Browse by Artist: PARTCH, HARRY

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	Delusion Of The Fury
Label:	COLUMBIA
Format:	2LP
Price:	$26.00
Catalog #:	P 749311HLP

Gatefold 180 gram vinyl reissue, originally released in 1971. "In this long-awaited masterwork, Harry Partch rises above all attempts at descriptive containment and becomes quite simply heroic. Delusions Of The Fury, proceeding from tragedy to comedy, is nothing less than the full, ritualistic expression, in vocal instrumental and corporeal terms, of the reconciliation by the living both with death and with life. It is a total Partch statement, incorporating voices, mime, his celebrated instruments, dance, lighting and staging, all working to express this philosophical concept. Delusion Of The Fury, as is to be expected, is not cast in the common dramatic/musical mold." -- Eugene Paul

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The World Of Harry Partch
Label:	COLUMBIA
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	P 751492HLP

180 gram exact repro reissue, originally released in 1969. "The World of Harry Partch collects three of his best short pieces. 'Daphne of the Dunes' (1967) is a side-long update of 'Windsong' written for dance. The melodic segments are given more emphasis than usual for a Partch piece, and harmonically this is one of his best with arpeggiated glides/cries of the Harmonic Canons evoking our sympathies. Meter changes almost measure by measure, with one section in 31/16 meter; another (polymetric) section consists of 4/4-7/4 over 4/8-7/8! Needless to say, while being very physical, Partch's music isn't something you can easily tap your foot to. What's most important is that it works. Partch was not one to introduce musical complexity merely for its own sake, another factor that separated him from his contemporaries. Not only are the rhythms complex, but they are performed at a frantic pace unequaled by any music I've hard (save perhaps the inhumanly fast player piano pieces of Conlon Nancarrow!). This is characteristic of most of Partch's works, though I think 'Daphne' is one of the most successful and exhilarating. 'Barstow -- Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California' was composed in 1941 as part of 'The Wayward.' It offers such statements as 'Go to 538 East Lemon Avenue for an easy handout' and 'Looking for millionaire wife...' This charismatic piece is successful due to the contrasting of Partch's intoning voice with others in the ensemble and to increased instrumental emphasis. Last is 'Castor and Pollux' in a more modern performance than From the Music of Harry Partch, with greater vigor and fidelity. The World of Harry Partch is an excellent introduction to his works that comes highly recommended." -- Surface Noise

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	Enclosure 8
Label:	INNOVA
Format:	DVD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	INNO 399DVD

"In 1985, Philip Blackburn climbed the stairs to an attic in Iowa City and started trying to make sense of the boxes piled up there. They contained a composer's life's work: scrapbooks, tapes, photos, letters, scores, and film reels -- fragile treasures documenting the 20th century from a most unusual viewpoint, perhaps the world's most original musician: Harry Partch. The idea was to publish them and reveal Harry to the world on his own terms. Not as the crabby, homeless, self-taught microtonal musical weirdo and instrument maker, but as that most American of all artists, a truly independent thinker. With Enclosure 8, the work of bringing them to public attention reaches its apotheosis. The Enclosures series (named for the extras Partch wanted to add to his life-long letter to the world) started appearing in 1995 with a VHS video of four films made in collaboration with the Chicago-based film-maker Madeline Tourtelot. Four CDs, two years and one book later, Enclosure 4 appeared featuring his later films: Delusion of the Fury (his culminating ritual-theater work) and a San Diego Public TV documentary, also on VHS. Now the time has come for these to be issued on DVD, extensively restored, re-synched and digitally-remastered from the extant original prints. Until books and CDs become as obsolete as VHS, the Enclosures series is complete and, taken together with the Harry Partch Collection on New World Records, Partch's entire work is available for the first time. Innova's DVD, Enclosure 8, offers not only a chance to see higher quality versions of previously available material, but it also includes two performances made after Partch's death in 1974: a 1981 staged production of his hitchhiker piece, Barstow, directed by Danlee Mitchell, and a 2006 choreographed version of Castor & Pollux, performed by John Schneider's Ensemble Partch! using replicas of Partch's original set of instruments. Films include: Music Studio -- Harry Partch (1958): Partch takes the viewer on a tour of his Chicago home and plays his microtonal instruments. Includes his demonstration of how the soundtrack for Windsong was made. Windsong (1958): the ancient Greek legend of Daphne and Apollo, transported to Lake Michigan. U.S. Highball (1958; completed 1968): Partch and his ensemble perform a dramatized account of riding the rails during the Depression on a transcontinental hobo trip from California to Chicago. Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961): Harry's favorite: a ballet for gymnasts. The DVD is accompanied by a 12-page booklet featuring writings by Philip Blackburn, Danlee Mitchell, and Harry Partch." Total running time: 126 mins. NTSC format, all regions.

