Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots, and Its Fulfillments (Second Edition, Enlarged)

Partch, Harry

ISBN 10: 030680106X / ISBN 13: 9780306801068

Published by Da Capo Press, New York, 1979

About this Item

8vo, 517 pp., Spine slightly faded, else about fine. First printing of the second edition.

Seller Inventory # 052904

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots, and Its Fulfillments (Second Edition, Enlarged)
• Publisher: Da Capo Press, New York
• Publication Date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030680106X
• ISBN 13: 9780306801068
• Binding: softcover
• Illustrator: Well-illustrated
• Edition: 2nd ed.
• Condition: Nearly fine copy
• Seller catalogs:
  • Music

About this title

Synopsis

Among the few truly experimental composers in our cultural history, Harry Partch's life (1901-1974) and music embody most completely the quintessential American rootlessness, isolation, pre-civilized cult of experience, and dichotomy of practical invention and transcendental visions. Having lived mostly in the remote deserts of Arizona and New Mexico with no access to formal training, Partch naturally created theatrical ritualistic works incorporating Indian chants, Japanese kabuki and Noh, Polynesian microtones, Balinese gamelan, Greek tragedy, dance, mime, and sardonic commentary on Hollywood and commercial pop music of modern civilization. First published in 1949, Genesis of a Music is the manifesto of Partch's radical compositional practice and instruments (which owe nothing to the 300-year-old European tradition of Western music.) He contrasts Abstract and Corporeal music, proclaiming the latter as the vital, emotionally tactile form derived from the spoken word (like Greek, Chinese, Arabic, and Indian musics) and surveys the history of world music at length from this perspective. Parts II, III, and IV explain Partch's theories of scales, intonation, and instrument construction with copious acoustical and mathematical documentation. Anyone with a musically creative attitude, whether or not familiar with traditional music theory, will find this book revelatory.

About the Author

Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first twentieth-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales.