AVAILABILITY
* Copies in PAL format are available
from (a) ReR Megacorp, 79 Beulah Road,
Thornton Heath, Surrey, or (b) British
Harry Partch Society, 45 Newman Road,
Erdington, Birmingham (payment by UK
cheque only). Alternatively, order via
www.innova.mu
for payment by credit card.
BHPS provide additional documentation
(while stocks last) with PAL format
tapes.
I could launch into
(yet) another soliloquy about what makes
Harry Partch one of the most extraordinary
phenomena in the entire history of Music,
simply because each new encounter with
Partch makes me more gob-smacked than
ever at the sheer breadth and depth
of his astounding achievement. I could,
but I won’t, because I’ve soliloquised
a-plenty already. So, because some sort
of preludial soliloquy is really needed,
before reading on - assuming that you
want to read on, that is - please
have a quick look at, say, the review
of Innova’s Enclosure
1.
Without any doubt,
in my humble opinion at least, Delusion
of the Fury is Partch’s supreme
masterpiece. To all intents and purposes
it is the culmination of his entire
life’s work. Effectively, it marks the
end of the long and lonely path on which
he set foot half a century earlier,
when he kicked the entire Western European
musical tradition into touch and set
off to "do his own thing"
in the most ambitious way imaginable.
Indeed, if Delusion of the Fury
had been his ultimate target from the
word "go", it would have furnished
a fairy-tale finale. Boring old History,
however, suggests otherwise, reporting
that he was expressly preparing for
this work only for about a decade.
Unlike those of most
composers, though, Partch’s preparations
necessarily included much more than
mere architectural planning and compositional
sketches. Partch also faced the formidable
tasks of dreaming up, designing and
developing the very instruments on which
the music of Delusion of the Fury
would be played, and of inventing viable
musical notations appropriate to each
instrument. (See link at foot of article)
On top of that, his scenario was no
penny-plain operatic or balletic "plot",
but the fullest flowering of his corporeal
philosophy, which involved him in still
further considerations of staging, lighting,
costume, performance style - in fact
the caboodle, complete and co-ordinated,
right down to the last jot and tittle.
Heck, even Wagner had less of a job
on!
With all this on his
plate, it would have been nice to think
that he had security, a haven in which
to concentrate wholly on his work. Sadly,
this was too often not the case. Generally
he lived with the almost constant worry
of being made homeless, forever in search
of the next place to house both himself
and his growing orchestra of fragile
and large - some of them imposingly
large - instruments. Oh, and then there
was the perennial problem of money,
reputedly so essential for maintaining
the integrity of body and soul.
I must apologise if
parts of this review sound a bit on
the vague side: I’m having to work from
my less-than-wholly-reliable memory
because, as I write, I’m separated from
my copy of Bob Gilmore’s thorough, and
thoroughly gripping, biography of Harry
Partch by a small matter of 12,000 miles!
Nevertheless, without plumbing the depths
of detail, I do recall marvelling at
the minor miracle that brought Delusion
of the Fury before the public. Somehow,
the quite large number of talented people,
possessed of or acquiring the requisite
and often rarefied skills, all came
together and melded. Considering that
Partch was an oft-times lonely figure,
and difficult to get on with, this is
truly remarkable. So, I suppose, you
could say that there is something
of the fairy-tale in the tail of the
tale!
The minor miracle was
compounded by the timely presence of
Madeline Tourtelot, the corporeally-minded
cinematographer extraordinaire
who had already, on several occasions,
collaborated with Partch (see Enclosure
1 in this series). Thus, not only
did Delusion of the Fury manage
to meet its public, but also the staged
performance was preserved on film for
posterity. In passing, the icing on
the cake has to be John McClure’s outstanding
CBS sound recording of the music (available
as Enclosure 6), which is by
some margin the best recorded example
of a Partch "original", and
as far as I can ascertain the only
recording of Partch’s music made during
his lifetime by any major record company.
