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LP
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NW 90002LP
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2022 restock. Performed by The Gate 5 Ensemble: Harry Partch (director), Danlee Mitchell, Harry Partch, Michael Ranta, Emil Richards, Wallace Snow, Stephen Tosh. Limited edition LP release (180 gram vinyl) with previously unpublished bonus tracks + free download card. "'In late 1962 Harry Partch returned to California and began a project that would not only become the bones of a masterwork, Delusion of the Fury, but have a life of its own. In a too-small space within an abandoned Petaluma chick hatchery, Partch gathered the instruments he had designed and built -- new and old -- eager to once again expand the boundaries of his compositional fabric. He learned each individual part as he composed, establishing that it could be played. And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma (1963-64, rev. 1966) was born of his exploration and assembled with that 'minimum of players' over a three-year period. In spite of rough conditions and meager resources Partch's dogged persistence, along with the efforts of his dedicated assistants, eventually succeeded in realizing the 34 verses of expanded duets. With this album we revisit an important work and turning-point, guided by the original 'Statement' Partch wrote for the first commercial release of the piece. Previously only excerpted, it is a voicing of his beliefs that transcends one project to illuminate an entire purpose. We also reprise exquisite notes by the late Bob Gilmore, who distills and explains the story of Petals so clearly and eloquently. No one wants a dead reissue, so by digging into the archives, I am pleased to offer hidden gems. First, The Petals Sessions is an aural glance into the cramped quarters of the recording space, as composer and players labor to bring new notes to life, Harry himself giving direction. The montage ends with a 'test take' by Danlee Mitchell and Michael Ranta that could have easily been a keeper! Finally, we present the original Verse 17. In 1964 Partch wrote two duets that used the Adapted Viola; by the time the piece was finished in 1967, he had excised them. The ending track -- never before released -- brings Harry back to life, playing and recording Adapted Viola for one of the last times. I was completely unaware of this recording until I examined the outtakes and it glows, fifty years on. That Petals ever came to be, like much of Partch's story, stands somewhere between determination and miracle.' --Jon Szanto, The Harry Partch Foundation"
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LP
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P 751492HLP
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2024 restock; recent 9.0 rating from Pitchfork; 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
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2LP
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P 749311HLP
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2023 restock; 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
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CD
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NW 80624CD
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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.
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CD
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NW 80623CD
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"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'."
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CD
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NW 80622CD
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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."
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CD
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NW 80621CD
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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."
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