Early life (1901–1919) On June 24, 1901, Partch was born in
Oakland, California. His parents were Virgil Franklin Partch (1860–1919) and Jennie (née Childers, 1863–1920). The
Presbyterian couple were
missionaries, serving in China from 1888 to 1893, and again from 1895 to 1900, when they fled the
Boxer Rebellion. Partch moved with his family to Arizona for his mother's health. His father worked for the
Immigration Service there, and they settled in the small town of
Benson. It was still the
Wild West there in the early twentieth century, and Partch recalled seeing outlaws in town. Nearby, there were native
Yaqui people, whose music he would hear. His mother sang to him in
Mandarin Chinese, and he heard and sang songs in Spanish. His mother encouraged her children to learn music, and he learned the
mandolin, violin, piano,
reed organ, and
cornet. His mother taught him to
read music. In 1913, the family moved to
Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Partch began to study the piano seriously. He obtained work playing keyboards for
silent films while he was in high school. By 14, he was composing for the piano. He developed an early interest in writing music for dramatic situations, and cited his lost composition
Death and the Desert (1916) as an early example. In 1919, Partch graduated from high school.
Early experiments (1919–1947) The family moved to Los Angeles in 1919 following the death of Partch's father. There, his mother was killed in a
trolley accident in 1920. He enrolled in the
University of Southern California's School of Music in 1920, but was dissatisfied with his teachers and left after the summer of 1922. He moved to San Francisco and studied books on music in the libraries there and continued to compose. In 1923 he 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. The book pointed Partch towards
just intonation as an acoustic basis for his music. Around this time, while working as an usher for the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, he had a romantic relationship with the actor
Ramon Novarro, then known by his birth name Ramón Samaniego; Samaniego broke off the affair when he started to become successful in his acting career. By 1925, Partch was putting his theory into practice by developing paper coverings for violin and viola with fingerings in just intonation, and wrote a string quartet using such tunings. He put his theories in words in May 1928 in the first draft for a book, then called
Exposition of Monophony. He supported himself during this time doing a variety of jobs, including teaching piano, proofreading, and working as a sailor. In New Orleans in 1930, he resolved to break with the European tradition entirely, and burned all his earlier scores in a
potbelly stove. Partch had a New Orleans violin maker build a viola with the
fingerboard of a cello. He used this instrument, dubbed the Adapted Viola, to write music using a scale with twenty-nine tones to the octave. Partch's earliest work to survive comes from this period, including works based on Biblical verse and Shakespeare, and
Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po (1931-1933) based on translations of the Chinese poetry of
Li Bai. In 1932, Partch performed the music in San Francisco and Los Angeles with sopranos he had recruited. A February 9, 1932, performance at
Henry Cowell's New Music Society of California attracted reviews. A private group of sponsors sent Partch to New York in 1933, 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. Partch unsuccessfully applied for
Guggenheim grants in 1933 and 1934. The
Carnegie Corporation of New York granted him $1500 so he could do research in England. He gave readings at the
British Museum and traveled in Europe. He met
W. B. Yeats in Dublin, whose translation of
Sophocles'
King Oedipus he wanted to set to his music; he studied the spoken inflection in Yeats's recitation of the text. He built a keyboard instrument, the Chromatic Organ, which used a scale with forty-three tones to the octave. He met musicologist
Kathleen Schlesinger, who had recreated an ancient Greek
kithara from images she found on a vase at the
British Museum. Partch made sketches of the instrument in her home, and discussed
ancient Greek music theory with her. Partch returned to the U.S. in 1935 at the height of the
Great Depression, and spent a transient nine years, often as a
hobo, often picking up work or obtaining grants from organizations such as the
Federal Writers' Project. For the first eight months of this period, he kept a journal which was published posthumously as
Bitter Music. Partch included notation on the speech inflections of people he met in his travels. He continued to compose music, build instruments, and develop his book and theories, and make his first recordings. He had alterations made by sculptor and designer friend Gordon Newell to the Kithara sketches he had made in England. After taking some woodworking courses in 1938, he built his first Kithara at
Big Sur, California, at a scale of roughly twice the size of Schlesinger's. In 1942 in Chicago, he built his Chromelodeon—another 43-tone reed organ. He was staying on the eastern coast of the U.S. when he was awarded a Guggenheim grant in March 1943 to construct instruments and complete a seven-part
Monophonic Cycle. On April 22, 1944, the first performance of his
Americana series of compositions was given at
Carnegie Chamber Music Hall put on by the
League of Composers.
