insider.si.edu: Interview with Harry Partch
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Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison. He built his own instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method…
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science · American composer (1901–1974) · composer · musicologist · music theorist · musical instrument maker · inventor · also Harry Partch, Partch
Born 24 June 1901 · Died 3 September 1974 · Q201494
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2025· 1 entry
2024· 2 entries
San Diego Union-Tribune: Year in review: From Harry Partch to Taylor Swift, 2024’s music scene was busier than ever
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The San Diego Union-Tribune: Harry Partch’s priceless musical instruments return to San Diego after 33-year odyssey
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2022· 1 entry
Released album “Harry Partch: The Bewitched / Taylor Brook: Block”.
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2021· 2 entries
Released album “Harry Partch, 1942”.
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Released album “The Bewitched”.
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2019· 2 entries
Bay Area Reporter: Harry Partch at Opus: How the iconoclastic composer performed at a 1950s San Francisco gay bar
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Released album “Sonata Dementia”.
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2015· 1 entry
Released album “Masterworks of the 20th Century”.
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2013· 1 entry
Charles Corey, a former doctoral student of Drummond, assumed responsibility for the instruments
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2012· 1 entry
A complete set of replicas was built by Thomas Meixner under commission by Ensemble Musikfabrik and used in performances of Partch's work including Delusion of the Fury
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2011· 1 entry
Released album “Bitter Music”.
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2008· 1 entry
Jazz: Harry Partch: Plectra and Recussion Dances
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2007· 1 entry
Released album “The Instruments of Harry Partch”.
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2006· 1 entry
Moviefone: Harry Partch Enclosure 7 (2007) - Where to Watch
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2003· 1 entry
Released album “U.S. Highball”.
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2002· 1 entry
Released album “The Wayward”.
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1999· 1 entry
Drummond brought the instruments to Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, where they resided until November 2014, when they were moved to the University of Washington, Seattle
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1998· 2 entries
Released album “Enclosure 5”.
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Musicologist Bob Gilmore published a biography of Partch
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1997· 4 entries
Released album “The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2”.
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Released album “The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 1”.
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Released album “The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 3”.
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Released album “The Bewitched (Members of the University of Illinois Musical Ensemble feat. conductor: John Garvey)”.
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1995· 2 entries
Released album “17 Lyrics of Li Po”.
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Released album “Enclosure Two”.
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1993· 1 entry
Released album “Just West Coast”.
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1991· 2 entries
Partch's journals from June 1935 to February 1936 were discovered and published—journals that Partch had believed to have been lost or destroyed
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Dean Drummond became the custodian of the original Harry Partch instrument collection until his death in 2013
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1990· 1 entry
Released album “Microtonal Works by Partch, Cage, Labarbara, Drummond”.
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1989· 1 entry
Released album “Revelation in the Courthouse Park”.
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1978· 1 entry
Released album “The Music of John Cage and Harry Partch”.
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1974· 2 entries
Died 1974-09-03.
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Partch was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Percussive Arts Society, a music service organization promoting percussion education, research, performance and appreciation
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1973· 1 entry
Where he died after suffering a heart attack on September 3, 1974
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1971· 1 entry
Released album “Delusion of the Fury: A Ritual of Dream and Delusion”.
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1970· 2 entries
Supporters created the Harry Partch Foundation to administer Partch's music and instruments
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The Harry Partch Foundation was founded to handle the expenses and administration of Partch's work
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1969· 1 entry
Released album “The World of Harry Partch”.
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1966· 1 entry
Released album “And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma”.
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1957· 1 entry
Partch provided the music for Madeline Tourtelot's film Windsong, the first of six film collaborations between the two
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1953· 1 entry
Released album “Plectra and Percussion Dances”.
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1950· 1 entry
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1950).
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1949· 1 entry
Pianist Gunnar Johansen allowed Partch to convert a smithy on his ranch in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin into a studio
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1947· 1 entry
And published in 1949 by the University of Wisconsin Press
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1944· 2 entries
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1944).
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The first performance of his Americana series of compositions was given at Carnegie Chamber Music Hall put on by the League of Composers
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1943· 1 entry
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1943).
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1942· 1 entry
In Chicago, he built his Chromelodeon—another 43-tone reed organ
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1938· 1 entry
Built his first Kithara in Big Sur California at a scale of roughly twice the size of Schlesinger's
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1935· 1 entry
At the height of the Great Depression, and spent a transient nine years, often as a hobo, picking up work or obtaining grants from organizations such as the Federal Writers' Project
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1933· 1 entry
Where he gave solo performances and won the support of composers Roy Harris, Charles Seeger, Henry Cowell, Howard Hanson, Otto Luening, Walter Piston, and Aaron Copland
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1932· 1 entry
Partch performed the music in San Francisco and Los Angeles with sopranos he had recruited
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1930· 2 entries
Burned all his previous compositions in a rejection of the European concert tradition
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Resolved to break with the European tradition entirely, and burned all his earlier scores in a potbelly stove
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1923· 1 entry
Came to reject the standard twelve-tone equal temperament of Western concert music when he discovered a translation of Hermann von Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone
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1922· 1 entry
Dissatisfied with the quality of his teachers
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1920· 1 entry
But was dissatisfied with his teachers and left after the summer of 1922
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1919· 2 entries
Partch graduated from high school
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Following the death of Partch's father
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1913· 1 entry
The family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Partch began to study the piano seriously
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1901· 2 entries
Born 1901-06-24.
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Partch was born in Oakland, California
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