The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2

by Harry Partch

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    PDF liner notes also included.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9.99 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2 via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $15.99 USD or more 

     

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

about

Harry Partch's compositions of the 1940s-and to some extent his work in general-have remained until recently an unwritten chapter in the history of American music. And yet it was these very pieces-the collection of four works he would later collectively entitle The Wayward-that brought him to the attention of the New York musical world. His concert of these pieces for the League of Composers (April 22, 1944) established for him a small but permanent reputation as a musical maverick who had wandered off well-worn tracks and had developed a sort of lateral extension of his art, independently of any of the main circles of American music.

The musical starting point of the compositions of The Wayward is the inflections and rhythms of everyday American speech. From the beginnings of his mature output in 1930 Partch had been devoted to what he called "the intrinsic music of spoken words," and these four works capture something of the spontaneous musicality of the conversations of the hoboes he befriended during the Depression. In their original form these pieces used only the small collection of instruments Partch had built or customized by 1943: Adapted Viola, Adapted Guitar, Chromelodeon, and Kithara. The versions recorded here are all later reworkings, sometimes with only small changes (as in the case of San Francisco), and sometimes involving a substantial amount of recomposition (as in the case of U.S. Highball).

The final work on this disc dates from twenty years later than the compositions of The Wayward, and represents one of the high points of Partch's later instrumental idiom. And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma was composed in Petaluma, California, in March-April 1964, and revised at various times and places until the completion of the final copy of the score in San Diego in October 1966. It marks a radical departure from the theater works he had written at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s, and shows a renewed concentration on technical innovation and on fusing his activities as composer and instrument-builder within the context of a single composition. Newly remastered.

credits

released January 1, 2004

Gate 5 Ensemble (Evanston, Illinois) (U.S. Highball); Harry Partch, Danlee Mitchell, Elizabeth Gentry (San Francisco); Harry Partch, David Dunn, Dennis Dunn, Randy Hoffman, with dubbed-in interludes from the 1950 recording by Harry Partch, Ben and Betty Johnston, and Donald Pippin (The Letter); The Harry Partch Ensemble, Danlee Mitchell, music director (Barstow); The Gate 5 Ensemble, Harry Partch, director (And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma)

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

New World Records Brooklyn, New York

Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.

contact / help

Contact New World Records

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2, you may also like: