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The American composer
Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...
(1901-1974) composed using scales of unequal intervals in
just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals Interval may refer to: Mathematics and physics * Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers ** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to ...
, derived from the natural Harmonic series; these scales allowed for more tones of smaller intervals than in the standard Western tuning, which uses twelve equal intervals. One of Partch's scales has 43 tones to the octave. To play this music, he built many unique instruments, with names such as the Chromelodeon, the Quadrangularis Reversum, and the Zymo-Xyl. Partch called himself "a philosophic music-man seduced into carpentry". The path towards Partch's use of many unique instruments was a gradual one. Partch began in the 1920s using traditional instruments, and wrote a string quartet in just intonation (now lost). He had his first specialized instrument built for him in 1930—the Adapted Viola, a viola with a cello's neck fitted on it. He re-tuned the reeds of several
reed organ The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. T ...
s and labeled the keys with a color code. The first was called the ''Ptolemy'', in tribute to the ancient music theorist
Claudius Ptolemaeus Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...
, whose musical scales included ratios of the 11-limit, as Partch's did. The others were called ''Chromelodeons'', a
portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsmelodeon Melodeon may refer to: * Melodeon (accordion), a type of button accordion *Melodeon (organ), a type of 19th-century reed organ *Melodeon (Boston, Massachusetts), a concert hall in 19th-century Boston * Melodeon Records, a U.S. record label in the ...
''. Most of Partch's works used the instruments he created exclusively. Some works made use of unaltered standard instruments such as
oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. A ...
,
clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
, or
cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
, and ''Revelation in the Courtyard Park'' (1960) used an unaltered small wind band. In 1991, Dean Drummond became the custodian of the original Harry Partch instrument collection until his death in 2013. In 1999 the instruments began a residency at
Montclair State University Montclair State University (MSU) is a Public university, public research university in Montclair, New Jersey, with parts of the campus extending into Little Falls, New Jersey, Little Falls. As of fall 2018, Montclair State was, by enrollment, ...
in
Montclair, New Jersey Montclair () is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a wealthy and diverse commuter town and suburb of New York City within the New York metropolitan area. As ...
which lasted until November 2014 when they moved to University of Washington in Seattle. They are currently under the care of Charles Corey. Those who have duplicated partial sets of Partch instruments include John Schneider, whose West Coast ensemble includes replicas of the Kithara, Surrogate Kithara, Cloud-Chamber Bowls, Adapted Guitars, Adapted Viola, Diamond Marimba, Bass Marimba, Chromelodeon, and two Harmonic Canons.


Adapted Guitars

Partch built two steel-string guitars: the six-string Adapted Guitar I, and the ten-string Adapted Guitar II (played with a
slide Slide or Slides may refer to: Places * Slide, California, former name of Fortuna, California Arts, entertainment, and media Music Albums * ''Slide'' (Lisa Germano album), 1998 * ''Slide'' (George Clanton album), 2018 *''Slide'', by Patrick Glees ...
). Partch first started experimenting with such instruments in 1934, and the Adapted Guitar I first appeared in ''Barstow'' in 1941. In 1945, he began using amplification for both instruments.


Adapted Viola

The Adapted Viola is the earliest extant instrument created by Partch. It is made from a
cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
fingerboard neck attached to the body of a viola. It also includes a changeable
bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...
which allows triple stops, i.e. full triads, to be sustained. Partch hammered brads into the
fingerboard The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The stri ...
to aid with finding fingerings. The Adapted Viola was constructed in New Orleans with the assistance of an Edward Benton, a local violin maker. Partch originally called it the Monophone, but by 1933 it had become known as the Adapted Viola. Partch tuned the Adapted Viola an octave below the
violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
and the brads inserted into the instrument fingerboard are placed at ratios commonly used in Partch's works. In playing the instrument, Partch called for a "one-finger technique," which is "much closer to the spirit of Indian vina playing than it is to the pipe organ." Specifically, he desired that notes should be approached by gliding from tone to tone: As Partch's first instrument, the Adapted Viola is used heavily in many of his early mature compositions. In works such as ''Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po'' and ''Two Psalms'' the music is scored only for Adapted Viola and intoning voice.


Bamboo Marimbas

Nicknamed "Boo" and "Boo II", the Bamboo Marimbas are marimbas made of
bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...
, using the concept of a tongued resonator to produce the tones. The Boo I was first built in 1955. Some of the bamboo was replaced with larger-diameter pieces in 1963. It has a total of 64 bamboo resonators, organized into six ranks. The back ends of the tubes are sealed. Boo II was built in 1971. It also has 64 tubes, but the tubes are open at both ends. The tongues cut into the bamboo are approximately 1/6 of the length of the tube in order to produce a harmonic at 6/5 of the fundamental.


Bass Marimba and Marimba Eroica

The Bass Marimba and Marimba Eroica have more traditional linear layouts and are very low in pitch. The Bass Marimba was first built in 1950. It has eleven bars made of
Sitka spruce ''Picea sitchensis'', the Sitka spruce, is a large, coniferous, evergreen tree growing to almost tall, with a trunk diameter at breast height that can exceed 5 m (16 ft). It is by far the largest species of spruce and the fifth-larg ...
. The lowest bar corresponds to a piano C2. It can be played with mallets or by slapping with the pads of the fingers. The Marimba Eroica was built in 1954. It comprises four bars of Sitka spruce on top of large resonator boxes. The lowest bar sounds at 22 Hz, approximately the F below the lowest note of a piano.


