The evolution of Harry Partch's monophony.
Item
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Title
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The evolution of Harry Partch's monophony.
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Identifier
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AAI9618077
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identifier
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9618077
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Creator
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Kassel, Richard M.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joel Lester
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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The composer Harry Partch (1901-74) disliked the standard equally-tempered tuning system of Western music. He was looking for an alternative when, in 1923, he discovered Helmholtz and Ellis's On the Sensations of Tone, a study of acoustics and its musical applications that would serve as the basis for Partch's just-intonation system labeled Monophony. This system at first involved finding just equivalents for standard scales; but then Partch began focusing on the mathematical properties of the ratios used in just intonation and their impact on the human ear. He devised Otonalities (major) and Utonalities (minor) in which, instead of the usual triads, consonant hexads (based on common denominators and numerators, respectively) served as the harmonic framework. A recently rediscovered treatise draft, Exposition of Monophony (1933), demonstrates that Partch's theory was essentially complete by that time, although important elements such as the Tonality Diamond (an interlocking grid of related ratios) and the elimination of the troublesome overtone/undertone rationale came later. In later years he focused on the aesthetic element of Monophony; the most crucial source is the journal, Bitter Music (1935-36, typescript 1940), which Partch believed to be destroyed. This musical diary covers a period of hoboing by Partch; here he achieved an American vernacular form of speech-song, which was put to good use in the Americana works of the early 1940's. Monophonic theory was refined throughout the 1930s and 1940's; its evolution came to fruition with the 1949 publication of Partch's treatise Genesis of a Music (1947).
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
