(b Oakland, CA, 24 June 1901; d San Diego, 3 Sept 1974). American composer, theorist, instrument maker and performer. He dedicated most of his life to implementing an alternative to equal temperament, which he found incapable of the true consonance his ear and essentially tonal aesthetic demanded. He invented an approach to just intonation he called ‘monophony’; realizing that traditional instruments and performers would be inimical to his system, he designed and constructed new and adapted instruments, developed notational systems, and trained performing groups wherever he was living and working. By the 1940s he had transformed a profound antipathy to the European concert tradition into the idea of ‘corporeality’, emphasizing a physical and communal quality in his music.
Growing up in the American Southwest, Partch had piano lessons and played well enough to accompany silent films in Albuquerque. By 1920 he had returned to California, where he spent the next 13 years as a proofreader, piano teacher and violist. During this period he began to research intonation, sparked by his discovery of Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone in 1923: he was particularly influenced by Helmholtz's preference for just intonation, and by the translator A.J. Ellis's discussions of 19th-century experimental keyboard instruments, most of them English. He experimented with just intonation on string instruments, and eventually developed the ‘adapted viola’ by attaching a cello fingerboard to a viola and indicating appropriate finger positions, an instrument he finished in 1930 in New Orleans during a one-year sojourn there. By 1928 he had completed the first draft of a theoretical treatise, Exposition of Monophony, which extended triadic consonance to include the 7th, 9th and 11th partials. He also posited a symmetrical 29-note-per-octave scale (more properly gamut) for the adapted viola. Acknowledging the text-setting principles of early opera, Gluck, Musorgsky, Debussy and the Schoenberg of Pierrot lunaire, his first ‘monophonic’ works featured an ‘intoning’ voice that used Sprechgesang in a non-expressionist manner and was accompanied (in 1930–33) by the adapted viola. From the outset he used pitches outside the chosen gamut, never restricting himself dogmatically.
Partch presented his first recitals in 1932–3. By 1933 his gamut had evolved to 37 tones (after flirtations with 39, 41 and even 55 tones), and the last draft of Exposition of Monophony was finished (though subsequently lost until the early 1980s). He went to New York, where he won a grant to do research in England (1934–5), where he studied the work and instruments he had read about in On the Sensations of Tone; he also met Yeats, Arnold Dolmetsch, Dulac, A.E. and (in Rapallo) Pound. In addition to the new adapted guitar, he had a first keyboard instrument (the Ptolemy) built in London; it was abandoned after being shipped to California. He returned to the USA in the spring of 1935; by June he had begun a nine-month transient existence in the western states, the subject of his socio-musical diary, Bitter Music. This narrative of life on the road and in Depression-era federal work camps mixes irony, nostalgia and homoeroticism with drawings and interpolations of voice-and-piano renderings of transcribed speech-music, along with more complex settings. Partch nearly published it in 1940, but later tried to destroy all copies; it resurfaced in the 1980s.
By 1941 Partch was in the Midwest, where he expanded his instrumentarium (adding notably two chordophones – the kithara and harmonic canon (see illustration) – and an adapted harmonium, the chromelodeon), set a final 43-tone gamut and began to compose for larger ensembles. During the early 1940s he concentrated on works with ‘Americana’ texts, including hitchhikers' inscriptions (Barstow), newsboys' cries (San Francisco) and a hobo's train journey (US Highball). He had his first semi-official university association at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1944 to 1947; his anti-academic views were reinforced by the music faculty's generally hostile attitude towards his music (see Wiecki).
He returned to California and composed smaller pieces suffused with the melancholy of his first ‘monophonic’ music. His treatise, Genesis of a Music, was finally published in 1949; in it the ‘expanded tonality diamond’, based on the consonant hexad and revealing an interlocking series of common tones, reached fruition. He worked with Ben Johnston (1950–51) and presented the original version of King Oedipus at Mills College, Oakland (1952). His Gate 5 Ensemble (1953–5) performed and recorded Plectra and Percussion Dances and the revised Oedipus for his private record label (later also called Gate 5). These large-ensemble works have a mixture of tragic solemnity and vigorous rhythm, the latter due to the new percussion instruments: the diamond marimba, bass marimba, marimba eroica, cloud-chamber bowls and spoils of war.