Chromelodeons

The Chromelodeons are
pump organ The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. T ...
s modified by Partch to conform to his tonality system. Chromelodeon I was adapted in 1945 from a 73-key pump organ. Chromelodeon II was adapted in 1959 from an 88-key pump organ. Both keyboards have colored and numbered labels representing ratios of the tuning system.


Cloud-Chamber Bowls

The Cloud-Chamber Bowls are a set of , 16-inch diameter
Pyrex Pyrex (trademarked as ''PYREX'' and ''pyrex'') is a brand introduced by Corning Inc. in 1915 for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. It was later expanded to include kitchenw ...
bowls cut from
carboy A carboy, also known as a demijohn or a lady jeanne, is a rigid container with a typical capacity of . Carboys are primarily used for transporting liquids, often water or chemicals. They are also used for in-home fermentation of beverages, ...
s, suspended in a frame. The carboys were originally sourced from the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, where they were used in the construction of
cloud chamber A cloud chamber, also known as a Wilson cloud chamber, is a particle detector used for visualizing the passage of ionizing radiation. A cloud chamber consists of a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapour of water or alcohol. ...
s. It was first built in 1950.


Diamond Marimba

The Diamond Marimba is a
marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...
with keys arranged in a physical manifestation of the 11-limit
tonality diamond In music theory and tuning, a tonality diamond is a two-dimensional diagram of ratios in which one dimension is the Otonality and one the Utonality.Rasch, Rudolph (2000). "A Word or Two on the Tunings of Harry Partch", ''Harry Partch: An Anthol ...
. Partch first built it in 1946.


Eucal Blossom

The Eucal Blossom is a bamboo marimba with 33 resonators in three rows of eleven, supported by a branch of eucalyptus. It was first built in 1964.


Gourd Tree and Cone Gongs

Twelve temple bells bolted to gourd resonators on a bar of
eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euca ...
, and two
Douglas Aircraft The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. and later merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas; it then operated as ...
bomber nosecones. First built in 1964.


Harmonic Canons

The Harmonic Canons (from the same root as '' qanún'') are 44-stringed
sonometer A monochord, also known as sonometer (see below), is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument, involving one (mono-) string ( chord). The term ''monochord'' is sometimes used as the class-name for any musical stringed instrument h ...
instruments with complex systems of movable bridges that were mostly positioned by Partch on
harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...
nodal positions to get a just intoned harmonic relation between the left and right string part. They are tuned differently depending on the piece, and are played with fingers or picks, or in some cases, unique mallets. Harmonic Canon I (1945), II (1953), III (1965).


Kitharas

Named after their inspiration, the Greek kithara, the Kitharas are upright 72-stringed instruments, tuned by sliding
pyrex Pyrex (trademarked as ''PYREX'' and ''pyrex'') is a brand introduced by Corning Inc. in 1915 for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. It was later expanded to include kitchenw ...
rods underneath the strings, and played with fingers or a variety of plectra. The Kithara I was first built in 1938, and restored in 1972. The Surrogate Kithara was built in 1953, and the Kithara II in 1954.


Mazda Marimba

The Mazda Marimba is made of Mazda light bulbs and named after the Zoroastrian god
Ahura Mazda Ahura Mazda (; ae, , translit=Ahura Mazdā; ), also known as Oromasdes, Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hoormazd, Hormazd, Hormaz and Hurmuz, is the creator deity in Zoroastrianism. He is the first and most frequently invoked spirit in the ''Yasna''. ...
.


Quadrangularis Reversum

Partch built the Quadrangularis Reversum in 1965, about twenty years after the Diamond Marimba. The central section's 36
African padauk ''Pterocarpus soyauxii'', the African padauk or African coralwood, is a species of ''Pterocarpus'' in the family Fabaceae, native to central and tropical west Africa, from Nigeria east to Congo-Kinshasa and south to Angola.International Legume D ...
blocks are an upside-down, mirrored version of the Diamond Marimba—hence ''Reversum''. This reverse possibility was shown to Partch by
Erv Wilson Ervin Wilson (June 11, 1928 – December 8, 2016) was a Mexico, Mexican/United States, American (dual citizen) music theory, music theorist. Early life Ervin Wilson was born in a remote area of northwest Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Mexico, wher ...
who helped with its construction. To the left and right are sets of ten alto-register blocks. Bamboo resonators are under the blocks. Partch's initial plan, abandoned due to cost, was to use square bamboo ('' C. quadrangularis'') for the resonators—hence the first part of the instrument's name. The curved uprights are eucalyptus, and the bar across the top is intended to evoke a
torii A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The presence of a ''torii'' at the entrance is usually the simplest ...
. The instrument is quite large at across the top and tall.


Spoils of War

The Spoils of War is a collection of several instruments, including more Cloud Chamber Bowls, artillery shell casings, metal "whang-guns", a
Pernambuco Pernambuco () is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.6 million people as of 2020, making it seventh-most populous state of Brazil and with around 98,148 km², being the 19 ...
wood block, and a gourd. First built in 1950.


Zymo-Xyl

The Zymo-Xyl is an oak-block
xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the ...
augmented with tuned liquor and wine bottles,
Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...
hubcaps, and an aluminum ketchup bottle. The name is from the Greek '' zymo-'' for "fermentation", and '' xylo-'' or ''xyl-'' for "wood". First built in 1963.


See also

*
Experimental musical instrument An experimental musical instrument (or custom-made instrument) is a musical instrument that modifies or extends an existing instrument or class of instruments, or defines or creates a new class of instrument. Some are created through simple modif ...
* List of works by Harry Partch


References


Footnotes


Works cited

* * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


Harry Partch Information CenterCorporeal Meadows: Harry Partch an American Original
{{Harry Partch Harry Partch Partch