albert Hofmann’s discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide. Represented by three sopranos, the LSD Trio (Love, Sex, and Death) embarks on a journey, encountering a diverse cast of characters influential in science, literature, entertainment, national security, and politics. The four scenes on this video represent about half of the opera. (For the remaining scenes, see “LSD: The Opera” on this YouTube channel.)

Performances took place at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles on June 14-15, 2024.

Librettists: Gerd Stern, Ed Rosenfeld, and Anne LeBaron

  • Scene 1: Huxley’s Last Trip—Part 1
  • Scene 3: Double Helix: Soliloquy No. 1 (a twisted example…)
  • Scene 6: Three Lunches: Soliloquy No. 2 (Finnegan’s Wake)
  • Scene 8: Mary Meyer and JFK

The Cast (in order of appearance)

  • Aldous Huxley SCOTT GRAFF
  • Laura Huxley; LSD Trio (Death) AUBREY BABCOCK
  • LSD Trio (Love); Jackie Kennedy ANNA SCHUBERT
  • LSD Trio (Sex); Marilyn Monroe NELLE ANDERSON
  • James Watson; John F. Kennedy DOMINIC DELZOMPO
  • Francis Crick; Timothy Leary TODD STRANGE
  • Albert Hofmann; Marshall McLuhan JON KEENAN
  • Anita Hofmann; Mary Meyer MARIA ELENA ALTANY

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San Francisco (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:

Setting the gliding contours of real human voices had partly inspired Partch’s famed microtonal scale, and the opening viola lines of San Francisco do, in fact, wordlessly depict the curbside sales pitch with uncanny accuracy. So accurate, in fact, that when reviewing the 1944 Carnegie Hall premiere for the New York Tribune, Lou Harrison wrote, “Mr. Partch has woven a spell of about the foggiest and dampest music I have ever heard. I got homesick”.

Partch Instruments:
,
Additional Instruments:
,

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.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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PARTCH Ensemble and Del Sol Quartet premiere “One-Footed” by Taylor Brook

Notes

Live at REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles on June 17, 2022.

Program note by Taylor Brook:

The title of this work refers to a fascinating chart in Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music: “The One-footed Bride.” Resembling the outline of a foot, this chart marks out just intervals and their inversions along either side of a central axis. In this chart, one finds diatonic interval regions associated with expressive qualities; seconds and sevenths with “approach,” thirds and sixths with “emotion,” perfect fourths and fifths with “power,” and the tritone region with “suspense.” While highly subjective, there’s a certain intuitive sense to these pairings. Even more fascinating for me was how Partch fits his 43-note scale into a diatonic structure. What this suggests is that we might understand the many intervals of Partch’s scale as shadings within each region. This became the foundation of my piece, One-footed: an exploration of the expressive potential of thinking about pitch and interval in this way. The instrumentation for One-footed combines a string quartet with many of Partch’s famous instruments. As a composer writing in 2021 I enjoy the legacy of composers like Partch and Ben Johnston, where performers like the Del Sol Quartet now deeply understand just intonation, and I see the PARTCH ENSEMBLE as a whole new type of orchestra that can finally be bridged to as a result. One-footed was written for the combined forces of Del Sol Quartet and PARTCH Ensemble in 2020-2021.

This performance was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Making Music: Alex Wand

Notes

Alex Wand discusses his composition “Darkness within darkness” for Partch’s Adapted Guitar I, Gourd Tree, Cello, and two Vocalists. Together with Artistic Director John Schneider, they discuss the inspiration behind the work, the sourcing of libretto from Lao Tsu’s “Tao Te Ching,” and the unique manner Alex combines elements of contemporary music, folk music, and Partch’s exquisite intonation to create an ethereal, otherworldly venture into what Alex calls “the darkness that is the eternal Tao.”

This video is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Darkness Within Darkness (remote presentation)

Notes

Text: Verse One of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

Featuring Matt Cook, Derek Stein, Argenta Walther, and Alex Wand

Darkness Within Darkness is a setting of Verse One of the Tao Te Ching. It is part of a series of compositions I have worked on for several years with the goal of setting to music the eighty one verses of the Tao Te Ching. My first encounter with the Tao Te Ching was in 2013 when on a music tour from Shanghai to Tibet with Wang Ping, a Chinese poet and writer. She introduced me to the book and has since encouraged my setting it to music. The piece features Harry Partch’s gourd tree, cloud chamber bowls, and adapted guitar I, as well as voices and cello. I hope to express the meaning of the text with the intonation and unique timbres of these instruments.

Verse One of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated to English by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.

Copyright 2011. Used by permission of Jane English, eheart.com.

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