Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos (Music in American Life)

Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos (Music in American Life)
by Harry Partch

Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos (Music in American Life)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Harry Partch
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-06-02
ISBN: 0252069137
Number of pages: 520
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Book Reviews of Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos (Music in American Life)

Book Review: Bitter Music
Summary: 5 Stars

This collection is a great insight into the thought and creative process of one of America's most fascinating composers. Passionate, original, non-academic, this collection exemplifies a mind committed to the working out of ideas. The early journals, essays mostly from the middle years and librettos from later work - it's not necessarily a cohesive body of work but it's a welcome antidote to the memoirs of more academic composers whose work slices smaller and smaller into a worked ground. Parallel with Partch's search for the sounds between the notes, is his search for the ideas between the ideas. Partch continually questions, continually searches, as if trying to resynthesise concept and sound world in a vital performance art. You can dip into this collection repeatedly and continue to come up refreshed.

Summary of Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos (Music in American Life)

Now in paper for the first time, "Bitter Music" is a generous volume of writings by one of the twentieth century's great musical iconoclasts. Rejecting the equal temperament and concert traditions that have dominated western music, Harry Partch adopted the pure intervals of just intonation and devised a 43-tone-to-the-octave scale, which in turn forced him into inventing numerous musical instruments. His compositions realize his ideal of a corporeal music that unites music, dance, and theater. Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, "Bitter Music" includes two journals kept by Partch, one while wandering the West Coast during the Depression and the other while hiking the rugged northern California coastline. It also includes essays and discussions by Partch of his own compositions, as well as librettos and scenarios for six major narrative/dramatic compositions.

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