University work (1947–1962) Supported by Guggenheim and university grants, Partch took up residence at the
University of Wisconsin from 1944 until 1947. This was a productive period, in which he lectured, trained an ensemble, staged performances, released his first recordings, and completed his book, now called
Genesis of a Music.
Genesis was completed in 1947 and published in 1949 by the
University of Wisconsin Press. He left the university, as it never accepted him as a member of the permanent staff, and there was little space for his growing stock of instruments. In 1949, pianist
Gunnar Johansen allowed Partch to convert a
smithy on his ranch in
Blue Mounds, Wisconsin into a studio. Partch worked there with support from the Guggenheim Foundation, and made recordings, primarily of his
Eleven Intrusions (1949–1950). He was assisted for six months by composer
Ben Johnston, who performed on Partch's recordings. In early 1951, Partch moved to
Oakland for health reasons, and prepared for a production of
King Oedipus at
Mills College, with the support of designer
Arch Lauterer. Performances of
King Oedipus in March were extensively reviewed, but a planned recording was blocked by the
Yeats estate, which refused to grant permission to use Yeats's translation of Sophocles's play. In February 1953, Partch founded a studio, named
Gate 5, in an abandoned shipyard in
Sausalito, California, where he composed, built instruments and staged performances. Subscriptions to raise money for recordings were organized by the Harry Partch Trust Fund, an organization put together by friends and supporters. The recordings were sold via mail order, as were later releases on the Gate 5 Records label. The money raised from these recordings became his main source of income. Partch's three
Plectra and Percussion Dances,
Ring Around the Moon (1949–1950),
Castor and Pollux, and
Even Wild Horses, premiered on Berkeley's
KPFA radio in November 1953. After completing
The Bewitched in January 1955, Partch tried to find the means to put on a production of it. Ben Johnston introduced
Danlee Mitchell to Partch at the
University of Illinois; Mitchell later became Partch's heir. In March 1957, with the help of Johnston and the
Fromm Foundation,
The Bewitched was performed at the University of Illinois, and later at
Washington University in St. Louis, though Partch was displeased with choreographer
Alwin Nikolais's interpretation. Later in 1957, Partch provided the music for
Madeline Tourtelot's film
Windsong, the first of six film collaborations between the two. From 1959 to 1962, Partch received further appointments from the University of Illinois, and staged productions of
Revelation in the Courthouse Park in 1961 and
Water! Water! in 1962. Though these two works were based, as
King Oedipus had been, on
Greek mythology, they modernized the settings and incorporated elements of popular music. Partch had support from several departments and organizations at the university, but continuing hostility from the music department convinced him to leave and return to California.
Later life in California (1962–1974) Partch set up a studio in late 1962 in
Petaluma, California, in a former chick hatchery. There he composed
And on the Seventh Day, Petals Fell in Petaluma. He left northern California in summer 1964, and spent his remaining decade in various cities in southern California. He rarely had university work during this period, and lived on grants, commissions, and record sales. A turning point in his popularity was the 1969
Columbia LP
The World of Harry Partch, the first modern recording of Partch's music and his first release on a major record label. His final theater work was
Delusion of the Fury, which incorporated music from
Petaluma, and was first produced at the
University of California in early 1969. In 1970, the Harry Partch Foundation was founded to handle the expenses and administration of Partch's work. His final completed work was the soundtrack to
Betty Freeman's
The Dreamer that Remains. He retired to San Diego in 1973, where he died after suffering a heart attack on September 3, 1974. The same year, a second edition of
Genesis of a Music was published with extra chapters about work and instruments Partch made since the book's original publication. In 1991, Partch's journals from June 1935 to February 1936 were discovered and published—journals that Partch had believed to have been lost or destroyed. In 1998, musicologist
Bob Gilmore published a biography of Partch. ==Personal life==