However, I’m getting
a bit ahead of myself. Let’s first take
a quick look at the layout of Partch’s
"ritualistic web". Acts I
and II tell two stories. The first,
on a "Japanese theme", is
tragic and the second, on an "African
theme", is comic. Taken together,
they reflect the Janus image of the
"thespian mask" ideogram.
Although drastically different, the
two tales nevertheless share a basic
thesis which, stripped of its sundry
and manifold philosophical overtones,
boils down to: "Mankind has an
enduring and indefatigable talent for
making Ghastly Mistakes".
In the work’s full
title the key word is "ritual",
which Partch regarded as the main basis
and generator of his brand of corporealism.
Partch weaves "ritual" into
every strand of his web. Perhaps the
main distinguishing feature of any ritual
involving music is that the musicians
are an integral part of the proceedings.
Partch hauls his orchestra out of the
"pit", and plonks it right
on the stage, where it becomes not merely
part of the stage setting, but actually
is the set. Correspondingly, the
instrumental players are performers
in the fullest sense, wearing costume
and stage make-up just like the actors,
singers and dancers who move before
and between them. Partch regarded costume,
and especially "uniform" costume,
as the sine qua non of ritual.
The drama is enacted
principally through the ancient art
of mime, which traditionally involves
the use of strictly stylised movements.
Such movements generally embody a set
of expressive codes, such as are nowadays
most often encountered in classical
ballet. Both stylisation and codes are
also elements of ritual. For the most
part the vocal contributions are wordless,
the voices being used as highly expressive
musical instruments. "Singing"
quite often takes the form of chanting
which, again, is a powerful component
of many religious rituals. Explicit
words, on the other hand, are reserved
exclusively for dramatic "punch-lines".
Act I is preceded by
an instrumental overture, an extended
Exordium intended to draw the
audience into the "web of dream
and delusion", whilst the two acts
are separated by a substantial Sanctus,
a bridge which does double-duty as postlude
to Act I and prelude to Act 2. Rather
more mundanely it provides - as do bog-standard
entr’actes - a bit of elbow-room for
the cast to change their costumes and
even, in some cases, their make-up.
Even the very terms, Exordium
and Sanctus, breathe the very
air of ritual.
OK, fair enough - but
what’s the Big Deal about this "ritual"
business? I think the answer is simple
enough: down through the ages, ritual
has always been a fully communal
thing, in which not only are all the
components that make up the performance
closely integrated, but also the audience
is necessarily and intimately involved.
Partch, although stopping short of requiring
the audience to be in costume and make-up
and issued with "walk-on"
parts, nevertheless provides all the
trappings of ritual: he aims to arouse,
if not his audience’s base instincts,
then at least its deep-seated racial
memories.
It’s one thing for
a live enactment of such a ritual to
draw a live audience into its delusory
web. It’s another entirely for a filmed
enactment to do the same to individuals
like you and me, as we sit in the safety
of our front rooms, cluttered with unsympathetic
artefacts and, in all probability, utterly
inappropriately illuminated. Tourtelot’s
job, if we can call it just that, is
surely therefore more than simply to
record the event, but to try to preserve
as much as possible of the ritualistic
atmosphere and, indeed, the entire dramatic
experience.
As with films like
Rotate the Body in All Its Planes
and Windsong (see Enclosure
1), Tourtelot’s film technique is
gently creative, by which I mean that
while she doesn’t just point cameras
at the action and hope for the best,
neither does she distract you from the
narrative with over-egged fancy effects.
Her directorial hand moves with immense
subtlety. Consider, for example, the
Exordium. Interspersed with the
titles we see photographs of the musical
instruments, and shots of the shadowy
stage, on which the instrumental performers
are assembling. What we see, though,
is obscured by the gloom, and only occasionally
relates to what is prominent aurally.
Little by little, however, the proportion
of shots featuring an instrument being
played increases. Tourtelot is tantalising
us! By revealing so little that makes
any immediate sense, she is spinning
a web of her own. Moreover, these "exordial"
shots seem to be deliberately reflecting
the eyes and ears of a representative
member of the "live" audience,
as he tries to figure out what the heck
is going on.
I must admit, at first
I found myself asking the obvious questions,
like, "What’s going on? Surely
the sights should be matched to the
sounds? Shouldn’t the shots be framed
to give a clearer view?" Indeed
they should, and this is a substantial
failing - but it is, in fact, my
failing! Of course, the "failing"
evaporated as it dawned on me that this
is not a documentary film, and
Tourtelot’s cunning purpose slotted
into place.
I must also admit that,
once the action had got going, I occasionally
felt a twinge of that same mild frustration
that I get in films of opera or ballet.
I’m sure you all know the sort of thing,
for instance those occasions when, during
a large ensemble scene, the camera
concentrates on one individual
(or even a part of an individual),
for no reason that is apparent, either
immediately or even after repeated study.
Either that, or when one character is
doing something really important,
you find yourself looking at some other
character, standing to one side, and
doing nothing more dramatically significant
than studying the ceiling.
When the film is produced
by a major company with vast resources
at its beck and call, these less-than-magical
moments can only be due to some irritating
artistic contrariness (or sheer blasted
ignorance) on the part of the director.
Well, as is apparent from Enclosure
1, Tourtelot hardly constitutes
a "major company" and, with
the best will in the world, her array
of only four cameras is nowhere
near enough to catch all the broad pictures
and the many details of Partch’s theatrical
ritual, and "on the hoof"
at that. Then again, in a few places
- for example, at the end of Emergence
of the Spirit in Act I, or at the
end of the Sanctus - there are
some rough edges in the editing.
It quickly becomes
clear that this film suffers from the
same technical limitations as those
in Enclosure 1. The picture has
that same fuzzy, grainy, "16 mm."
feel, with a rather anaemic colour response.
Fortunately, in this last respect, cranking
up the "colour/saturation"
control on your TV works restorative
wonders! The sound, although a bit better
than that of the Enclosure 1
films, still has a very restricted dynamic
range. My review tape is a VHS copy
from Innova’s published NTSC original,
so there will be some loss of quality,
but I don’t think the NTSC will be drastically
better. If you decide to get the PAL
version, please note that mine came
minus the last couple of seconds of
the score.
Again, all of this
points to budgetary constraints and,
as the film progresses, I gathered the
same impression, of artistic imagination
transcending technical limitations,
as I got in the films of Enclosure
1. So, maybe the odd occasion when
the "can" simply didn’t contain
a good enough shot is something to be
tolerated gladly!
The central Sanctus
is the other point at which, other than
the instrumentalists playing, there
is no stage action, and thus for which
Tourtelot has to invent some visual
interest. At the start, she elects to
mix with images of the instrumentalists
some shots of greenery. In passing,
it just so happened that one such shot
showed what looked like gum trees swaying
in the wind which, by a curious coincidence,
was exactly what I could see
if I looked out of the window next to
the television! As the music of the
Sanctus shifts from "Act
I postlude" to "Act II prelude",
so she shifts the imagery, to shots
of waves on a beach, and thence to a
sequence of stills, a sort of "trailer"
pre-echoing the action of Act 2. Whilst
not quite so innovative as the Exordium,
this nevertheless provides an exceptionally
imaginative visual bridge which deposits
us, neat as a new pin, into the Act
2 action proper.
Both Acts effectively
take place in forest clearings. The
physical deployment of Partch’s orchestra
thus represents the forest, through
which the performers make their entrances
and exits. Tourtelot extends these by
the interpolation of shots of the actors
moving through real forest - though
I suspect that the "real"
forest is actually somewhere in the
shrubbery of the gardens of UCLA, where
the performances were produced. Maybe
the mundane reason for this was to cover
times when the stage was static but
nevertheless, with commendable economy
of means, it quietly opens out the edges
of the confined clearing.