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	Enclosure III
Label:	INNOVA
Format:	Book
Price:	$90.00
Catalog #:	INNO 402BK

Reprinted! Originally released in 1997 and now available again. An unbelievable 528 page limited edition artbook, produced by Partch historian Philip Blackburn. "Lavishly produced from original documents in the Partch archives, a portrait-chronicle of Partch's life and work. Includes reproductions of Partch's writings, over 300 photographs by Partch and others, letters (with correspondents including John Cage, Anaļs Nin, Kenneth Anger, and many others) lectures, sketches, reviews, drawings, and more."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	Enclosure Five
Label:	INNOVA
Format:	3CD
Price:	$32.00
Catalog #:	INNO 405CD

"The fifth part of The American Composer's Forum series chronicling the life and work of Harry Partch (1901-74), one of America's most extraordinary, yet central, composers. Partch was a self-taught musician, eclectic visionary, instrument-builder, microtonal theorist, gay, sometime-hobo, who conceived and composed a Corporeal, integrated, ancient ritual theater. Enclosure Five is a 3-CD set focussing on Partch's works inspired by ancient Greece. It includes important works published here for the first time, reissues of out-of-print recordings, and new performances. With this issue, the entirety of Partch's recorded ouevre (with one exception) is publicly available for the first time. Taken with the rest of the Enclosures series and the Harry Partch Collection on CRI, we can now begin to assess Partch's whole output. Works include: A reissue of 'Ulysses at the Edge' with Jack Logan playing the trumpet part originally intended for Chet Baker; 'Revelation in the Courthouse Park (after The Bacchae of Euripides),' in its original version recorded at the University of Illinois in 1960 and excerpted on Partch's own Gate Five records; 'King Oedipus,' the culmination of Partch's Speech-Music period, in its original version using the translation by W.B. Yeats. Although Partch considered this his most important work (it took 19 years to write) and an excellent performance (featuring the incomparable Allen Louw as Oedipus), it was never released because of a permission dispute; Miscellaneous short Speech-Music works: 'By the Rivers of Babylon' (reorchestrated from the version heard on Enclosure Two); 'Come Away, Death' from the lost collection, December 1942. This work, for voice and guitar, appears in with the work by Douglas Moore that inspired Partch's own setting; and 'Minuet,' a curious Baroque duet performed by Partch and his then-student, Ben Johnston; 'The Bewitched (A Dance Satire)' in a 1980 recording from Cologne featuring an extraordinary performance and recording of this major Partch work (produced by Kenneth Gaburo for the Berlin Festival, with Danlee Mitchell, music director and Isabelle Tercero as The Witch). Partch's own spoken introductions to two of the works are included as well as an extensive booklet. The Enclosures series, named after Partch's last contemplated work and released on the Innova Recordings label of the American Composers Forum, is the culmination of a 13-year endeavor by Dr. Philip Blackburn, a Minnesota-based composer, performer, administrator and scholar. Inspired by Partch's pioneering spirit and dearth of published materials, Blackburn worked with the Harry Partch Foundation, colleague Kenneth Gaburo, and many others to bring Partch's singular voice to the public, attempting to 'let Harry speak for himself.'"