In 1956 he moved to Urbana, where Johnston taught at the University of Illinois, to produce The Bewitched, a mime drama featuring a coloratura witch leading a group of ‘lost musicians’ through a dramatic haze; the première (1957) barely survived the friction between composer and choreographer Alwin Nikolais (see Gilmore, 1995). In 1958 he collaborated with Madeline Tourtelot on three films (Windsong, Music Studio and the performing sections of US Highball), then returned to Urbana to compose and produce Revelation in the Courthouse Park and Water! Water!. Another major event at Urbana was his meeting Danlee Mitchell, a percussionist who became his foremost performer, conductor, assistant, amanuensis and friend for the rest of his life.
Partch returned to California for good in 1962. With the exception of a few smaller pieces, his music since the early 1950s had been truly ‘corporeal’: dramaturgically intense, musically eclectic, and with the instruments (now over 20) and their performers in full view of the audience. The culmination of his theatrical and musical theories was Delusion of the Fury, a two-act work in which he used two non-European myths: a Japanese noh tale of a pilgrim doing penance for a killing, and an African story of a quarrel judged by a deaf and near-sighted judge. The work has some of Partch's most beautiful as well as most invigorating music; the variety of textures allows the subtleties of his harmonies and instrumental timbres to come forward. (Tourtelot filmed the 1969 production.)
He was never in good health, and his physical and mental stability began to give way in the last decade of his life. He managed to compose the score for The Dreamer that Remains, an episodic but touching mesh of reminiscences and music in an earlier style. He died of a heart attack a year after the film's completion. By that time, his instrumentarium (excluding small hand instruments) comprised the following: chordophones (plucked or struck with mallets unless otherwise stated): adapted guitars I and II, adapted viola (bowed), kithara I and II, surrogate kithara, harmonic canons I, II (Castor and Pollux) and III (blue rainbow), crychord, koto (a gift from Lou Harrison and not altered) idiophones (all tuned unless otherwise stated): diamond marimba, quadrangularis reversum, bass marimba, marimba eroica and mbira bass dyad (all wood); boos I and II, eucal blossom (bamboo); gourd tree, cone gongs (metal); cloud-chamber bowls, mazda marimba (glass); zymo-xyl (glass and wood), spoils of war (metal and wood, includes whang gun) aerophones: chromelodeons I and II (modified reed organs), bloboy (pipes and bellows)
As Johnston noted soon after Partch’s death, the problems in preserving a music so intimately tied to its creator and a fragile and unique instrumentarium are immense. Dean Drummond, a Partch performer in the 1960s and the founder of the New York group Newband, has taken possession of the instruments; they have been used in Partch performances and new works by Drummond and others, while copies have been made of some. They now reside at Montclair State University (New Jersey). But reproductions of the composer's tablature scores, transcriptions into expanded conventional notation, recordings and films remain the primary means by which to study and hear the music – a somewhat ironic situation given Partch's lifelong ambivalence about recording.
Nevertheless interest in Partch has increased greatly since his death, and overtaken the view held of him in life as quixotic or worse. His eclecticism, especially his unfettered use of traditional music from around the world, anticipated many post-serialist trends, and he has served as a model for developments in intonation, acoustic instruments and timbre, even as computer programs produce the fine tunings of his ‘monophony’. He influenced the percussive motor-rhythm music of the minimalists of the 1960s and 70s, and his theatre works are precursors of numerous experiments since the mid-1950s. His life provides an example of curmudgeonly but humane courage.