I am less sure about
Tourtelot’s treatment of the beginning
of Act 2's Time of Fun Together.
Like the Infernal Dance in The
Firebird, this is the choreographic
climax of the work. On-stage "it’s
all happening" or at least it’s
all starting to happen, so doesn’t
it seem perverse to cut, almost immediately,
to a beach whereupon the leader of the
Time of Fun performs utterly alone?
Perverse, yes, an instance of that cause
of "mild frustration" I mentioned
above. However, it’s also out of character
for Tourtelot, and this inclines me
to wonder whether there was some temporary
calamity on the stage, for which this
brief visual interpolation provided
the "elastoplast"? If so,
it is neatly tied back to the beach
shot during the Sanctus, and
one way or another ends up feeding us
another philosophical bone on which
to gnaw!
Let’s turn now to the
performers and the performance. Partch
sets the scene with a musical master-stroke,
a creeping, crawling, flesh-tingling
motive on Harmonic Canon. This, which
might usefully be called the "Web
Motive", recurs at crucial turning-points
during the drama, and is also the dreamless
night into which all ultimately dissolves.
Within this web of dream and delusion,
the drama is enacted by three principals,
John Blount, Susan Marshall, and Glendon
Hornbrook. Each takes two rôles,
one in each act (would you believe?!).
In the solemn first
Act, their miming has formal elegance
and balletic grace, their movements
clearly modelled on the exaggerated
and deliberate bodily movements characteristic
of the Japanese Noh plays from which
Partch drew his theme. Hornbrook’s "Spirit
of the Slain" looks so imposing
and fearsome that I did, for a moment,
wonder how Blount’s relatively slight
and innocuous-looking "Pilgrim"
ever managed to slay him in the first
place. Hornbrook it is who has the unenviable
task of exiting between the instruments,
walking backwards. Although the
action symbolises the Spirit fading
away, it could so easily have ended
rather differently.
In the comical, even
farcical second Act, energy and vigour
dominate, reflecting the primitive dynamism
of the African native cultures from
which the folk-tale enacted is drawn.
The story is a joke - one with "political"
overtones at that - and it is uninhibitedly
played for laughs. The fractious interchanges
between Blount’s uncomprehending "Deaf
Hobo" and Marshall’s persistent
"Old Woman" are delightfully
volatile and amusing. The insert card
makes references variously to a "woman
who tends a goatherd [sic]",
"a Goat Woman (a Lamb Here) has
Lost her Kid", and "Old Woman
with Lamb". I think that this adds
up to her being a goat woman in the
original folk-tale, but in effect a
shepherdess here? Not that it matters
much!
The principals are
supported by a chorus, in the classical
Greek sense. As a bunch of hooded "Shadows"
in the first Act, they have little more
to do than process solemnly and mysteriously.
All that changes in Act II where, amongst
other things, as a bunch of villagers
they get to have a right royal knees-up
in the Time of Fun Together.
However, here there is a problem, which
is that somehow the dancing lacks the
rude and robust strenuousness of the
music. Mind you, I’ve lost count of
the times when I’ve had similar misgivings
about balletic "knees-ups",
even the ones glorying under the banner
of bacchanale! Heck, it’s half
a century since West Side Story
showed them how it should be done, so
you’d have thought that they’d have
got the hang of cutting loose by now.
Anyway, this chorus of dancers
is no worse than any in this respect.
In mitigation, it’s worth adding that
they were faced with a challenge of
the "utterly new", similar
to that which confronted Nijinsky’s
corps in The Rite of Spring.
I’m not sure of the
origin of the voices of the vocal chorus.
