Castor & Pollux

Videos

  • Castor and Pollux (remote presentation with choreography by Sarah Swenson)

    Notes

    World premiere choreography by Sarah Swenson

    Performed by Cheryl Banks-Smith, TamsinCarlson, Queala Clancy, Tori Cone, Miranda Cox, and Sarah Swenson

    Perhaps the only ‘triple exposure’ in music history, Partch called this infectious dance music, “A tribute to the twin stars of luck. Atonal-dynamic dithyramb. A ritualistic ecstasy…In Castor each of the first three sections requires pairs of different instruments and dancers, all three of which have identical measure patterns, but not necessarily the same rhythms. Number 4, then, is the total of these, played and danced simultaneously. Thus, three different compositions become one composition—the “Delivery,” the logical result and the sum total of the factors that make it inevitable. Pollux follows the same plan: Numbers 5, 6, and 7 combined to result in Number 8.”

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  • Partch performing Castor & Pollux at Roulette, New York, NY

    Notes

    PRISM Quartet and Partch (East Coast Debut)

    CASTOR & POLLUX (1952) by Harry Partch (1901 – 1974)

    A Dance for the Twin Rhythms of Gemini

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  • Castor & Pollux, live at REDCAT, 2008

    Notes

    Performed by Partch Ensemble on May 31, 2008

    A wild ride in Disney Hall as Music of Microtonal Composer/Inventor Harry Partch Is performed on amazing Instruments by PARTCH, an acclaimed ensemble Under the direction of John Schneider, -Noted Musician, Educator, Founder of Microfest, He hosts the KPFK weekly Radio Show “Global Village” and also hosted the “SOUNDBOARD TV series.

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Performances

Recordings

Related Pieces

Composer

Reið (Raidō) II

Videos

  • Reið (Raidō)II [Ride/Journey] live at REDCAT, June, 2024

    Notes

    World Premiere by PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, June 2024

    “Reið (Raidō) II is the sixth in a cycle of chamber pieces I have been composing for the last several years where each work is associated with a specific ancient Runic symbol. “Reið (Raidō)” directly translates to “ride” or “journey.” A journey on horseback is implied, but this can also be interpreted as an experience which connects this life with the afterlife, or this realm with other realms of existence or consciousness. The repetitive and percussive nature of a galloping horse is often further associated with shamanic drumming that accompanies certain primordial esoteric practices. In my work Reið (Raidō) there are 3 groupings of instruments and players, conveying three types of microtonal tunings: a Chromelodeon, tuned to a 43-note division of the octave based on ratios derived from just intonation; a piano and a harp whose standard equal temperament is tuned apart by the difference of a 7th partial of the overtone series, or approximately in equal tempered 1/6th tones; and 3 percussionists who play a variety of indefinite pitched or noise-based percussion instruments. In this dramatic representation of both an ancient and futuristic ritual, these various tunings and timbres are utilized through a carefully controlled harmonic, motivic, and formal personal language, that unifies structure and architecture with intensity and expression.”

    — Jeffrey Holmes

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

    This performance was also made possible in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

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Performances

Recordings

No recordings (yet…)

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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Performances

Recordings

No recordings (yet…)

Related Pieces

Composer

Three Dances (1952) by Harry Partch

Notes

1. Samba—A DECENT AND HONORABLE MISTAKE
2. Heartbeat Rhythm—RHYTHM OF THE WOMB–MELODY OF THE GRAVE
3. Afro-Chinese Minuet—HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

We begin this evening’s concert with the Three Dances that begin the third section of Partch’s Plectra & Percussion Dances (1952). The composer warned, “It’s an amazing fact that the world of dance music, and of Latin American dance music particularly, has produced an army of purists that is equal of anything that serious classical music can offer. I say this in order to advise you that the first scene, for example, “A Decent and Honorable Mistake,” may not be recognizable to you as a samba. The second scene, “Rhythm of the Womb, Melody of the Grave,” is based on a rhythmically contrapuntal heartbeat. The third scene, “Happy Birthday to You!” begins with an African-sounding marimba and somehow gets involved with a Chinese- sounding guitar in a pentatonic melody, and so I call it an Afro-Chinese Minuet.” This last dance ends with these directions: “Slowly enough that canon TRIADS are distinct,” after which they are to be played “faster than the previous runs so that the triads are NOT distinct.” The harmonies of each of those descending triads are wildly divergent, as if the composer is pausing to reminisce about various years past, but finally admits that as a 51-year old they are, in fact, a blur.

