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“Unstuck in time”: Harry Partch's Bilocated Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2015

JAKE JOHNSON
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Abstract

In a letter dated to 1960, Harry Partch describes living two lives simultaneously—one in modern America and another in ancient Greece. Furthermore, throughout his life, Partch exhibited striking dualities in both his music and personal life. Partch's affinity for Greek themes and modalities in his music and music theory is well known, but less known is his feeling of bilocation between Greek and modern life. Using writings by Vonnegut, Woolf, and Stephen Hawking, I examine methods of constructing history that support Partch's temporal irregularity and, in so doing, foster new ways of understanding Partch and his music. With a particular focus on corporeality within his late work Revelation in the Courthouse Park, I explore how Partch leaned on his sense of bilocation to cope with his decidedly outsider status, how that in turn helped him deal with reality, and how biographers might tackle this most perplexing issue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 163 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2015 

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References

References

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Chesworth, Darren, dir. The Outsider: The Story of Harry Partch. BBC, 2002.Google Scholar
Freeman, Betty. Interview with the author, 27 September 2008.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Danlee. Interview with the author, 28 September 2008.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Stephen. Phone interview with the author, 28 September 2013.Google Scholar
Harry Partch Archive, University of Illinois Library.Google Scholar
Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. rev. Pusey, E. B.. London: Oxford Press, 1843.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). London: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S.Collected Poems, 1909–1935. New York: Harcourt, 1936.Google Scholar
Gilley, Brian Joseph. Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Bob. Harry Partch: A Biography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Granade, Samuel Andrew II. “‘I Was a Bum Once Myself’: Harry Partch, U.S. Highball, and the Dust Bowl in the American Imagination.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, Champaign–Urbana, 2005.Google Scholar
Harlan, Brian. “One Voice: A Reconciliation of Harry Partch's Disparate Theories.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 2007.Google Scholar
Hawking, Stephen W. and Hertog, Thomas. “Populating the Landscape: A Top-Down Approach.” Physical Review D 73/12 (2006): 1–21.Google Scholar
Johnston, Ben. “The Corporealism of Harry Partch.” Perspectives of New Music 13 (Spring–Summer 1975): 85–97.Google Scholar
Leppert, Richard. The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Lundquist, James. “The ‘New Reality’ of Slaughterhouse-Five.” In Kurt Vonnegut. New York: Frederic Ungar, 1977. Reprinted in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, ed. Bloom, Harold, 71–78. Modern Critical Interpretations Series. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001.Google Scholar
Montiglio, Silvia. Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Partch, Harry. Bitter Music: Collected Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, ed. McGeary, Thomas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Raulerson, Graham. “The Hobo in American Musical Culture.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2011.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. The ABC of Relativity. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1925.Google Scholar
Sheppard, W. Anthony. “Bitter Rituals for a Lost Nation: Partch's Revelation in the Courthouse Park and Bernstein's Mass.” Musical Quarterly 80/3 (Autumn 1996): 461–99.Google Scholar
Tridgell, Susan. Understanding Our Selves: The Dangerous Art of Biography. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004.Google Scholar
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death. New York: Dell, 1969.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. London: L. and V. Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1928.Google Scholar
Chesworth, Darren, dir. The Outsider: The Story of Harry Partch. BBC, 2002.Google Scholar
Freeman, Betty. Interview with the author, 27 September 2008.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Danlee. Interview with the author, 28 September 2008.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Stephen. Phone interview with the author, 28 September 2013.Google Scholar