It might be the above, or it might be
the instrumentalists. All I can say
is, I didn’t actually spot any specific
lips moving, and the booklet notes decline
to provide any enlightenment. Whoever
they are, though, they do a darned good
job of negotiating the oral acrobatics
- including whistling - demanded by
Partch. Three vocal soloists are credited:
John Stannard (tenor, also instrumentalist),
Victoria Bond (soprano) and Paul Bergen
(bass). The latter two have particularly
significant parts. Leading the revelry
in Time of Fun, Bond has to wrap
her tonsils around some particularly
demanding lines, especially when you
remember that this is supposed to be
a divertimento, pure and simple.
High honours are due to Bergen, whose
intonations of the "punch-lines"
in both acts carry very considerable
clout, deep, dark and doom-laden in
the first, deep, dark and dopey in the
second.
I imagine that it can’t
be easy for musicians, finding themselves
in costume, right up there in the thick
of the stage action, with lighting that’s
less than ideally suited to discerning
non-standard notations that (I suspect)
many of them had only just learned,
and performing on weird and wonderful
instruments that (again, I suspect)
many of them had only just learnt how
to play. Supporting my suspicions, I
could see music stands. Music stands?
Yes. In his book, Genesis of a Music,
Partch stated categorically that he
expected musicians, like the actors,
singers and dancers, to have memorised
their parts: music stands had no place
on his stage. I can think of only one
reason why they should be in evidence
here.
Having put his musicians
right in the limelight, Partch also
expected them not just to play their
instruments, but to perform -
that is, to express their contribution
to the drama through bodily movement.
This does happen, but not at first,
probably because of the relatively static
nature of Act 1's drama. Perhaps also
they needed time to gain confidence
and get into the swing of things?
Playing and ensemble
are often a bit on the ragged side -
their subsequent CBS studio recording
of the music is, not surprisingly, much
slicker - but considering the highly
unusual, even unique circumstances,
the players do nothing short of a sterling
job. Technical perfection for its own
sake is, of course, something else of
which Partch had a poor opinion, and
I’m sure that he preferred what he got
here to any amount of "virtuosic
accomplishment". And what did he
get here? I would say, players with
an evident belief in the artistic
value of what they are doing.
I realise that I’ve
said very little about the music itself,
mainly because I’m saving all that for
the forthcoming review of Enclosure
6, the above-mentioned sound recording.
For now, suffice it for me to say that
the music, like the instruments on which
it is played, is a unique sound-world
that recalls the words intoned in one
of Schoenberg’s String Quartets (I forget
which one!): "I breathe the air
of another planet". It is, indeed,
"far out, man".
As a "filler",
there is another film, The Music
of Harry Partch. This is a sort
of "re-make" of the Tourtelot
film Music Studio featured in
Enclosure 1. The basic elements are
more or less the same: (a) a philosophical
background, (b) demonstrations of some
of Partch’s instruments, (c) performance
of Daphne of the Dunes, an enlarged
scoring of the music for the film Windsong.
Directors Paul Sheen and Paul Marshall,
however, turn in a much less accomplished
piece of film-making, with no functional
relationship between its two broad sections.
In the first section, Partch is led
around, almost by the nose, and interviewed
by Will Ogdon, the then chairman of
the University of California at San
Diego Music Department. This "interview"
is a singularly stilted, awkward and
embarrassing affair, giving the distinct
impression that off-screen Partch and
Ogdon weren’t exactly bosom buddies.
Music Studio, with its voice-over
approach, was altogether smoother and
more comfortable in this respect.
As ever, though, the
real and abiding fascination is the
invaluable opportunity afforded to see
and hear Partch’s incredible instruments
in action, and it’s a timely opportunity
for those still a bit bemused by the
film of Delusion of the Fury.
There is the added bonus of two of the
duets from On the Seventh Day Petals
Fell in Petaluma, a series of studies
written expressly as part of the preparation
for Delusion. Of these duets,
which are played by the composer and
Danlee Mitchell, Delusion’s musical
director, the second is particularly
striking, being both breathtakingly
delicate and extraordinarily beautiful.
