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“A Fountainhead of Pure Musical Americana”: Hobo Philosophy in Harry Partch's Bitter Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2017
Abstract
Largely because of its troubled publication history, Bitter Music—Harry Partch's journal of a portion of his travels as a hobo—has attracted little scholarly or popular attention. This article aims to help elucidate Bitter Music by examining the influence of hobo philosophy on its creation and reception. Certain aspects of the historical and current hobo subculture's ideology—particularly bricolage, anarcho-syndicalism, radical egalitarianism, and non-hierarchical temporal perception—appear to motivate various factors in Partch's creation of the journal and his later attempts to destroy it. Additionally, I examine how hobo philosophy animates Partch's approach to speech, song, and instrumental music, culminating in a close reading of the journal's longest musical-textual entry. The article concludes with an examination of how Bitter Music’s publication history further enhances the resonance of hobo philosophy with the ways in which the journal is apprehended by readers and, in the current century, listeners.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Society for American Music 2017
References
References
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Kassel, Richard, ed. Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California. Madison, WI: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 2000.Google Scholar
Anderson, Nels. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923.Google Scholar
Depastino, Todd. Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Dunn, David, ed. Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000.Google Scholar
Granade, S. Andrew. Harry Partch: Hobo Composer. Eastman Studies in Music. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Granade, S. Andrew. “‘I Was a Bum Once Myself’: Harry Partch, U.S. Highball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005.Google Scholar
Harlan, Brian Timothy. “One Voice: A Reconciliation of Harry Partch's Disparate Theories.” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 2007.Google Scholar
Johnson, Jake. “‘Unstuck in Time’: Harry Partch's Bilocated Life.” Journal of the Society for American Music
9, no. 2 (May 2015): 163–77.Google Scholar
McGeary, Thomas. Music of Harry Partch: A Descriptive Catalog. Brooklyn: Institute for Studies in American Music, City University of New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Partch, Harry. “Barbs and Broadsides.” Percussive Notes 18, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 6–15.Google Scholar
Partch, Harry. Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos. Edited with an introduction by Thomas McGeary. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Partch, Harry. Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and Its Fulfillments. 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo, 1974.Google Scholar
Raulerson, Graham. “The Hobo in American Musical Culture.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2011.Google Scholar
Raulerson, Graham. “Individualism, Collage, and Recalcitrance: California and Hobo Culture in Harry Partch's The Wayward.” MA thesis, University of Iowa, 2004.Google Scholar
Kassel, Richard, ed. Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California. Madison, WI: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, 2000.Google Scholar