Author: S. Andrew Granade Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1580464955 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
During the Great Depression, Harry Partch rode the railways, following the fruit harvest across the country. From his experience among hoboes he found what he called ""a fountainhead of pure musical Americana."" Although he later wrote immense stage works for instruments of his own creation, he is still regularly called a hobo composer for the compositions that grew out of this period of his life. Yet few have questioned the label''s impact on his musical output, compositional life, and reception. Focusing on Partch the person alongside the cultural icon he represented, this study examines Par.
Author: Matthew David Altizer Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
"This report will consider Partch's life as a hobo from the 1920s to the early 1940s and how his life during this time helped to define him as a person and as a composer. By examining his music, writings and drawings from these hobo years, I demonstrate that Partch should indeed be classified as a "hobo composer" because Bitter Music and his compositions in The Wayward are creatively rich in their representation of Partch's own hobo life. The first chapter explores Partch's attraction to seclusion during his youth as well as his two major hobo experiences in the 1920s and 1930s. The second and third chapters survey two of Partch's main musical works from his hobo period: the journal Bitter Music and the composition Barstow-Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California from the collection The Wayward. By examining these two compositions written during Partch's hobo experiences in conjunction with his thoughts about religion, sexuality, music and the hobo lifestyle, this report will show that Harry Partch was profoundly influenced by his experiences as a hobo. His music from the period speaks both to his personal situation as well as to the larger phenomenon of the hobo culture during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and thus labels him as a hobo composer"--Leaf 4
Author: Harry Partch Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252069130 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 532
Book Description
Now in paper for the first time, Bitter Music is a generous volume of writings by one of the twentieth century's great musical iconoclasts. Rejecting the equal temperament and concert traditions that have dominated western music, Harry Partch adopted the pure intervals of just intonation and devised a 43-tone-to-the-octave scale, which in turn forced him into inventing numerous musical instruments. His compositions realize his ideal of a corporeal music that unites music, dance, and theater. Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, Bitter Music includes two journals kept by Partch, one while wandering the West Coast during the Depression and the other while hiking the rugged northern California coastline. It also includes essays and discussions by Partch of his own compositions, as well as librettos and scenarios for six major narrative/dramatic compositions.
Author: Harry Partch Publisher: Da Capo Press ISBN: 9780306801068 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 544
Book Description
Among the few truly experimental composers in our cultural history, Harry Partch's life (1901–1974) and music embody most completely the quintessential American rootlessness, isolation, pre-civilized cult of experience, and dichotomy of practical invention and transcendental visions. Having lived mostly in the remote deserts of Arizona and New Mexico with no access to formal training, Partch naturally created theatrical ritualistic works incorporating Indian chants, Japanese kabuki and Noh, Polynesian microtones, Balinese gamelan, Greek tragedy, dance, mime, and sardonic commentary on Hollywood and commercial pop music of modern civilization. First published in 1949, Genesis of a Music is the manifesto of Partch's radical compositional practice and instruments (which owe nothing to the 300-year-old European tradition of Western music.) He contrasts Abstract and Corporeal music, proclaiming the latter as the vital, emotionally tactile form derived from the spoken word (like Greek, Chinese, Arabic, and Indian musics) and surveys the history of world music at length from this perspective. Parts II, III, and IV explain Partch's theories of scales, intonation, and instrument construction with copious acoustical and mathematical documentation. Anyone with a musically creative attitude, whether or not familiar with traditional music theory, will find this book revelatory.
Author: Bob Gilmore Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300065213 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 492
Book Description
Visionary composer, theorist, and creator of musical instruments, Harry Partch (1901-1974) was a leading figure in the development of an indigenously American contemporary music. A pioneer in his explorations of new instruments and new tunings, Partch created multimedia theater works that combine sight and sound in a compelling synthesis. He is acknowledged as a major inspiration to postwar experimental composers as diverse as György Ligeti, Lou Harrison, Philip Glass, and Laurie Anderson, and his book Genesis of a Music, first published in 1949, is now considered a classic. This book is the first to tell the complete story of Partch's life and work. Drawing on interviews with many of Partch's associates and on the complete archives of the Harry Partch Estate, Bob Gilmore provides a full and sympathetic portrait of this extraordinary creative artist. He describes Partch's complicated relationships with friends, patrons, the musical establishment, and the world at large. He traces Partch's upbringing in the remote desert towns of the Southwest, his explosive encounter with formal music education in Los Angeles, and his revolutionary course as a composer that began with an interest in the musicality of speech patterns. After immersing himself in hobo subculture during the Depression, Partch came to occupy a lonely and uncompromising position as a cultural outsider. Richly fascinating in themselves, Partch's compositions, writings, and life also have much to reveal about American society and the creative impulses of the artistic avant-garde.
Author: Harriet Hyman Alonso Publisher: Wesleyan University Press ISBN: 0819571245 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
Known as “Broadway’s social conscience,” E. Y. Harburg (1896–1981) wrote the lyrics to the standards, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” “April in Paris,” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” as well as all of the songs in The Wizard of Oz, including “Over the Rainbow.” Harburg always included a strong social and political component to his work, fighting racism, poverty, and war. Interweaving close to fifty interviews (most of them previously unpublished), over forty lyrics, and a number of Harburg’s poems, Harriet Hyman Alonso enables Harburg to talk about his life and work. He tells of his early childhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, his public school education, how the Great Depression opened the way to writing lyrics, and his work on Broadway and Hollywood, including his blacklisting during the McCarthy era. Finally, but most importantly, Harburg shares his commitment to human rights and the ways it affected his writing and his career path. Includes an appendix with Harburg’s key musicals, songs, and films.
Author: Graham Lock Publisher: Courier Dover Publications ISBN: 0486824098 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 467
Book Description
Based on interviews from a 1985 tour, this book profiles one of jazz's most important figures. Anthony Braxton discusses the expression of his musical visions and related ethical, political, and spiritual beliefs. "Absolutely essential reading." — The Wire.
Author: Kyle Gann Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252051424 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
"Tuning is the secret lens through which the history of music falls into focus," says Kyle Gann. Yet in Western circles, no other musical issue is so ignored, so taken for granted, so shoved into the corners of musical discourse. A classroom essential and an invaluable reference, The Arithmetic of Listening offers beginners the grounding in music theory necessary to find their own way into microtonality and the places it may take them. Moving from ancient Greece to the present, Kyle Gann delves into the infinite tunings available to any musician who feels straitjacketed by obedience to standardized Western European tuning. He introduces the concept of the harmonic series and demonstrates its relationship to equal-tempered and well-tempered tuning. He also explores recent experimental tuning models that exploit smaller intervals between pitches to create new sounds and harmonies. Systematic and accessible, The Arithmetic of Listening provides a much-needed primer for the wide range of tuning systems that have informed Western music. Audio examples demonstrating the musical ideas in The Arithmetic of Listening can be found at: https://www.kylegann.com/Arithmetic.html
Author: S. Andrew Granade
Author: Matthew David Altizer
Author: Harry Partch
Author: Harry Partch
Author: Bob Gilmore
Author: David Dunn
Author: Harriet Hyman Alonso
Author: Harry Partch
Author: Graham Lock
Author: Kyle Gann