It’s a pity that Partch
used the Chromelodeon to demonstrate
the difference between a justly-intoned
major third and the same interval in
twelve-tone equal temperament. The rich
cloud of overtones of the instrument
- a substantially-modified harmonium
- conspires with the soundtrack’s lack
of clarity to ensure that most mortals
will be hard-pressed to spot any difference,
particularly with the perfunctory, almost
impatient demonstration that Partch
gives!
The second section,
comprising the bulk of the film, is
given over to a complete performance
of Daphne of the Dunes, ostensibly
on the lawn in front of the UCSD Art
Gallery. Certainly, what you see
is "just like it says on the tin".
However, what you hear does not
sound like it at all. The acoustic is
all "wrong", sounding dry
and enclosed and, although you can see
other things going on around and about,
there are discernible none of the background
noises that you would expect to hear
in an open-air setting.
During the final couple
of minutes, the sound on my PAL-format
copy went off-beam, big-time. A growing
stream of rapid-fire dropouts all but
obliterated the music. I raised this
with Philip Blackburn, the producer
of the Enclosure series, who
assured me that the NTSC version is
entirely free of this distortion. Hopefully,
by the time that crowds of customers
are clamouring for PAL-format copies,
the problem will have been winkled out
of the copying chain!
For obvious reasons,
as far as Partch’s music is concerned
there’ll never be much in the way of
competing performances and recordings
to compare. Daphne of the Dunes,
however, is an exception: as a sound
recording, Partch’s own Gate 5
version (distributed by CRI) is wholly
superior. The playing far more assured,
and the recording boasts far better
sound, and impressively lively stereophonic
sound, at that. Yet, you get something
from this film that you never will from
the sound-only recording: the wonderful,
uplifting sight of the young players,
brimming with dedication, concentration
and enthusiasm. OK, one of them is not
so young, but then he is the composer!
In a rather nice touch,
the box and insert card design, by Philip
Blackburn and John Goodman, uses elements
taken from Partch’s original score for
his "Mime-Drama". However,
although fairly full credits are given,
the insert card says very little about
the contents, other than a brief synopsis
of the dramatic action. If you buy this
tape, I strongly recommend that you
supplement it with the Enclosure
6 CD, not only for its excellent
sound and playing but also for its more
detailed booklet! If you go for the
PAL-format tape, the additional documentation
provided by BHPS (N.B. "while stocks
last"!) is well worth having, including
as it does photographs of Partch’s main
instruments and scenes from the drama,
a sample of the manuscript score illustrating
Partch’s adaptation of conventional
notation to his justly-intoned scale,
and a reproduction of the poster advertising
the performances.
So, what do we have
here? It is nothing short of a record
of a unique and uniquely fascinating
artistic event that will, in all probability,
never be repeated - unless someone is
seriously into the logistics of moving
mountains. Nowadays so much utter dross
is routinely and robustly preserved,
in pictures and sound of unprecedentedly
pristine quality, that it is hard to
get your head around one simple fact:
these priceless pieces of history have
scraped through to posterity by the
skin of their teeth. I sincerely hope
that Innova are actively pursuing the
transfer of these films, and those of
Enclosure 1, onto DVD. Although
the transfer process can do something
to reduce the technical imperfections
of the film medium, its main value will
be in securing the record in that robust
format.
Whatever the medium,
those who are prepared to peer through
the murk can at least gain an appreciation
of, and I hope enjoy, this truly
extraordinary and pioneering combination
of arts - Tourtelot’s visionary cinematography,
and Partch’s corporeal world of justly-intoned
"microtonality". Believe me,
it’s like nothing else on this Earth.
I cannot praise Innova too highly for
preserving and publishing these treasures.
Paul Serotsky
see also 'A
Just Cause' by Paul Serotsky
VHS tape, NTSC format*, monaural sound 
