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Rekindling Ancient Values: The Influence of Chinese Music and Aesthetics on Harry Partch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2010

S. ANDREW GRANADE
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Abstract

Scholarship on American composer Harry Partch (1901–74) has long focused on the composer's use of Greek musical ideals as the basis of his aesthetic, but little attention has been paid to China, a nation with which Partch had familial ties and with which he claimed an affinity. Using Partch's published writings, along with unpublished manuscripts, letters, and interviews, this article repositions China's role in the development of Harry Partch's music and aesthetic. By surveying his early experiences with Cantonese opera, his early expositions of his theoretical thinking, and his first full-scale composition, a setting of seventeen poems by Li Po, it demonstrates that China symbolized an alternative path. China's musical traditions were tied directly to the spoken word and featured integration of the arts through ritual, and thus for Partch presented a way to renew Western music. Through the Chinese musical quotations that reside in several of his works, the article also shows that, despite his later protests to the contrary, Chinese music both informed and shaped his music. Finally, it suggests that only by exploring the implications of China in his music can we fully understand Partch's compositional aesthetic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2010

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References

References

The Barnard Hewitt Harry Partch Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Folder 2, “Statement of Proposed Activity.”Google Scholar
The Betty Freeman Harry Partch Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Folder 14: Transcripts of Interviews conducted for The Dreamer That Remains.Google Scholar
Harry Partch Estate Archive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, series: individual folders, Partch, Harry: “On the Maintenance and Repair of—and the Musical and Attitudinal Techniques for—Some Putative Musical Instruments.”Google Scholar
Harry Partch Estate Archive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, series: unnumbered folders, correspondence—articles and reviews.Google Scholar
Harry Partch Estate Archive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, series: unnumbered folders, correspondence—misc.Google Scholar
The Peter Yates Harry Partch Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Folder 2: Correspondence between Harry Partch and Peter Yates (1952–1972).Google Scholar
Albright, Daniel. Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Google Scholar
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Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
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Brown, Martin, and Philips, Peter. “Competition, Racism, and Hiring Practices among California Manufacturers, 1860–1882.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 40 (October 1986): 61–74.Google Scholar
Chu, Peter, Foster, Lois M., Lavrova, Nadia, and Moy, Steven C.. Chinese Theatres in America. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Research, Federal Theatre Project, 1936.Google Scholar
Clark, Franklin S. “‘Seats Down Front!’ Since Women Have Appeared on the Chinese Stage, Chinatown's Theaters Are Booming.” Sunset Magazine 54 (April 1925): 33, 54.Google Scholar
Dobie, Charles Caldwell. San Francisco's Chinatown. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1936.Google Scholar
Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco. Certain Noble Plays of Japan: From the Manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa, Chosen and Finished by Ezra Pound, with an Introduction by William Butler Yeats. Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1916.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Daniel Lee. “A Study of Cantonese Opera: Musical Source Materials, Historical Development, Contemporary Social Organization, and Adaptive Strategies.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1988.Google Scholar
Frankenstein, Alfred. “An Operatic Cycle of Cathay by Benefit of Symbols and Cymbals.” San Francisco Chronicle, 19 January 1936.Google Scholar
Garland, Peter. Americas: Essays on American Music and Culture, 1973–80. Santa Fe, N.M.: Soundings Press, 1982.Google Scholar
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McClain, Charles J. In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.Google Scholar
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Partch, Harry. Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, ed. McGeary, Thomas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Partch, Harry. Genesis of a Music. 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “American Compositional Theory in the 1930s: Scale and Exoticism in ‘The Nature of Melody’ by Henry Cowell.” Musical Quarterly 85/4 (Winter 2001): 595–640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “Racial Essences and Historical Invisibility: Chinese Opera in New York, 1930.” Cambridge Opera Journal 12/2 (July 2000): 135–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “Songs of the Exclusion Era: New York Chinatown's Opera Theaters in the 1920s.” American Music 20/4 (Winter 2002): 399–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riddle, Ronald. Flying Dragons, Flowing Streams: Music in the Life of San Francisco's Chinese. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Scott, Derek B. “Orientalism and Musical Style.” Musical Quarterly 82/2 (Summer 1998): 309–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheppard, W. Anthony. Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Small, Christopher. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1998.Google Scholar
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Rev. ed. Boston: Little Brown, 1998.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982.Google Scholar
Yang, Mina. “Orientalism and the Music of Asian Immigrant Communities in California, 1924–1945.” American Music 19/4 (Winter 2001): 385–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yangzhong, Ding. “Brecht's Theatre and Chinese Drama.” In Brecht and East Asian Theatre, ed. Tatlow, Antony and Wong, Tak-wai, 28–45. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Yeats, William Butler. “Certain Noble Plays of Japan.” In Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre, 1840–1990, ed. Brandt, George W., 126–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Yung, Bell. Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Stephen dir. The Dreamer That Remains. DVD. innova Recordings 407, 2006.Google Scholar
