22 Oct
2007
22 Oct
'07
2:36 p.m.
Hallo,
Dave Phillips hat gesagt: // Dave Phillips wrote:
I wouldn't recommend Partch's book to a
student looking for a starting
text on typical theory/composition. Harry Partch was an amazing and
idiosyncratic composer who designed his own instruments and trained
musicians on them in order to get his music heard at all (shades of Don
Van Vliet), he was pretty far from the mainstream.
Wendy Carlos has some interesting commentary on Partch's contributions.
She notes particularly that Partch's instruments were perhaps not the
best designs for projecting harmonies based on just and other
intonations (HP's instruments were mostly percussive, with not much
sustain).
While we're at Wendy Carlos: She has a lot of stuff written on here
website: http://www.wendycarlos.com/ and I like her writing better
than that of Partch. (Being half trained as a mathematician, I have a
hard time following Partch's idiosyncratic way of talking about math
issues. I think he makes simple things much harder to follow than they
really are. Wendy is much better in that regard.)
Ciao
--
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__