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Harry Partch is a huge figure in experimental music and instrument invention. He was a prolific instrument maker, building instruments to play his unique style of microtonal music. He is one of the most widely known experimental musical instrument builders.

Chronology

Here is a breakdown of the major locations Partch lived and stayed while building his instruments.

1925 Los angels, Partch began making microtonal marked paper covers for violin and viola fingerboards and began drafting a new music theory in 1928.
1930 moved to New Orleans and burned all of his prior scores as part of his efforts to break from the European tradition. Built the Adapted Viola while in New Orleans in 1932.
1932 Moved back to Los Angeles, performed in San Francisco
1933 Traveled to to New York and received a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to study in England
1934 Traveled England studying speech patterns, a copy of a Greek Kithara, ancient Greek music theory
1935 Returned to United States, lived as a Hobo intermittently for 9 years during the Great Depression.
1938 Partch is in Big Sur where he takes woodworking lessons and builds the first Kithara
1942 He is in Chicago, where he builds the first Chromelodeon
1943 Living on East Coast of US when he receives a Guggenheim grant
1944 Partch moved to the University Of Wisconsin where he put together his first ensemble, lectured and finished Genesis of Music in 1947
1949 Moved to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin and worked out of a converted forge at the Gunnar Johansen ranch where he composed and recorded works.
1951 Moved to Oakland and worked at Mills college
1953 Moved to Sausalito, California and founded his studio Gate 5 at an abandoned ship yard where he built more instruments and staged performances.
1957 University of Illinois, staged a number of large scale works and was in teaching staff.
1962 Moved to Petaluma, California and made a studio an an former chick hatchery
1964 Left Petaluma moved to various places
1965 Moved to Venice Beach, California at an abandoned laundromat at 1110 West Washington Blvd.
1967 Left Venice Beach moved to various places
1973 Moved to San Diego until his death in 1974

Instruments

List of instruments on Wikipedia, which also features some great photos of each instrument 1)
I have presented Partch's instruments in chronological order in order to better understand the ways his ensemble and interests shifted over time.
There are multiple replica sets of the instruments needed to play various compositions by Partch. The original instruments are mostly located at Montclair State University 2). There is another set located in Los Angeles.

Adapted Viola, Adapted Guitar I, Adapted Guitar II, Adapted Guitar III

Adapted Viola (also called a Monophone) 1930-1933
Made from a cello neck attached to a viola and built by violin maker Edwin Bentin in New Orleans in 1930. Had 29 notes per octave marked with small dots.

Adapted Guitar I 1934-1942
In just intonation, the guitar has high stainless steel frets that were attached to a brass plate that sits on the fretboard.

Adapted Guitar II 1945
This version had small pin added to the fretboard that were smoothed down to make the instrument nearly fretless. The instrument has additional strings added and the fingerboard widened to fit a total of 10 strings. Had an embedded microphone to allow the instrument to be amplified.

Adapted Guitar III~1945
Same instrument as Adapted Guitar 1 but the frets were removed and marking made instead and the instrument was played using a stainless steel rod that was slide to different positions, similar to the harmonic canons.

Chromatic Organ (Ptolemy)

Built in 1934, considered a failure by Partch due to insufficient building skills and technical skills to make the instrument work. Was a reed organ like the Chromelodeon but used a typewriter style keyboard. Diagrams and description are in only early editions of Genesis of a Music.

Kithara I & II

Kithara I was built 1938

Kithara II was built 1954

Chromelodeons

Chromelodeon I was built in 1942-1945 from a 73-key pump organ. All 159 reeds were re tuned. A sub bass keyboard was built for the Old Chromelodeon II in 1945, removed and than added to Chromelodeon I in 1949. Later in 1963 the bellows on the instrument were rebuilt with far more spring pressure to fully power the sub bass reeds.

Old Chromelodeon II, built in 1946 at the University of Wisconsin and abandoned in 1949. The reeds and sub bass section from this instrument were removed and installed in Chromelodeon I in 1949

Chromelodeon II was built in 1959 from an 88-key pump organ that Partch was gifted in 1950. All 244 reeds were retuned to various degrees. The instrument retained its 5 stops which were renamed to Z, A-Left, 12, X, A-Right. Each of the stops have fractured ranges that only partially overlap but allow for the instrument to play a much larger overall range than the Chromelodeon I.

Harmonic Canon I, II & III

Harmonic Canon I was built 1945
New Harmonic Canon I was built as a copy of Canon I to allow for an alternative tuning so that the original would not need to be retuned mid performance
Harmonic Canon II called “Castor & Pollux” was built 1953
Harmonic Canon III called “Blue Rainbow” was built 1965

Diamond Marimba

Built 1946

Bass Marimba

Built 1950

Spoils of War

Built 1950

Cloud Chamber Bowls

Built 1950, made from 12 cut Carboys (glass water tanks)

Surrogate Kithara

The Surrogate Kithara was built 1953

Marimba Eroica

Built 1954

chrisbanta-marimbaeroica.jpg

“Weighing in at 847lbs., the resulting instrument has four pitches: A-56Hz, E-42Hz, C-33Hz, and heaven forbid, an infrasonic super low F at 22Hz! The tone of this low F is not detectable by human hearing.” 3)

Boo I & II (Bamboo Marimba)

Boo I was built in 1955 and updates 1963
Boo II was built in 1971

Crychord

Built in 1959 by an unknown student of industrial design at the University of Illinois

Zymo-Xyl

Built 1963

Mazda Marimba

Built 1963 4)

Gourd Tree

Built 1964

Cone Gongs

Built 1964

Eucal Blossom

Built 1964

Quadrangularis Reversurn

Built 1965

Koto

A modefied instrument that was originally given to Partch by Lou Harrison in 1966. 5)

Garden of Eden

Built 1972

Bolivian Double Flute

The flute was given to Partch by Ervin Wilson

Bloboy

A “contraption” that gives the impression of a passing freight train.

Makers Influenced by Partch

Dean Drummond was Partch's assistant and later ran the Partch Ensemble after Partch's death. He also built his own microtonal ensemble called Newband.
Dylan Crismani- Is a builder working on a new Partch style ensemble in Australia. 6)

Notes

Partch has had a strong influence on me, and I have a tendency to be a contrarian about his lineage, as I have taken a very different interpretation of microtonal music in my work. I am a huge fan of his instruments and work, and because of encountering his instruments I leaned away from making string and percussion instruments and away from very large instruments (choosing instead primarily woodwinds and small scaled instruments with very simple interfaces). Something about the complexity of playing and performing his instruments and the monumental scale of his instruments leaves me uneasy about his music (in terms of taking influences that lead to making things like it, not in the critical of it sense). I would love to make huge instruments that are difficult to tune and to play, but the exercise is very against the kind of intuitive musical ecosystems I want to make. I hope one day I will at the very least start working larger with adequate space.
I do not plan to hash out Partch too much beyond his instruments on this wiki, information about him is much more widely available then most of the people featured on this wiki. I will focus on the people he influenced more then focusing on his own life and career.

Instruments of the Partch Ensemble in LA 7)
List of instruments on Wikipedia 8)
Obituary 9)
Harry Partch website 10)
Photographs of the instruments at Montclair state university 11)

harry_partch.1671083578.txt.gz · Last modified: 2022/12/15 05:52 by mete
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