Perhaps because America is a new country, her more significant composers tend to be radicals and experimentalists. Among the grand old men of American music one thinks of Charles Ives—the closest approach America has made to a major composer: to a lesser degree of Carl Ruggles and of Wallingford Riegger: and of the still active Edgar Varèse whose works, ignored in the twenties, are having so potent an influence on the music of the mid-century. All these men are known of in England, though we have little first-hand acquaintance with the sound of their music. Another senior experimentalist, Harry Partch, is not, however, even a name to us; and although this is in part due to the fact that he is a peculiarly American phenomenon, what he stands for has relevance to the modern world as a whole. It is time we became aware of him: this article is an informal introduction.