Erbe (Heritage) presents three new works written for the instruments of Harry Partch, the American composer and instrument builder who left the conservatories behind and devised his own microtonal system. His instruments, archaically wild and angularly modern, cannot be replaced by anything else in performance. Since 2013 Ensemble Musikfabrik has been the only ensemble to own a complete set of replicas, and this volume of the Edition Musikfabrik shows how other composers have taken up that legacy.
The replicas were built for the Cologne ensemble by its percussionist Thomas Meixner. Partch's own music is not their only use: through the project pitch 43_tuning the cosmos (Partch divided the octave into 43 unequal tones), Musikfabrik has commissioned composers from many countries. The three works were recorded between 2015 and 2018 in the Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal of the WDR Funkhaus in Cologne, in a production of Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Siân Edwards conducts the pieces by Sampo Haapamäki and Martin Smolka, Clement Power the work by Carola Bauckholt.
Haapamäki, a Finnish composer born in 1979 who has written in quarter-tones since 2004, uses only Partch instruments in Heritage (2016), sixteen of them. A bell stroke opens it, the Chromelodeon reed organ supplies drones, and sharp crashes mark the way. Smolka, born in Prague in 1959, combines traditional and Partch instruments in Wooden Clouds (2017-18), five movements that grow from a stately, angular melody in the winds. Bauckholt's Voices for Harry Partch (2014-15) takes the human voice as its starting point: not the meaning of words, but the sound, melody and rhythm of speech. A child's voice reads a text, and an extract from an interview with Partch is heard.
Heritage was premiered at the Time of Music festival in Viitasaari, Finland, in July 2016, and Bauckholt's piece at the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen in Hannover in May 2015. Among the instruments heard across the disc are the Cloud-Chamber Bowls, made from large glass carboys, the Blue Rainbow and the Spoils of War. In MusicWeb International Richard Hanlon called Bauckholt's work "limpid, mysterious and substantial". The booklet poster shows Gerhard Richter's Betty (1988).
CD in digipak with fold-out poster, Wergo WER 6870 2, released in 2019 in the Edition Musikfabrik (59'03").
