Word: partch
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...Stauf, an anagrammatical updating of the Faust legend co-written by Michael Sahl. The highlights, though, were The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a moving minimalist meditation by British Composer Michael Nyman based on a case history in Neurologist Oliver Sacks' best seller, and Harry Partch's 1959 Revelation in the Courthouse Park, a quirky blending of Euripides and Elvis Presley, scored for an unorthodox orchestra and set to a musical scale with 43 tones instead of the normal twelve...
Because of its complexity and rarity, Revelation was the big attraction. Partch's own libretto alternates between two analogous fleshly rites: the orgiastic reception by female fans accorded to Dion (Obba Babatunde), a Presley symbol, and the lustful revels of the mythic Bacchae in praise of their priapic god, Dionysus. Each principal singer takes two roles. Mom (Suzanne Costallos) falls under the Pelvis' spell, just as her ancient Greek counterpart, Agave, is seduced by Dionysus. When Sonny (Christopher Durham) attempts to intervene, he is, in his alter ego of Pentheus, torn apart by the horde of crazed women...
...California-born Partch, who died in 1974, was a noteworthy iconoclast. Dissatisfied with the "tempered" method of tuning in use since the time of Bach, Partch sought a purer, just intonation based on the harmonic overtones that resonate naturally when any note is sounded. To make his microtones audible, Partch invented a series of exotic instruments constructed out of such objects as artillery shell casings and Pyrex jars...
Died. Harry Partch, 73, far-out American composer and instrument maker; of a heart attack; in San Diego...
Feeling hemmed in by tradition, Partch added 31 tones to the twelve possible in the existing octave, then built entire orchestras out of cloud chambers, shell casings and auto exhaust pipes. With casually carpentered but poetically named instruments (the Boo, Whang Gun and Surrogate Kithara), Partch played compositions bearing such provocative titles as Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room...