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	Enclosure Six: Delusion of the Fury
Label:	INNOVA
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	INNO 406CD

Finally, the major missing piece of the Partch discography has been reissued! "To mark the 25th anniversary of the composer's death (on September 4, 1974), and just in time for his centenary (June 24, 2001), Delusion of the Fury, the monumental work of ritual-theater that propelled Harry Partch into the limelight, is being released on CD. Originally recorded for Columbia Masterworks and long-since out of print, Innova, in conjunction with Sony Music Special Products, has reissued this central item of American musical history. With the appearance of this recording, the complete works of Harry Partch (1901-1974), one of the most important of American artists, are available for the first time (the remaining works are published largely by innova's Enclosure series and the CRI Partch Collection). Like composer Conlon Nancarrow, Partch had to wait until late in life for his radical contributions to the arts to receive wide attention. With the 1969 production of Delusion he was 'discovered', idolized, and gurufied, as a 43-tone-to-the-octave, ex-hobo, eccentric, maverick, iconoclastic instrument-builder, and a 'philosophic music-man seduced into carpentry.' Hippy hyperbole notwithstanding, Partch was a genuine far-out radical whose time has come. Again. Delusion of the Fury is a 72' totally-integrated, corporeal, microtonal, elemental work of ritual theater, incorporating almost all of Partch's hand-built orchestra of sculptural instruments. Using mime, dance, music, vocalizations, lighting, and costume, Partch presents two tales concerning reconciliation of life and death, one after a Japanese Noh drama, the other after an Ethiopian folk tale. The video release Enclosure Four: Harry Partch (Innova 404) features the film version of Delusion, but this is the first time that the high-quality stereo sound version is available on CD. Perhaps the most astonishing, seductive and compelling of Partch's works, Delusion stands as the 'Choral Symphony' or 'Ring Cycle' do to other composers: a culminating testament to a lifetime of 'doing your own thing.' The 16-page illustrated booklet features Partch's introduction and a new text by conductor Danlee Mitchell."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	Enclosure 7
Label:	INNOVA
Format:	DVD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	INNO 407DVD

"Harry Partch (like his friend Anaļs Nin) considered his life's work to be a letter to the world. His last act was going to be to add the enclosures. He never got around to it. After 20 years of working on the Partch archives, Philip Blackburn has now completed the seven-part 'Enclosures' series as it were on his behalf. Enclosure 7, the culminating DVD of this multimedia series, is a monumental tribute to the most significant works of this American original and iconoclast. It includes new versions of his late masterworks and never-before-seen footage that bring us closer to the real Harry behind the myth. The Dreamer That Remains is a documentary produced by Betty Freeman and directed by Stephen Pouliot in 1972. Here is the director's original cut along with his commentary. If you've never seen Partch or his instruments before, this is the place to start. 'Delusion of the Fury' was his magnum opus; a lifetime of instrument-invention and ideas of ritual theater were poured into this giant work. The 1971 film has been resynched and the soundtrack remastered in 5.1 surround sound. The CBS LPs of this work came with a bonus album of Harry introducing his instruments. Unavailable for years, this DVD features this talk along with a slideshow of the instruments. 'Revelation in the Courthouse Park' was Harry's fusion of current pop idolatry with parallel (only a little more sinister) scenes of ancient Greece. Now you can see excerpts of the original 1960 Illinois production, replete with gymnasts, fireworks, and transvestites. And finally, if you ever wondered how a simple recipe for rose petal jam could turn into a hobo dance and a diatribe about music critics, you are in for a treat." NTSC-DVD video, all regions; 140 minutes.

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 1
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80621CD

Reissue of CRI 751. "This newly remastered reissue marks a welcome return to the catalog of the first volume of the classic 4-CD collection that was formerly available on the CRI label. The works recorded on this disc span the first six years of what Harry Partch (1901-1974), slightly tongue-in-cheek, called the 'third period' of his creative life. They show him moving away from the obsession with 'the intrinsic music of spoken words' that had characterized his earlier output (the vocal works of 1930-33 and 1941-45) and towards an instrumental idiom, predominantly percussive in nature. This path was to take him through the 'music-dance drama' King Oedipus (1951) -- the culmination of his 'spoken word' manner -- to the 'dance satire' The Bewitched (1954-55), in which his new percussive idiom manifests itself. The three works on this disc show Partch before, during, and after this period of transition. In their quiet, forlorn way, the Eleven Intrusions are among the most compelling and beautiful of Partch's works. The individual pieces were composed at various times between August 1949 and December 1950, and only later gathered together as a cycle. Nonetheless they form a unified whole, with a nucleus of eight songs framed by two instrumental preludes and an essentially instrumental postlude. Although foreshadowed by the dance sequences of King Oedipus, the Plectra and Percussion Dances (1952) are the first of Partch's major works to be wholly instrumental in conception. The final work on this disc is Ulysses at the Edge, written at Partch's studio at Gate 5 in July 1955. Ulysses, which Partch describes as a 'minor adventure in rhythm,' is unique among his mature compositions in that, in its original form, it did not call for any of his own instruments."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80622CD

New version of CRI 752. Features: "And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma," "The Wayward: U.S. Highball; San Francisco; The Letter; Barstow." "Harry Partch's compositions of the 1940s -- and to some extent his work in general -- have remained until recently an unwritten chapter in the history of American music. And yet it was these very pieces -- the collection of four works he would later collectively entitle The Wayward -- that brought him to the attention of the New York musical world. His concert of these pieces for the League of Composers (April 22, 1944) established for him a small but permanent reputation as a musical maverick who had wandered off well-worn tracks and had developed a sort of lateral extension of his art, independently of any of the main circles of American music. 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."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 3
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80623CD

"The four works on this newly remastered CD are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch's aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for The Dreamer That Remains, for Rotate the Body in All Its Planes, for Windsong, and for Water! Water!, was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. In these works music joins with drama, with film, with dance, even with gymnastics, as integral parts of the composer's vision. The eloquent and affecting The Dreamer That Remains (1972) was Partch's last work. It was commissioned by the patroness Betty Freeman for her film on Partch which was directed by Stephen Pouliot. Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961) was a spin-off of the 'Tumble On' sequence in Partch's large-scale theatre piece 'Revelation' in the Courthouse Park. It was premiered at the National Collegiate Gymnasts Championship in 1961. Windsong (1958) was also written for film, the soundtrack to a film by Madeline Tourtelot in which Partch saw the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo. (A later version of the work was named Daphne of the Dunes). Finally, somewhat akin to a Broadway musical, Water! Water! (1961) is perhaps Partch's most lively and lighthearted work. It pokes fun at many targets, especially the rush of audiences for water at the interval; thus the subtitle: 'An Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues'."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 4 - The Bewitched
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80624CD

2005 remaster, from original mono master tapes (recorded in 1957). "The Bewitched was Partch's first work solely intended for dance (and mime-dance at that; he was not overly enamored in his lifetime of so-called 'modern dance'). Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also function at times as movers-singers-actors. Such is the case of The Bewitched, where the instruments are the set, in front of (and around) which dancers 'dance,' but where the onstage musicians also move and sing. Partch's masterpiece has been lovingly remastered from the original mono masters and the 24-page booklet includes never-before-published photographs from productions of The Bewitched. This is the definitive document of this very important work." "The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre. It is the opposite of specialized. I conceived and wrote it in California in the period 1952-55, following the several performances of my version of Sophocles' Oedipus. In spirit, if not wholly in content, it is a satyr-play. It is a seeking for release --through satire, whimsy, magic, ribaldry -- from the catharsis of tragedy. It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity, in the feeling that the modern spirit might thereby find some ancient and magical sense of rebirth. Each of the 12 scenes is a theatrical unfolding of nakedness, a psychological strip-tease, or -- a diametric reversal, which has the effect of underlining the complementary character, the strange affinity, of seeming opposites." -- Harry Partch.

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7012

"Composer, theorist, inventor of musical instruments, and one of the most colorful characters of the 20th century music, Partch (1901-1974) broke with Western tradition and forged a new music based on a more primal, corporeal integration of the elements of speech, rhythm and performance using the intrinsic music found in the spoken word, the principles of acoustic resonance and just-intonation. The Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po were composed between 1931 and 1933 and are among Partch's earliest extant compositions. They were composed for Intoning Voice and Partch's Adapted Viola, a hybrid instrument consisting of a cello neck grafted onto the body of a viola, its open strings sounding one octave below the violin. Partch used texts from the 8th century Chinese poet, Li Po. This is the 1st recording of all 17 of Partch's 'Lyrics of Li Po.'"

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