Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an American composer, theorist, instrument designer, and performer. Born in Oakland, California, he was the son of Virgil Franklin Partch and Jennie Partch. The youngest of three siblings, his older brother Paul and older sister Irene had been born in China, while his parents were serving as Presbyterian missionaries. After his mother contracted tuberculosis, the family moved to Benson, Arizona. Partch grew up learning Chinese lullabies from his mother. His sister played violin and and cello and his brother played mandolin. Partch's own musical training began on piano, which he performed well enough on to accompany silent films while the family was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After the Yaqui Nation was forcibily relocated near Benson, Partch encountered their musical traditions as well. After Partch's father died in 1918, Partch moved to Southern California, briefly studying piano at the University of Southern California. After his mother's death in 1920, he spent the next thirteen years working as a proofreader, piano teacher, and violist.
In 1923, Partch discovered Herman von Helmholtz's On the Sensation of Tone. From this and from his study of both Chinese and Native American music systems, he developed a 29-tone scale. This scale first appears in his "Exposition of Monophony" (1928). Partch would continue to develop this microtonal scale system, eventually settling on a 43-pitch system, composing pieces to showcase it, and building instruments upon which it could be played.
Throughout the early part of the 1930s, Partch travelled between California and the East Coast, riding the rails, living as a hobo, and picking up odd jobs to make money. During one of these short term jobs, Partch was hired by the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles (now the Southwest Museum of Pasadena) to transcribe Native American melodies recorded by the folklorists Eleanor Hague and Charles Fletcher Lummis. Around the same time, Partch made his first adapted viola to accomodate for his developing microtonal system. By 1933, he begun to develop several other instruments. In 1934, he earned a Carnegie Grant to study music in England, where he began working with Kathleen Schlesinger, who had reconsted an ancient Greek Kithara. After returning to the US in 1935, he returned to life as a hobo, writing a musical diary called Bitter Music, which was later published in 1940.
In 1941, Partch found himself in Chicago, where he began developing speech music, based on heightened speech used in ancient Greek dramas. During this time, he also constructed his first Kithara, Harmonic Canon, and Chromelodeon. Shortly thereafter, Partch began setting his experience of living as a hobo to music, composing works like Barstow, The Letter, and US Highball. During this period he received two Guggenheim grants and received support from composers like Otto Luening. From 1944 to 1947, he was briefly employed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
In 1947, Partch finally completed his book A Genesis of Music, which outlined his rationale for adopting a 43-pitch system. By the early 1950s, he had begun to gain some notariety, establishing the Gate 5 Ensemble, a group that specialized in performing his music instruments, and record label. During this period, Partch completed his first major stage play King Oedipus (1952) and had it performed at Mills College in Oakland, CA. He had also begun a musical partnership with fellow composer Ben Johnston, who advocated for Partch to receive a visiting artist position at the University of Illinois in 1956.
While at Illinois, Partch premiered his large stage work, The Bewitched (1957), as part of the Festival of Contemporary Arts. He would premiere two additional music theater works at the University of Illinois, Revelation in the Courthouse Park (1960) and Water! Water! (1961). In 1958, he began collaborating with filmmaker Madeline Tourtelot, producing films for Windsong (1958), Harry Partch Music Studio (1960), US High Ball (1968), Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961), The Renascent (1963), and Delusion of the Fury (1969). Also in Urbana, Partch met Danlee Mitchell, a percussionist and student at the University who later became Partch's principal percussionist, assistant, amanuesis, and eventually the executor of Partch's Estate.
After failing to secure a permanent faculty position at the University of Illinois, Partch returned to California in 1962, where he completed his final projects, a stage drama based on a Japanese Noh play called The Delusion of the Fury (1966) and music for the Stephen Pouliout Film The Dreamer that Remains (1972). Partch died in San Diego, California in 1974.
Sources:Richard Kassel, rev. Andrew Granade, "Harry Partch," Grove Music Online, 2024.
Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch: A Biography. Yale University Press, 1998.
John Schneider, Liner Notes to Harry Partch, 1942. Microfest Records, 2021.
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