Harry Partch, John Cage

A great compilation of historical recordings by the two essential composers of American avant-garde music of the 20th Century. Partch performs with his ensemble selections from "Eleven Intrusions" and "Li Po Songs" on recordings spanning from 1943 to 1977, while David Tudor performs Cage's "Music of Changes" recorded in 1953.
"Harry Partch and John Cage — both born in California, Partch in 1901, Cage in 1912 — are in their generation surely the central figures of the American experimental tradition. They met on several occasions, and Cage, despite an aversion to Partch’s artistic idiom, has always been supportive of Partch’s music. Partch, on the other hand, had no grasp of Cage’s art and even less curiosity about it. Both men are exemplars of an artistic and philosophic independence and individualism that has few peers. But their approach to music and to life diverged almost as widely as possible. Partch, with vitriolic and passionate condemnation, threw out all of Western musical practice and theory since ancient Greece and set about to forge a wholly new system, with its own scales, melodic and harmonic conventions, instruments, and concert occasions. Cage, more good-naturedly but with equal iconoclasm, divested music first of its focus on pitch, then of countable time, and finally of choice. He launched the principle of indeterminacy in music and has remained its severest practitioner."