The Corporealism of Harry Partch

Abstract

More than is usually the case there is after Harry Partch's death little certainty that any continuity will result from his life's efforts. Practically none of his works are performable without his instruments, and there is only one set of those. They are quite perishable and very difficult to maintain in playable co.ndition. If anything of his work is to survive beyond a very few years, even with dedicated efforts on the part of people now concerned, the effort will have to be well supported. Partch did say, and then gainsaid in his recently republished Genesis of a Music,' that perhaps recordings could be a solution for such a composer as he. If the recording became the definitive art work, as with magnetic tape compositions, which are like paintings, otherwise unpromising undertakings such as his might become feasible. But just about everything Partch composed is not only music but also theater. Although he did some films, most of his works are for the stage. They are heavy on the visual side, and not only because of the instruments, themselves works of sculpture, but as total visual theater. Their impact is not received simply by listening to the music. You do get something, but less even than from an opera you have never seen. Corporealism was a theory that Partch lived. It is a vehement protest against what he considered the negation of the body and the bodily in our society. It resulted specifically in an attack on abstraction. What that meant to him was first of all that music should not be separated from words or visible actions, whether theatrical, choreographic or simply musi-