RICHARD KASSEL
all in just intonation unless otherwise stated
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Works in equal temperament, incl. pf conc., sym. poem, c50 songs, 1910s–20s, destroyed 1930 |
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String Quartet, vn, 2 va, vc, c1925–7, lost |
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My Heart Keeps Beating Time, equal temperament (L. Yoell), 1v, pf, 1929, rev. 1935 (in Bitter Music) |
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17 Lyrics of Li Po (trans. S. Obata), 1v, adapted va, 1930–33; San Francisco, 9 Feb 1932 |
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By the Rivers of Babylon (Ps cxxxvii), 1v, adapted va, 1931; San Francisco, 9 Feb 1932; final rev., 1v, vc, kithara II, chromelodeon, 1955 |
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Potion Scene from Romeo and Juliet (W. Shakespeare), 1v, adapted va, 1931; San Francisco, 9 Feb 1932; rev. 1955, 1v, 2 S, vc, orig. insts |
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The Lord is My Shepherd (Ps xxiii), 1v, adapted va, 1932; San Francisco, 9 Feb 1932; rev., 1v, chromelodeon, kithara, 1943 |
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Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California, 1v, adapted gui, 1941; New York, 22 April 1944; final rev., 2 vv, orig. insts, 1968, facs. and transcr. ed. R. Kassel (Madison, forthcoming) [1st of 4 works in The Wayward cycle] |
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December, 1942: 3 Settings, 1v, adapted gui: Come Away, Death (Shakespeare: Twelfth Night), The Heron (Tsuryuki, trans. A. Waley), The Rose (E. Young); nos.2–3 rev., 1v, orig. insts, in Intrusions |
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Dark Brother (T. Wolfe: God's Lonely Man), Bar, adapted va, chromelodeon, kithara, Indian drum, 1942–3; Madison, WI, 3 May 1945; rev., addl bass mar, after 1951 |
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Mad Scene from King Lear (Shakespeare), 1v, chromelodeon, kithara, c1942–3, lost |
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US Highball: a Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip (Partch), vv, gui I, kithara, chromelodeon, 1943; New York, 22 April 1944; rev., 2 vv, large ens of orig. insts, 1955 [2nd of 4 works in The Wayward cycle] |
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San Francisco: a Setting of the Cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties, 1v, adapted va, chromelodeon, kithara, 1943; 22 April 1944; rev., 1v, vc, kithara II, chromelodeon, 1955 [3rd of 4 works in The Wayward cycle] |
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The Letter: a Depression Message from a Hobo Friend, 1v, adapted gui, kithara, 1943; final rev., 1v, large ens of orig. insts, 1972 [4th of 4 works in The Wayward cycle] |
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2 Settings from Finnegans Wake (J. Joyce): Isobel, Annah the Allmaziful, S, double flageolet/2 fl, kithara, 1944; Madison, 7 March 1945 |
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Y[ankee] D[oodle] Fantasy (Partch), S, tin fls, tin ob, flexatone, chromelodeon, 1944; New York, 22 April 1944 |
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‘I'm very happy to be able to tell you about this … ’ (W. Ward, BBC transcr.), S, Bar, kithara, Indian drum, 1945; Madison, 3 May 1945; lost |
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Polyphonic Recidivism on a Japanese Theme (The Crane), equal temperament, SATB, 1945 |
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Intrusions, incl. Study on Olympos' Pentatonic, Study on Archytas' Enharmonic, The Waterfall (Young), The Street (W. Motley: Knock On Any Door), Lover (G. Leite), Soldiers–War–Another War (G. Ungaretti, trans. W.F. Weaver), Vanity (Ungaretti, trans. Weaver), Cloud Chamber Music, 1v, orig. insts, last work with chorus, Indian deer-hoof rattle, 1946–50 |
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Sonata Dementia (Partch), 1v, insts, 1949–50; rev. as Ring Around the Moon |
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The Wooden Bird (incid. music, W. Leach), 1v, insts, 1950, collab. B. Johnston; Charlottesville, VA, 10 Jan 1951 |
