Music Studio : Harry Partch (1958)

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] An inscription given to me by a Japanese calligrapher has hung on my studio walls in recent years, and it says, Though homeless, you make a shrine wherever you are. At the moment, my shrine happens to be in Chicago. And if it is a shrine, it becomes one only through the musical instruments that I have around me. These are unusual in size, shape, and philosophic purpose. They are a musical necessity because I am essentially not an instrument builder, but a composer. I am a philosophic music man who long ago was seduced into musical carpentry. As a composer and a musical philosopher, I make my living by selling records of my music. I am both the manufacturer and the retailer and I distribute the records very largely by mail. My music and my instruments are the expression of an ancient tradition in which sight and sound unite toward the achievement of a single dramatic purpose. This is not concert music. It finds its highest purpose in collaboration with other arts, with dance, with tragedy, with satire, with farce, and in the present instance with the art of film. Unfortunately, records carry their message only to the ear. They bring no similar and unifying excitement to the eye. With film, it is possible for the eye to explain to the ear and for the ear to fulfill the vision. Some 35 years ago, I began experimenting with musical scales different from the piano scale and for theoretical and practical instrument building purposes. I determined on a 43 tone to the octave scale. Here is the scale on my chromalian and adapted reed [Music] organ. [Music] Here is the ancient Greek and harmonic scale. Now, another ancient Greek scale. The 13 subbase reads descend to a 33 cycle tone, the lowest C on the piano. Even lower tones are given by my Mima Aeroica which has only four tones but the lowest is about 22 cycles an F below the lowest tone on the piano. [Music] Unfortunately, sound systems are generally not capable of reproducing the profound resonances of this giant MIMA. The huge mallets are sometimes put aside in favor of gloved hands. Going up the scale with the same type of instrument, the blocks become smaller, but this the base mora is still so large that the player must stand on a riser as he does with the deeper mima. The large mallets produce a full resonant tone. [Music] The tips of fingers a sharp bongol like [Music] [Music] tone. A completely different type of mora is made from 64 sections of Philippine bamboo, each with a vibrating tongue cut in the open end. Buu is my name for this mima. Five different sounds are heard on the instrument that I call the spoils of war. The first two are produced on brass artillery casings and large Pyrex bulls. The third is a high block tone. The fourth a deep tone. and the fifth is made on a piece of spring steel. The diamond mima has 36 blocks placed in diagonal rows so that one stroke of a mallet will play either triads or full chords. Right hand strokes are major while left hand strokes are [Music] minor. A passage of music shows one of the diamond mimba's potentialities. [Laughter] [Music] I call this instrument the cloud chamber bowls. The centers of the car boys from which they came were used in so-called cloud chamber experiments. [Music] The harmonic cannon or harmonic law goes back to the ancient monord for its basic idea. The monocord had two fixed bridges and a movable bridge between with which ancient theorists determined their scales. [Music] This part of the instrument has 44 strings and the bridges are designed especially for each composition. They are knocked down and other bridges are set up to produce a completely different pattern of sound. [Music] The twin half of the instrument also has 44 strings and still another bridge setting. [Music] Still another evolution of an ancient idea is the Cathara with 72 strings of equal length arranged in chords and with glass rods for playing higher tones. The long resonators are necessary in producing good low tones. [Music] The surrogate cathara has eight strings on each box and also uses glass rods. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] In performing the music that I wrote for Meline Tertillo's film wind song. I played 10 different instruments. After recording a few measures on one instrument, I used headphones to listen to these while adding the sounds of a second instrument. No more than four are used simultaneously. The music in this case became an oral extension of the symbols of man and his fate. [Music] [Music] Ow. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Hey, heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]