CDLXXII. PARTCH, Harry: Eleven Intrusions

CDLXXII. PARTCH, Harry (1901-1974)

Eleven Intrusions (1949-50)
1. Study on Olympus' Pentatonic (1:20)
2. Study on Archytas' Enharmonic (2:02)
3. The Rose (1:42)
4. The Crane (1:41)
5. The Waterfall (1:11)
6. The Wind (1:44)
7. The Street (2:46)
8. Lover (1:53)
9. Soldiers -- War -- Another War (2:02)
10. Vanity (0:48)
11. Cloud-Chamber Music (4:02)
Harry Partch, principal vocals, instrumentalist
Ben Johnston, instrumentalist
Betty Johnston, instrumentalist
Donald Pippin, instrumentalist
Bill Snead, instrumentalist

"In their quiet, forlorn way, the Eleven Intrusions are among the most compelling and beautiful of Partch's works. They are the main compositional product of a lonely, isolated period he spent in Gualala, on the far northern California coast, where he established a studio for his instruments on a ranch belonging to his pianist friend Gunnar Johansen. The ranch -- situated on a spectacular stretch of the Pacific coast, surrounded by fir and redwood trees (which were to provide building materials for Partch's instruments) -- seemed at first an idyllic place to work. During the autumn and winter of 1948-49 Partch converted the abandoned smithy on the ranch into a comfortable and elegant studio, and it was here that the Instrusions were composed and recorded. Very soon, however, he began to find the isolation oppressive, and some sense of the loneliness and introversion that characterized this period of his life can perhaps be heard in this work.

The individual pieces were composed at various times between August 1949 and December 1950, and only later gathered 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. The works uses a total of ten of Partch's instruments (including two, the Bass Marimba and the Cloud-Chamber Bowls, that had been built in the Gualala studio) but was conceived for only five musicians -- those on this recording. Besides Partch himself, who is the principal vocalist and plays Harmonic Canon, Adapted Guitar and Adapted Viola, the performers are: Ben Johnston, then twenty-four, who had come out to Gualala to study with Partch, and who was pressed into service doing repair work around the ranch and learning to play Partch's percussion instruments. Johnston's wife, Betty; and their friends Bill Snead and Donald Pippin.

The Eleven Intrusions are squarely in the line of works for 'intoning voice' that had formed Partch's entire output to that time. In instrumental terms, the new features are the pairing of strings and percussion, and the absence of the Chromelodeon (his adapted and retuned reed organ). The Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales for Harmonic Canon and Bass Marimba, which begin the work, were written at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the spring of 1946, fully three years before he began the other pieces. Originally for Harmonic Canon solo, a Bass Marimba part was added in Gualala in 1950. Stylistically they are among his lead adventurous pieces, their texture dividing quite conventionally into melody, simple strummed accompaniment, and bass line; but the quasi-vocal nature of the melodic line provides an ideal bridge to the songs that follow. The two scales are Olympos' Pentatonic, a simple five-note mode which in Partch's just tuning is 1/1, 9/8, 6/5, 3/2, 8/5, 2/1 (or, in more conventional terms, G, A, B-flat, D, E-flat, G); and Archytas' Enharmonic, with its celebrated 'quarter-tones' -- in Partch's terms 1/1, 28/27, 16/15, 4/3, 3/2, 14/9, 8/5, 2/1 (G, G-quarter-sharp, A-flat, C, D, D-quarter-sharp, E-flat, G).

The first group of songs -- 'The Rose, 'The Crane,' and 'The Waterfall' -- uses Adapted Guitar II and Diamond Marimba, and the music grows from chordal configurations on the two instruments. 'The Waterfall' offers an example of Partch's characteristic harmonic world, with a sequence of hexadic chords, the constituent tones of which resolve by narrow microtonal distances one into the next; these are articulated by strummed chords on the Guitar and arpeggiated chords on the Diamond Marimba. By contrast, the dark, haunting settings that follow, 'The Wind,' and 'The Street,' are more linear. The Harmonic Canon is set for a continuous microtonal sequence of Partch's 43-tone scale in baritone register, and its glissandi, shadowing the wailing contour of the voice, work texturally in suggesting the hollow moaning of wind riffling through a deserted landscape. In 'The Street,' the low-pitched sweeping movement on Harmonic Canon coupled with delicate, fast pianissimo repeated figures on Bass Marimba played by gloved hands, brings to life the cinematic sequence of moving images thrown up by the text: the expensively clad mannequins in shop windows, the gloom of doorways, boys under lamposts, old houses, the corner prostitute.