The Barnard Hewitt Harry Partch Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Folder 2, “Statement of Proposed Activity.”Google Scholar
The Betty Freeman Harry Partch Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Folder 14: Transcripts of Interviews conducted for The Dreamer That Remains.Google Scholar
Harry Partch Estate Archive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, series: individual folders, Partch, Harry: “On the Maintenance and Repair of—and the Musical and Attitudinal Techniques for—Some Putative Musical Instruments.”Google Scholar
Harry Partch Estate Archive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, series: unnumbered folders, correspondence—articles and reviews.Google Scholar
Harry Partch Estate Archive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, series: unnumbered folders, correspondence—misc.Google Scholar
The Peter Yates Harry Partch Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Folder 2: Correspondence between Harry Partch and Peter Yates (1952–1972).Google Scholar
Albright, Daniel. Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.Google Scholar
Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Berg-Pan, Renata. Bertolt Brecht and China. Studien zur Germanistik, Anglistik und Komparatistik; Bd. 88. Bonn: Bouvier, 1979.Google Scholar
Brecht, Bertolt. “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting.” In Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Willett, John. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.Google Scholar
Brown, Martin, and Philips, Peter. “Competition, Racism, and Hiring Practices among California Manufacturers, 1860–1882.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 40 (October 1986): 61–74.Google Scholar
Chu, Peter, Foster, Lois M., Lavrova, Nadia, and Moy, Steven C.. Chinese Theatres in America. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Research, Federal Theatre Project, 1936.Google Scholar
Clark, Franklin S. “‘Seats Down Front!’ Since Women Have Appeared on the Chinese Stage, Chinatown's Theaters Are Booming.” Sunset Magazine 54 (April 1925): 33, 54.Google Scholar
Dobie, Charles Caldwell. San Francisco's Chinatown. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1936.Google Scholar
Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco. Certain Noble Plays of Japan: From the Manuscripts of Ernest Fenollosa, Chosen and Finished by Ezra Pound, with an Introduction by William Butler Yeats. Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1916.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Daniel Lee. “A Study of Cantonese Opera: Musical Source Materials, Historical Development, Contemporary Social Organization, and Adaptive Strategies.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1988.Google Scholar
Frankenstein, Alfred. “An Operatic Cycle of Cathay by Benefit of Symbols and Cymbals.” San Francisco Chronicle, 19 January 1936.Google Scholar
Garland, Peter. Americas: Essays on American Music and Culture, 1973–80. Santa Fe, N.M.: Soundings Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Garrett, Charles Hiroshi. “Chinatown, Whose Chinatown? Defining America's Borders with Musical Orientalism.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57/1 (Spring 2004):119–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilmore, Bob. Harry Partch. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Hisama, Ellie M. “Postcolonialism on the Make: The Music of John Mellencamp, David Bowie and John Zorn.” Popular Music 12/2 (May 1993): 91–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Idwal. “Cathay on the Coast.” American Mercury 8 (1926): 453–60.Google Scholar
Jones, Idwal. “The Chinese Theater Advancing.” San Francisco Chronicle, 25 December 1924, 20.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, Mark. “Immigration, Exclusion, and Taxation: Anti-Chinese Legislation in Gold Rush California.” Journal of Economic History 65/3 (September 2005): 779–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Anthony W. Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Library of Congress American Memory. “The Chinese in California 1850–1925.” Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/cubhtml/cichome.html.Google Scholar
Martin, George. Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClain, Charles J. In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.Google Scholar
McClain, Ernest G., and Ming, Shui Hung. “Chinese Cyclic Tunings in Late Antiquity.” Ethnomusicology 23/2 (May 1979): 205–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Partch, Harry. Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, ed. McGeary, Thomas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Partch, Harry. Genesis of a Music. 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “American Compositional Theory in the 1930s: Scale and Exoticism in ‘The Nature of Melody’ by Henry Cowell.” Musical Quarterly 85/4 (Winter 2001): 595–640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “Racial Essences and Historical Invisibility: Chinese Opera in New York, 1930.” Cambridge Opera Journal 12/2 (July 2000): 135–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “Songs of the Exclusion Era: New York Chinatown's Opera Theaters in the 1920s.” American Music 20/4 (Winter 2002): 399–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riddle, Ronald. Flying Dragons, Flowing Streams: Music in the Life of San Francisco's Chinese. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Scott, Derek B. “Orientalism and Musical Style.” Musical Quarterly 82/2 (Summer 1998): 309–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheppard, W. Anthony. Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Small, Christopher. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1998.Google Scholar
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Rev. ed. Boston: Little Brown, 1998.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982.Google Scholar
Yang, Mina. “Orientalism and the Music of Asian Immigrant Communities in California, 1924–1945.” American Music 19/4 (Winter 2001): 385–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yangzhong, Ding. “Brecht's Theatre and Chinese Drama.” In Brecht and East Asian Theatre, ed. Tatlow, Antony and Wong, Tak-wai, 28–45. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Yeats, William Butler. “Certain Noble Plays of Japan.” In Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre, 1840–1990, ed. Brandt, George W., 126–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Yung, Bell. Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Stephen dir. The Dreamer That Remains. DVD. innova Recordings 407, 2006.Google Scholar

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