The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2

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Description of The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2

The musical starting point of the compositions of The Wayward is the inflections and rhythms of everyday American speech. From the beginnings of his mature output in 1930 Partch had been devoted to what he called "the intrinsic music of spoken words," and these four works capture something of the spontaneous musicality of the conversations of the hoboes he befriended during the Depression. In their original form these pieces used only the small collection of instruments Partch had built or customized by 1943: Adapted Viola, Adapted Guitar, Chromelodeon, and Kithara. The versions recorded here are all later reworkings, sometimes with only small changes (as in the case of San Francisco), and sometimes involving a substantial amount of recomposition (as in the case of U.S. Highball).

The final work on this disc dates from twenty years later than the compositions of The Wayward, and represents one of the high points of Partch?s later instrumental idiom. And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma was composed in Petaluma, California, in March?April 1964, and revised at various times and places until the completion of the final copy of the score in San Diego in October 1966. It marks a radical departure from the theater works he had written at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s, and shows a renewed concentration on technical innovation and on fusing his activities as composer and instrument-builder within the context of a single composition. Newly remastered.

Of related interest:
80621 The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 1

General CDs

• Styles > Classical
• Chamber Music > General
• Historical Periods > Classical (c.1770-1830) > Forms & Genres > Chamber Music
• Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > General Modern
• World Music > General
• Jazz > Avant Garde & Free Jazz