Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for review. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019

Latest Posts

Ernst Pepping and Allan Pettersson: Moral Dilemmas in Symphonic Music
"The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and... "
Tell the Birds
Soundtrack to an Apocalypse
Feast Your Ears: New Music for Piano
Gone For Foreign
Fred Lerdahl: Time After Time
Nothing Sacred
Two From Wayne Horvitz
Two Fresh Cantaloupes

Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for our Editor's Pick's of the month. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019


Archives
Saturday, December 18, 2004 Saturday, December 25, 2004 Friday, December 31, 2004 Wednesday, January 05, 2005 Monday, January 10, 2005 Thursday, January 13, 2005 Thursday, January 20, 2005 Sunday, January 23, 2005 Monday, January 24, 2005 Saturday, January 29, 2005 Wednesday, February 02, 2005 Thursday, February 03, 2005 Monday, February 07, 2005 Tuesday, February 08, 2005 Friday, February 11, 2005 Monday, February 14, 2005 Wednesday, February 16, 2005 Tuesday, February 22, 2005 Monday, February 28, 2005 Sunday, March 06, 2005 Monday, March 07, 2005 Wednesday, March 09, 2005 Sunday, March 13, 2005 Friday, March 18, 2005 Monday, March 28, 2005 Saturday, April 02, 2005 Monday, April 11, 2005 Sunday, April 17, 2005 Tuesday, April 19, 2005 Monday, April 25, 2005 Monday, May 02, 2005 Monday, May 09, 2005 Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Tuesday, May 31, 2005 Monday, June 06, 2005 Thursday, June 16, 2005 Sunday, June 19, 2005 Sunday, July 10, 2005 Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Sunday, July 24, 2005 Friday, July 29, 2005 Monday, August 08, 2005 Monday, August 22, 2005 Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Friday, September 16, 2005 Sunday, September 25, 2005 Tuesday, October 04, 2005 Tuesday, October 18, 2005 Monday, October 24, 2005 Tuesday, November 01, 2005 Monday, November 07, 2005 Saturday, November 12, 2005 Wednesday, November 16, 2005 Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Friday, December 16, 2005 Monday, January 09, 2006 Thursday, January 12, 2006 Thursday, January 19, 2006 Tuesday, January 24, 2006 Thursday, February 02, 2006 Monday, February 13, 2006 Wednesday, February 15, 2006 Wednesday, March 01, 2006 Sunday, March 19, 2006 Sunday, March 26, 2006 Friday, March 31, 2006 Sunday, April 09, 2006 Monday, April 10, 2006 Thursday, April 20, 2006 Friday, April 21, 2006 Thursday, May 11, 2006 Thursday, May 18, 2006 Saturday, May 20, 2006 Friday, June 02, 2006 Tuesday, June 06, 2006 Friday, June 16, 2006 Monday, June 19, 2006 Sunday, June 25, 2006 Monday, June 26, 2006 Monday, July 10, 2006 Thursday, July 13, 2006 Thursday, July 20, 2006 Friday, July 21, 2006 Sunday, July 23, 2006 Thursday, August 03, 2006 Wednesday, August 09, 2006


Powered by Blogger

Monday, February 07, 2005
Harry Partch Collection, vols. 1-3
New World Records

When I worked at Tower Records, I would recommend to customers they buy DVDs of operas instead of CDs: opera is something to been seen and heard, not just heard. When you only hear an opera, you’re not really engaging with it in the way the composer intended. Same thing when you listen to a movie soundtrack. I mention this because much of the music featured on New World’s Harry Partch Collection was intended for dance, theater, or film. Partch himself regretted that recordings couldn’t capture the entire artistic experience, and, indeed, when listening to the Harry Partch Collection, as great a document as it may be, one gets the sense of getting only half the picture.

 height=Partch once wrote: "I do not aim toward interesting music – structurally, thematically, formalistically." Unfortunately, recordings draw our ears to precisely these intra-musical elements, and a lack of structural, thematic, and formal interest is omnipresent in Partch's music. This is probably unfair to say. But the fact is that, once one gets past the novelty of its timbres, Partch's work is frequently dull. Two works for me degenerated into pure tedium: "Plectra and Percussion Dances – Satyr-Play Music for Dance Theater" (vol.1) and "And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluna" (vol.2). In both, formal redundancy is to blame. The last third of "Petals" consists of earlier sections played simultaneously to form new sections. This technique is hit-or-miss at best, and composers should have the discretion to rework the "misses" rather than simply accepting the results. But such discretion was not part of Partch’s world.

 height=Still, I would be doing a disservice to Partch’s talents were I not to mention "US Highball," the first and most substantial section from his autobiographical tetrology "The Wayward" (vol.2). "US Highball," alone among the pieces on the Partch Collection (the fourth volume of which was not available for review), is a virtually unqualified success. A loose chronicle of a train trip during Partch’s peripatetic years as a hobo (1935-43), "US Highball" captures both the exhilaration and ennui endemic to travel. The text, composed of fragments from a notebook he kept during the time, evokes the cold of nights spent in box cars, the jerky motion of trains, the excitement of imminent arrivals, and the poignancy of transient companionship. There’s more than a breath here of Walt Whitman, and Steve Reich was channeling similar ideas in "Different Trains."

 height=The vast majority of the recordings on this set are re-releases of performances Harry Partch participated in himself, and to hear his voice and his ensemble is fascinating. The recording quality is frequently less than optimal, and the edits (especially in "Windsong" [vol.3]) are quite noticeable. But the air of authenticity is unmistakable. Since performances of Partch are, to put it mildly, rare, this collection is invaluable. I don’t think Partch was a great composer, but he was arguably the most iconoclastic composer of the twentieth century. As such, his works should be readily available to all music listeners. Now they are.

P.S. Later this month at Montclair State University, the Harry Partch Ensemble will be performing his theater piece "King Oedipus." This will be a great and rare opportunity to see what Partch was all about.

 



Search WWWSearch www.sequenza21.com