Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue: To Sound American
- 1 The Hobo in Partch's Early Life and Aesthetic
- Interlude 1 Transients and Migrants
- 2 The Transient Journey
- 3 Bitter Music
- 4 A Knight of the Road
- Interlude 2 Hoboes
- 5 U.S. Highball: Becoming a Musical Hobo
- 6 A Newsboy Letter
- 7 Trading on a Hobo Image
- 8 The Strangest Kind of Hobo
- Epilogue: To Be American
- Glossary of Instruments and Hobo Slang
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - A Knight of the Road
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue: To Sound American
- 1 The Hobo in Partch's Early Life and Aesthetic
- Interlude 1 Transients and Migrants
- 2 The Transient Journey
- 3 Bitter Music
- 4 A Knight of the Road
- Interlude 2 Hoboes
- 5 U.S. Highball: Becoming a Musical Hobo
- 6 A Newsboy Letter
- 7 Trading on a Hobo Image
- 8 The Strangest Kind of Hobo
- Epilogue: To Be American
- Glossary of Instruments and Hobo Slang
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As the 1940s dawned, Harry Partch was looking toward a new horizon, turning away from menial labor and its associations with the migrant and moving back into contact with musical society. Part of his new attitude toward the culture he felt had rejected him came from the increasing hardships, both physical and psychological, of his nomadic existence. The freedom he initially sought was constantly undercut by Californians' attitudes toward migrant workers and the sheer number looking for work: near Marysville he noted that “there were at least a hundred peach pickers for every job, and the banks of the American River were so thick with hobos that—at night—you'd have thought it was the site of an army bivouac.” Beyond the physical travails was an increasing sense of desperation about the impact of his situation on his compositional progress. He had not completed a musical work in five years and had been unable to find publication for his most recent major work—Bitter Music. The only instruments to play his scale remained his Adapted Viola and Adapted Guitar, with a discarded keyboard for the Ptolemy the only testimony of the previous years' work. At almost forty years old, he had little to show for close to two decades of grappling with his new musical ideas, and he felt stymied by his lack of achievement.
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- Information
- Harry Partch, Hobo Composer , pp. 110 - 128Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014