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Five Intrusions (1950) by Harry Partch

Notes

Performed by PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, June 2024

  1. Study #1 Olympos’ Pentatonic
  2. The Wind (Ella Young, Lao-tze)
  3. Study #2 Archytas’ Enharmonic
  4. The Street (Willard Motley)
  5. The Waterfall (Ella Young)

Those instruments were also explored in Partch’s chimerically titled suite of twelve compositions called Intrusions. This subset of five include his Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales that were originally for solo Harmonic Canon, to which he later added a bass marimba obligatto. Another Canon was strung and bridged in his 43-note octave from C#3-C#4 for The Wind whose hyperchromatic arpeggios hauntingly evoke two moods of that natural phenomenon that can both caress or destroy. The first text comes from the pen of Irish born poet Ella Young who lived in the Bay Area for many years, with the second from 6th century Chinese poet/philosoper Lao Tze that Partch had previously set in his 1935 memoir Bitter Music. In The Street, the chilly wind that blows over the jails and cartracks of Chicago sets the final paragraphs of Willard Motley’s 1947 best seller Knock on Any Door that describes a young Italian immigrant’s downward spiral from altar boy to criminal. And finally, Ella Young—also a Celtic mythologist who believed in fairies, pixies, and praised the benefits of talking to trees— returns to interrogate The Waterfall, curious as to why it would possibly seek oblivion after such a vivacious life in the sunlight.

— JS

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

This performance was also made possible in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

Partch Instruments:
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Progressions (live at at REDCAT, June 2024)

Notes

Performed by PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, June 2024

Progressions

  1. Intro + Progressions Within One Octave (1942)
  2. Sonata Dementia: Abstraction & Delusion (1949)

In 1942, Harry Partch gave a lecture-demonstration at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. After introducing the now famous 43-note/octave scale on his newly created Chromolodian (sic), he proceeded to submerse the students in an extraordinary ear-bending sequence of chord Progressions Within One Octave that even today are capable of jarring the most seasoned Modernist sensibilities. Apologizing in advance that these auditory experiments, “…afford a little vision into a new world of musical resources—hardly more than a glimpse through a keyhole,” they turned out to be a peek into the future, as this music would soon become the opening of his Sonata Dementia (1949), exquisitely orchestrated with the addition of six newly built instruments. This performance was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

This performance was also made possible in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

Partch Instruments:
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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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feel of the needle when at last you pull the needle through it (remote presentation)

Notes

A year ago I read The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, which inspired me to propose to her a musical theater adaptation of it. Having her consent, I conceptualized it for the PARTCH Ensemble and immersed myself in the subtleties of things Partch and Japanese—both surprisingly complementary in ways well expressed by the haiku of Santoka Taneda, used here as my title.

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Castor and Pollux (remote presentation with choreography by Sarah Swenson)

Notes

World premiere choreography by Sarah Swenson

Performed by Cheryl Banks-Smith, TamsinCarlson, Queala Clancy, Tori Cone, Miranda Cox, and Sarah Swenson

Perhaps the only ‘triple exposure’ in music history, Partch called this infectious dance music, “A tribute to the twin stars of luck. Atonal-dynamic dithyramb. A ritualistic ecstasy…In Castor each of the first three sections requires pairs of different instruments and dancers, all three of which have identical measure patterns, but not necessarily the same rhythms. Number 4, then, is the total of these, played and danced simultaneously. Thus, three different compositions become one composition—the “Delivery,” the logical result and the sum total of the factors that make it inevitable. Pollux follows the same plan: Numbers 5, 6, and 7 combined to result in Number 8.”

Partch Instruments:
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World Premiere of “Future Lilacs” (2016) by Ken Ueno

Notes

Color Theory Concert: PRISM Quartet and Partch

Ken Ueno: My work, “Future Lilacs,” metaphorically connects to color theory in blending different temperaments. It is the scientific reduction of sounds to a common denominator (thinking in terms of frequencies rather than scales) that helps me with this approach, which I consider a Newtonian way of rationalizing the ineffable.

June 12, 2016

Co-Presented by PRISM Quartet and Roulette

O Frabjous Day

Notes

PARTCH Ensemble performs “O Frabjous Day” on June 20, 2015

Set to poem of the same name, by Lewis Carroll

Music composed by Harry Partch

Live at the REDCAT Theater, Los Angeles, CA

Instruments:
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Castor & Pollux, live at REDCAT, 2008

Notes

Performed by Partch Ensemble on May 31, 2008

A wild ride in Disney Hall as Music of Microtonal Composer/Inventor Harry Partch Is performed on amazing Instruments by PARTCH, an acclaimed ensemble Under the direction of John Schneider, -Noted Musician, Educator, Founder of Microfest, He hosts the KPFK weekly Radio Show “Global Village” and also hosted the “SOUNDBOARD TV series.

Instruments:
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