The next group, 'Lover,' 'Soldiers -- War -- Another War, and 'Vanity,' offers an anticipation of the future direction of Partch's use of his ensemble forces. The songs depend on timbral contrasts and gestural patterns on the instruments articulating their form, and avoid the more usual structural relationship in harmonic terms. The songs mark the first use of the Cloud-Chamber Bowls, which in 'Soldiers -- War -- Another War' provide a hesitant chiming that is effectively juxtaposed with low tremolos on the Diamond Marimba. In 'Vanity' Partch creates an appealing and original texture from tremolos and slides on his three Guitars.

'Cloud-Chamber Music' opens with a sonorous carillon on four Cloud-Chamber Bowls, their distinctive bell-like tones yielding to a mournful microtonal lament on Adapted Viola and Adapted Guitar. Following this, in a fast tempo, the Viola introduces the melody of 'Canción de los Muchachos' of the Isleta tribe of New Mexico, an ancient cylinder recording of which Partch had transcribed at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 1933. This is then sung by all the musicians, accompanying themselves on their instruments, except the Kithara, whose player takes up a Native American deer-hoof rattle. This ritual provokes another outburst on the Cloud-Chamber Bowls. Ben Johnston has suggested a scenario implicit in this sequence of musical events: 'Cloud-Chamber Music,' he writes, 'begins as a depressed reaction to a false clarion, but then seizes on American Indian incentives as a reinvigorating antidote.' Johnston also sees the piece as partly autobiographical, an allegory of their situation in Gualala: Partch had cast himself, an aging man, in the role of inciter, with his Viola, by far the most 'traditional' of his instruments, undergoing the change first, and exhorting the youthful ensemble to follow him in the transformation." -- Bob Gilmore

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The Rose (Ella Young)

The rose that blooms in Paradise
Burns with an ecstasy too sweet
For mortal eyes
But sometimes down the jasper walls
A petal falls
Toward earth and night
To lose it is to lose delight beyond compare
To have it is to have despair

The Crane (Tsurayuki, trans. Arthur Waley)

Its cry is mournful in the reed plane
As though it had called to mind something
Which it wanted to forget

The Waterfall (Ella Young)

O shouting multitudes
Leaping from crag to crag
Gesticulating
Wrestling with limbs intertwined
Why are you so eager to leave the sunlight
So eager for the pool of oblivion?

The Wind (Ella Young, Lao Tzu)

She is the slender-blossomed thorn
She is the heartbeat of the Spring
The faint sweet music before morn
She, the light swallow on the wing
Maid moon she is, so young and white
Shy in the heaven's lordly dome
I am the lonely wind of night
I am the spent sea's bitter foam
I am drifted about as on the sea
I am carried by the wind as if I had nowhere to go

The Street (Willard Motley)

Over the jail the wind blows, sharp and cold. Over the jail and over the car tracks the cold wind blows. The streetcar clangs east, turns down Alaska Avenue, and at a diagonal crosses Halstead Street. North and south runs Halstead, twenty miles long. Twelfth Street. Boys under lampposts, shooting craps, learning. Darkness behind the school where you smarten up, you come out with a pride and go look at the good clothes in the shop windows and the swell cars whizzing past to Michigan Boulevard and start figuring out how you can get all these things. Down Maxwell Street where the prostitutes stand in the gloom-clustered doorways. Across Twelfth Street either way on Peoria are the old houses. The sad faces of the houses line the street like old men and women sitting along the veranda of an old folks' charity home. Nick? Knock on any door down this street.

Lover (George Leite)

So now lost and turn blood into night into dark
It means the dearest and most burned is along in the night in the black tarn
If you see the mad horse and he shows a yearning fear
Black stamp cuddle close it is almost time to shout it is almost time to scream
It is dark blood boils lost dark blood boils lost dark blood boils lost beauty

Soldiers -- War -- Another War (Giuseppe Ungaretti, trans. William Fense Weaver)

Soldiers

We remain like leaves on the trees in autumn

War

Far away like a blind man they have led me by the hand

Another War

In this darkness with my frozen hands
I can make out my face
I feel myself abandoned

Vanity (Giuseppe Ungaretti, trans. William Fense Weave)

Suddenly tall on the ruins is the clear stupor of immensity
And the man bent over the water surprised by the sun makes himself out as a
Shadow
Rocked by the water and slowly shattered