In my last post, I heaped praise upon Anton Webern for the strangeness and other-worldly qualities of his music. And yet, interestingly enough, he wasn’t the most out-there composer of the century, or even of his own generation.
Harry Partch started out normal enough, writing sufficiently normal music and taking in what his professors had to tell him. But at some point, he began to have doubts about music in the European tradition. The main thing that bothered him was how abstract, how artificial music had become, especially in the Austro-German style that had dominated western music since the time of Bach. Harmonic structures were increasingly complex, vocal styles increasingly florid, and in Partch’s mind, all of this just seemed unnatural.
Well, in for a dime, in for a dollar. Partch began questioning everything about western music, including the source of our harmonic complexity: Equal Temperament. What is equal temperament, you ask? Well, the notes of the chromatic musical scale (all the white and black keys on the piano) are derived from Pythagorean ratios: 1:1 gives us an octave, 2:1 gives us a perfect fifth, and so on and such forth. The problem is, certain pure intervals don’t really fit well (fifths are too sharp, fourths are too flat), which made tuning keyboards a very vexing endeavour. And so, in the mid-18th century, a tuning system was devised in which each pitch of the 12-note chromatic scale is equally out-of-tune with the others, hence equal temperament.
For Partch, this equally-out-of-tune method of tuning was the ultimate travesty of artificiality in music. It didn’t account for the many inflections and between-the-notes sounds we encounter in nature and in our own speech. Instead, equal temperament smoothed out those distinctions and idiosyncrasies, replacing them with what he felt was a bland and colourless palatte.
And so, in what amounted to a crisis of faith, Harry Partch burned all his compositions and proceeded to become a professional train-jumping hobo for the next several years. After taking sufficient time to clear his head and decide on a course, Partch reemerged from the wilderness like some mad prophet, preaching the gospel of Microtonality.
Seeking to remedy the evils of the 12-note Equal Tempered scale, Partch devised his own scale, consisting of 43 discreet pitches to the octave. This required a whole new collection of instruments: organs with recalibrated pipes, violas refitted with new necks, spent ammunition casings and glass bowls rescued from junkyards, and marimbas of truly epic proportions.
Essentially, Harry Partch built his own Music from the ground up: scale, theory, instruments, repertoire. He looked back to the Ancient Greeks for inspiration, but otherwise had no musical lineage. This is as new as it gets.
Personally, I don’t really know how I can call him a role model, even though I’ve now devoted a blog column to him in this series. I don’t use his 43-note scale, or any other microtonal scale, really; my own music is firmly rooted in the equal temperament tradition. Likewise, I don’t build my own instruments, nor do I seek out some refuge from artificiality in my music. Still, I admire his chutzpah, his conviction, his relentless pursuit of the Ideal.
That’s what’s truly awe-inspiring about this one-of-a-kind creator, that he would so fully chuck away all the trappings of modern thought and comfort in order to fully realize his own vision. In our modern society, we all too often reduce complex issues – economic, political, artistic, social – into binary “either/or” choices, then immediately discount one of the options and anyone who would argue for it. What a breath of fresh air it would be, for another Partch to come along, look at the two options presented, say “neither,” then craft a truly compelling alternative.
