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.”
Amateur California Prune Picker (2022) by Kyle Gann
Notes on Amateur California Prune Picker
Instruments
Chromelodeon ~ Adapted Viola ~ Gourd Tree ~ Spoils of War ~ Bass & Diamond Marimbas ~ Cloud Chamber Bowls
Program Notes by Kyle Gann:
Amateur California Prune-Picker (2022) by Kyle Gann — “As a long-time microtonalist, I’ve always wanted to write something for the Harry Partch instruments, so I am extremely grateful to John Schneider for offering me the chance. My idea was to prove, or perhaps I should say test, the universality of Partch’s ensemble by trying to write in a style that didn’t sound like Partch. Accordingly, I concentrated on the microtonal relationships among the various harmonies, and had to wrestle with the fact that not all of his instruments had the same pitches. After fifty years of composing, I was made to feel like a rank amateur in this totally idiosyncratic environment, and as Partch inveighed against his performers looking like an “amateur California prune picker,” I thought I should embrace the title. Were I to attempt a second essay, I would probably surrender and write “à la Harry.”
THE WAYWARD
“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
Barstow — Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a highway railing near Barstow, California (1941/68)
Program note by John Schneider: The legendary 1969 Columbia recording of Barstow imprinted the work in the imaginations of a generation, and like US Highball that followed, it underwent numerous orchestrations. Hitchhiker graffiti is put to music, telling the tale of eight wanderers – some funny, some sad, but always engaging when seen through the lens of Partch’s re-telling. He gives us an earthy and poignant first-hand account that is unique in the world of music, one that is sure to become a permanent part of our American cultural landscape. Taken along with the rest of his Americana from the 1940’s, Partch has created a body of work that places him shoulder to shoulder with the two best-loved storytellers of the era, John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.
San Francisco — A setting of the cries of two newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties ~ (1943/55)
Voices ~ Cello ~ Chromelodeon ~ Kithara II
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”.
The Letter — A depression message from a hobo friend (1943/55)
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)
Bass & Diamond Marimbas ~ Boo ~ BloBoy ~ Castor & Pollux Canons ~ Chromelodeon ~ Kithara II ~ Surrogate Kithara ~ Spoils of War
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.
Ulysses at the Edge of the World — A Minor Adventure in Rhythm (1955/62)
Ulysses at the Edge of the World was written for jazz great Chet Baker, to be accompanied by double bass and BooBams, bamboo tubes with skin heads that inspired Partch’s own 64-note tongue drum version he called “Boo.” Sadly, Baker was too busy to premiere the piece, and a few years later Partch added a baritone sax part as he had become a fan of Baker’s duets with Gerry Mulligan. The piece was eventually recorded by another pair of players, and in the liner notes to the LP New Music for Trumpet, the composer relates:
At the time I was writing it the feeling of my hobo years was strong. As a wanderer myself (like Ulysses) I had often been asked the question, “Have you ever been arrested before?” and it struck me as very humorous to be able to ask another wanderer the same question.
However, the duet version did not include the previous invitation, “Trumpet can improvise here if it wants, preferably on this six-tone scale…using the same 7/8 accompaniment.” So tonight, we couldn’t resist honoring Partch’s initial intent since both of our soloists are not only recognized stalwarts of the new music scene, but also major contributors to this city’s vibrant jazz scene.
Press for The Wayward at REDCAT, 2023
The PARTCH Ensemble players deserve much credit for performing on the Partch period instruments. These are only accessible for practice a few weeks prior to the show, have unique layouts and are tuned to many exotic pitches. Just reading the part scores is also very demanding. The difficulties are formidable, but the playing in this concert was smooth enough that the listener’s ear soon adapts to the alternate tuning and becomes comfortably immersed the Partch sound world.
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.
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.