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Plectra and Percussion Dances: Castor and Pollux, a Dance for the Twin Rhythms of Gemini, 1952, rev. 1968; Ring Around the Moon, a Dance Fantasm for Here and Now (Partch), 1952–3; Even Wild Horses, Dance Music for an Absent Drama (A. Rimbaud: A Season in Hell), vv, large ens of orig. insts, 1949–52; Berkeley, CA, 19 Nov 1953 |
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King Oedipus (1, after W.B. Yeats, after Sophocles), 10 solo vv, chorus, large ens of orig. insts, 1951 (begun 1933); Oakland, CA, 14 March 1952; rev. as Oedipus (Partch and J. Churchill, after Sophocles), 1952–4; Oakland, 2 June 1954; final rev., 1967; New York, 24 April 1997 |
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2 Settings from Lewis Carroll: O Frabjous Day!, The Mock Turtle Song, 1v, orig. insts, 1954; no.1, Mill Valley, CA, 13 Feb 1954 |
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Ulysses at the Edge, vv, tpt, db, model skindrums, boo, 1955; final rev., vv, a sax, bar sax, orig. insts, 1961–2; added to The Wayward cycle |
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The Bewitched (dance satire, 1, Partch), S, chorus, dancers, large ens of orig. and trad. insts, 1955–6; Urbana, IL, 26 March 1957 |
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Windsong (film score, dir. M. Tourtelot), large ens of orig. insts, 1958; rev. as Daphne of the Dunes (dance), 1967 |
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Revelation in the Courthouse Park (1, after Euripides: Bacchae), 16 solo vv, 4 speakers, chorus, dancers, large ens of orig. and trad. insts, 1959–60; Urbana, 11 April 1961 |
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Bless This Home (V. Prockelo), 1v, ob, orig. insts, 1961 |
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Rotate the Body in all its Planes (ballad for gymnasts, based on Revelation in the Courthouse Park, Chorus 3), S, chorus, large ens of orig. and trad. insts, 1961; Urbana, 8 April 1962 |
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Water! Water! (satirical ‘intermission’, 2, Partch), solo vv, choruses, large ens of orig. and trad. insts, 1961; Urbana, 9 March 1962 |
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Jine the Calvary (trad.), 1v, orig. insts, 1963 |
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Study, harmonic canon I and kithara I, 1963–4 |
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And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma, large ens of orig. insts, 1963–6; Los Angeles, 8 May 1966 |
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Delusion of the Fury: a Ritual of Dream and Delusion (2, Partch, after Jap. and African trad.), actors, chorus, dancers, large ens of orig. and small hand insts, 1965–6; Los Angeles, 9 Jan 1969 |
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The Dreamer that Remains: a Study in Loving (film score, dir. S. Pouliot), vv, chorus, large ens of orig. insts, 1972; La Jolla, CA, 25 March 1973 |
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recorded interviews in US-NHoh, US-U |
T. McGeary, ed.: Harry Partch: ‘Bitter Music’: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions and Librettos (Urbana, IL, 1991) [BM]
Exposition of Monophony (c1927–1933), excerpts in Interval, iv/2 (1983), 6; iv/3 (1984), 8–9
‘Ratio Keyboard Design, September 8, 1932’, Interval, v/3 (1986–7), 14–17
Analysis and Transcription of California Indian Melodies from the Lummis Cylinder Collection at the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles (1933), excerpts in Kassel (1991)
‘A New Instrument’, MO, lviii (1934–5), 764–72
Bitter Music (1935–6, rev. 1940)
Preface to Patterns of Music (1940) [BM]
Review of J. Yasser: Theory of Evolving Tonality (c1942–4), Interval, iv/4 (1985), 5–6
‘Show Horses in the Concert Ring’, Circle, no.10 (1948), 43–50; repr. in Soundings [Los Angeles], no.1 (1972), 66–76 [BM]
Genesis of a Music: an Account of a Creative Work, its Roots and its Fulfillments (Madison, WI, 1949, enlarged 2/1974)
‘The Rhythmic Motivations of Castor and Pollux and Even Wild Horses’ (1952) [BM]
‘Life in the Houses of Technitution’ (c1953), Allos, ed. K. Gaburo (La Jolla, CA, 1980), 291–301
‘Some New and Old Thoughts After and Before The Bewitched’ (1955) [BM]
