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File under: Experimental

Harry Partch

The Harry Partch Collection Volume 1

Label: New World Records

Series: The Harry Partch Collection

Format: CD

Genre: Compositional

Out of stock

This newly remastered reissue marks a welcome return to the catalog of the first volume of the classic 4-CD collection that was formerly available on the CRI label. The works recorded on this disc span the first six years of what Harry Partch (1901–1974), slightly tongue-in-cheek, called the “third period” of his creative life. They show him moving away from the obsession with “the intrinsic music of spoken words” that had characterized his earlier output (the vocal works of 1930–33 and 1941–45) and towards an instrumental idiom, predominantly percussive in nature.

This path was to take him through the “music-dance drama” King Oedipus (1951)—the culmination of his “spoken word” manner—to the “dance satire” The Bewitched (1954–55), in which his new percussive idiom manifests itself. The three works on this disc show Partch before, during, and after this period of transition.

Details
File under: Experimental
Cat. number: 80621-2
Year: 2004
Notes:
Tracks 1-11 Recorded in 1950–51 in Gualala, California, by Harry Lindgren. First released on Partch Compositions, a five-record 78 rpm set by Lauriston C. Marshall, Berkeley, California. Tracks 12-25 Recorded in 1953 in Sausalito, California, by Oscar Anderson. First released as Harry Partch Trust Fund First Edition in 1953. Tracks 14-17 ("Ring Around The Moon") are composed for Speaking Voice (on tones), Adapted Guitar II, Kithara, Harmonic Canon, Chromelodeon I, Chromelodeon Sub-bass, Cloud-Chamber Bowls and Marimba Eroica (one player), Diamond Marimba, Bass Marimba. Tracks 18-25 ("Even Wild Horses...) are composed for Adapted Viola, Adapted Guitar III, Kithara, Harmonic Canon, Chromelodeon and Sub-bass, Diamond Marimba, Bass Marimba, Cloud-Chamber Bowls, 9/8 Marimba Eroica, wood block and cymbal, tenor saxophone and/or baritone voice. Track 26 recorded in 1958 in Evanston, Illinois, by James Cunningham. First released on Gate 5 Records, Issue B, in 1962.