Magnificent Weirdos, Part One: Harry Partch
Posted on 18 September, 2010 in History, Music Theory, People, Video
It’s really amazing what I find on YouTube by sheer accident.
I began watching this BBC documentary on Harry Partch. I was hooked when the narrator described Partch’s contempt and disgust for the mainstream and his never-ending search for musical “truth” by way of his inventions, the most significant of them being his 43-tone scale.
Just the fact that this guy was a musical genius, and that he was so totally alienated from society (intellectually and by the fact that he was a gay man in pre-war America), makes this guy incredibly fascinating to me.
I highly recommend you watch this video. It’s in six parts at a total of 50-ish minutes.
Read the full article for the YouTube videos.
WEIRD, Erika and I were talking about him just last night. He appears on this 45 i got awhile back; think you’d dig it: http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Wild-Sounds-Of-New-Music/release/420429
[...] on 6 October, 2011 in Composers, History, Video I wrote a brief article about Harry Partch some time ago… This video from the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive is a newsreel [...]