‘Selected Correspondence to Lou Harrison 1955–1970’, A Lou Harrison Reader (Santa Fe, 1987), 54–62
‘The Ancient Magic’, Music Journal, xvii/5 (1959), 16 only [BM]
Manual on the Maintenance and Repair of, and the Musical and Attitudinal Techniques for, Some Putative Musical Instruments (1963), Interval, i/2 (1978), 8–12; i/3 (1979), 7–14; i/4–5 (1979), 15–18, 31–4
‘The University and the Creative Arts: Comment’, Arts in Society, ii/3 (1963), 22 [BM]
Lecture, Source, i/1 (1967), 103 only [BM]
A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations (1967) [lecture] [excerpt, BM]
P. Blackburn, ed.: Enclosures, iii (St Paul, 1997) [‘scrapbook’ of Partch materials]
GroveA (P. Earls)
S.N. Mayfield: ‘Student Devises 29-Degree Octave Theory of Music’, Times-Picayune [New Orleans] (16 Nov 1930)
J.M. Barbour: Review of Genesis of a Music, MQ, xxxvi (1950), 131–5
W. Leach: ‘Music for Words Perhaps’, Theatre Arts, xxxvii/1 (1953), 65–8
P.M. Schafer: ‘New Records’, Canadian Music Journal, iii/2 (1959), 55–8 [on US Highball]
M.J. Mandelbaum: Multiple Division of the Octave and the Tonal Resources of 19-Tone Temperament (Ann Arbor, 1961)
W. Mellers: ‘An American Aboriginal’, Tempo, no.64 (1963), 2–6
‘Harry Isn't Kidding’, Time (5 July 1963)
P. Earls: ‘Harry Partch: Verses in Preparation for Delusion of the Fury’, Yearbook, Inter-American Institute for Musical Research, iii (1967), 1–32
A. Woodbury: ‘Harry Partch: Corporeality and Monophony’, Source, i/2 (1967), 91–3
E. Friedman: ‘Tonality in the Music of Harry Partch’, Composer [Hamilton], ii/1 (1970), 17–24
A. Hiss: ‘Hobo Concerto’, New Yorker (7 Feb 1970)
S.L. Pouliot: ‘Filming the Work of Harry Partch, or Get to Know Your Genius’, American Cinematographer, lv (1974), 322–5, 333, 344–5
J. Cott: ‘The Forgotten Visionary’, Rolling Stone, no.158 (1974), 32–4, 36, 38
G. Kvistad and A.Otte: ‘Harry Partch (1901–74): Genesis of a Music’, Numus West, i/6 (1974), 29 only
B. Johnston: ‘The Corporealism of Harry Partch’, PNM, xiii/2 (1974–5), 85–97
W. Zimmerman: ‘Ben Johnston on Harry Partch’, Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Musicians (Vancouver, 1976), 347–71 [incl. score of The Letter]
R. Wernick: Review ofGenesis of a Music, JMT, xx (1976), 133–7
J. Fritsch: ‘Die Tonalität des Harry Partch’, Feedback Papers, no.14 (Cologne, 1977), 17; repr. in R. Brinkmann, ed.: Avantgarde Jazz Pop (Mainz, 1978), 31–41
G.A. Hackbarth: An Analysis of Harry Partch's ‘Daphne of the Dunes’ (Ann Arbor, 1979)
J. Smith: ‘The Partch Reverberations: Notes on a Musical Rebel’, San Diego Weekly Reader (25 Sept 1980); repr. in Interval, iii/1 (1981), 7–12; iii/2 (1981), 6–9, 12; Soundings, xii (1982), 46–59
M. Stahnke: ‘Gedanken zu Harry Partch’, Neuland: Ansätze zur Musik der Gegenwart, ii (1981–2), 242–51
W. Burt: The Music of Harry Partch (Melbourne, 1982)
P. Garland: Americas: Essays on American Musicians and Culture, 1973–80 (Santa Fe, 1982), 56–63, 267–90
W. Salmon: ‘The Influence of Noh on Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury’, PNM, xxii/1–2 (1984), 233–45
K. Gaburo: ‘In Search of The Bewitched: Concerning Physicality’, The Percussionist, xxiii/3 (1985), 54–84
T. Kakinuma: The Musical Instruments of Harry Partch as an Apparatus of Production in Musical Theatre (diss., U. of California, 1989)
T. McGeary: The Music of Harry Partch (Brooklyn, 1991) [catalogue incl. bibliography (to 1974) and discography]
R. Kassel: ‘Harry Partch in the Field’, Musicworks, no.51 (1991), 6–15
W. Mellers: ‘An Authentic American Composer’, Times Literary Supplement (31 May 1991), 16 [on Bitter Music]
R.V. Wiecki: ‘Relieving “12-Tone Paralysis”: Harry Partch in Madison, Wisconsin, 1944–1947’, American Music, ix/1 (1991), 43–66
R. Maltz: ‘Microtonal Techniques in the Music of Harry Partch and Ben Johnston’, Music Research Forum, vii (1992), 14–37
B. Gilmore: ‘On Harry Partch's Seventeen Lyrics of Li Po’, PNM, xxx/2 (1992), 22–58; erratum, PNM, xxxi/1 (1993), 332–3
J. Schneider: ‘Bringing Back Barstow’, Guitar Review, no.95 (1993), 1–13
‘Remembering Harry Partch’, 1/1 Just Intonation, viii/4 (1994) [Partch issue]
B. Gilmore: ‘“A Soul Tormented”: Alwin Nikolais and Harry Partch's The Bewitched’, MQ, lxxxi (1995), 80–107
R. Kassel: The Evolution of Harry Partch's Monophony (Ann Arbor, 1996)
B. Gilmore: Harry Partch: a Biography (New Haven, 1998)