I’m currently engrossed in Kyle Gann’s “American Music in the Twentieth Century”. In reading a section on Partch’s experimental scale using 43 divisions of the octave I was reminded of a chart I found a few years ago when I was studying intonation which was created by Gann around 1998.  It is called “Anatomy of an Octave” and it is located on his website here: http://www.kylegann.com/Octave.html.  Of further interest is another section on his website where he defends his own use of just intonation in his compositions.  In this section, as he lists his reasons, he says “I don’t see how Partch kept 43 pitches in his head. To get the accuracy I need for 7th and 11th harmonics, I need to be able to have pitches as close as 15 cents apart. To use an equal-tempered scale that would give me pitches that close would require more than 60 pitches per octave, and I only have 128 pitches in my MIDI controls and 61 keys on my keyboard. Just intonation gives me criteria for choosing only the pitches I need and leaving out all the rest.”

This led me to wonder…did Partch really keep 43 pitches in his head?  Or did he use some sort of approximation based on scales he had already studied, such as the Western 12 note scale?  If we look at the scale Gann gives us in Chapter 4, we can see that each of the normal diatonic pitches is included, listed as follows:

• half-tone (close to an equal temp. half-step)
• major/minor whole tone (close to an equal temp. whole step)
• the rest are listed as normal (i.e. major 3rd, perfect 4th, etc.) however they are tuned according to just intonation

Also keep in mind that, as Gann explains, this scale was based on G as the tonic.  So the “just intonation” intervals are consonant only in that respect, however, with 43 divisions of the octave you have a greater chance of being “close” to a consonance that wouldn’t otherwise exist in equal temperament.  At any rate, it is hard to say whether or not Partch used equal temperament as a tool to help him hear his own scale; perhaps he could hear 43 distinct pitches as Gann suggests. You can hear some of this scale on his adapted reed organ in this BBC video, around 4:25

I’m not sure if this recording of the “eight hitchhiker inscriptions from a highway railing at Barstow” was recorded by Partch or John Schneider, as the video has two conflicting descriptions, one in the comments and one in the actual video description.

Either way, you can hear the entire recording.  Two things struck me about the performance.  First, even with the experimental sounds he uses the music is fairly approachable, given the subject matter, use of spoken word, and easy to digest melody.  He returns to the same chord every time he moves to a new “inscription” as he announces the number which lends a very recognizable structure.

I was reading the program notes for John Corigliano’s band piece, “Circus Maximus”, and came upon the following interesting passage:

Attending a band concert … I find exhilarating. For starters, the repertoire of band music is largely contemporary. As a result the audiences expect and look forward to new works. Listening in an environment largely ignored by the press, they learn to trust their own ears and respond directly to what they hear. Most important of all, concert bands devote large amounts of rehearsal time over a period of weeks – not days – to learning thoroughly the most challenging of scores. With its combination of new notations and spatial challenges demanding an intricate coordination of a large work, Circus Maximus could only have been attempted under such special circumstances.

 

The most thought provoking part of that for me is the line “Listening in an environment largely ignored by the press, they learn to trust their own ears and respond directly to what they hear”.  I think this tends to be true.  Almost every new orchestra work that gets commissioned and premiered will have several reviews written about it, and orchestra enthusiasts are very keen to those sort of things.  On the other hand, band pieces rarely get reviewed unless its a big performance by a big composer, so the audience would not have any preconceived notions about the quality or character of the piece.  They listen to the music for what it is, not what someone else says it is.  Of course, an educated, open minded musician will be able to do this regardless of the venue, but I think its interesting that a big name composer like Corigliano, who writes primarily for the orchestral world, would have such a keen understanding of band audiences.

Atonal music isn’t something I listen to every day, but this is mesmerizing.