Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos

Harry Partch

University of Illinois Press, 2000 - Music - 487 pages

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.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - librarianbryan - LibraryThing

Bitter Music music itself gets five stars. If you read between the lines you get one of the most revealing artist bios ever.The other essays fluctuate between two and three stars.

Contents

• PART 2: 23
• Patterns of Music 1940: 159
• W B Yeats 1941: 165
• Show Horses in the Concert Ring 1948: 174
• No Barriers 1952: 181
• A Somewhat Spoof 1960: 188
• A QuarterSaw Section of Motivations: 196
• Barstow 1941: 201
• U S Highball A Musical Account of: 208
• Oedipus 1954: 218
• Plectra and Percussion Dances 1953: 228
• A Soul Tormented by Contemporary Music: 239
• Observations on Water Water 1962: 247
• PART 4: 253
• Water Water An Intermission with Prologues: 377
• Sources and Notes: 465
• Index: 481

About the author

Harry Partch (1901-1974) was a largely self-taught composer, music theorist, and musical instrument maker. He is a member of the Hall of Fame of the Percussive Arts Society and the author of Genesis of a Music. Thomas McGeary is the compiler of The Music of Harry Partch: A Descriptive Catalog and a contributor to The Blackwell History of Music in Great Britain. He also received an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for his translation and edition of Arnold Schoenberg's "Brahms the Progressive" for the Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos; Volume 517 of Music in American life
• Author: Harry Partch
• Editor: Thomas McGeary
• Contributor: Thomas McGeary
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, revised
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2000
• ISBN: 0252069137, 9780252069130
• Length: 487 pages
• Subjects: Music / General; Music / History & Criticism