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Delusion of the Fury [excerpts] (1965-1966)
| composer |
Harry Partch (1901-1974) |
| performers |
Paul Bergen, bass
An ensemble of instruments created by Harry Partch and performed by:
Michael Aaron
Latif Allen
Frank Berberich
Carol Brown
Gary Coleman
Dean Drummond
John Grayson
John McAllister
Robert McCormick
Todd Miller
Robert Randles
Emil Richards
Ruth Ritchie
Joe Roccisano
Robert Rose
Linda Schell
John Stannard
Mark Stevens
Bill Symons, Jr.
Lynn Taussig
Stephen Tosh
Nathan Widato
with
Danlee Mitchell, conductor |
| publisher |
Helicon Music (BMI)http://www.schott-music.com
|
| label |
innova Recordings 406http://www.innova.mu
|
| duration |
10:05 |
Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury was premiered in January 1969 at the Pasadena Art Museum in California. Written for six actors, four singers, and a large ensemble of instruments created by the composer, the piece is one of the best examples of Partch's concept of 'corporeality,' or 'total theater,' integrating music, dance, stagecraft, and ritual.
Danlee Mitchell:
"Delusion of the Fury ... illustrates Partch's uncanny ability to synthesize separate ideas, in this case a Japanese tale juxtaposed with an African one. Synthesis such as this can be seen in many other Partch works as metaphors for reaching out for personal community. While he had not seen satisfactory productions of most of his previous theatrical works due to inappropriate conceptual interpretation on the part of the others, or economic constraints, the 1969 production of Delusion did fulfill many of Partch's hopes and expectations."
Harry Partch:
"STATEMENT: Words cannot proxy for the experience of knowing -- of seeing and hearing. The concept of this work inheres in the presence of the instruments on stage, the movements of musicians and chorus, the sounds they produce, the actuality of truly integrated theater. [...]
"SYNOPSIS: It is an olden time, but neither a precise time nor a precise place ... Act I, on the recurrent theme of [Japanese] Noh plays, is a music-theater portrayal of release from the wheel of life and death. In simplest terms it is a final enlightenment, a reconciliation with total departure from the area of mortal cravings and passions. It is based on the legend of a princely warrior who falls in battle at the hands of a young rival. The act begins with the slayer's remorseful pilgrimage to the scene, and to the shrine. The murdered man appears as a ghost, sees first the assassin, then his young son, born after his father's death, looking for a vision of his father's face. Spurred to resentment by his son's presence, he lives again through the ordeal of death, but at the end -- with the supplication 'Pray for me!' -- he finds reconciliation.
"... The Sanctus ties Acts I and II together; it is the epilogue to the one, and prologue to the other. Act II, based on an Ethiopian folk tale, involves a reconciliation with life, not as a separate mental act from that with death, but as a necessary concomitant, an accommodation toward a healthy -- or at least a possible -- existence. Its essence is a tongue-in-cheek understanding, attained through irony, even through farce. A young vagabond is cooking a meal over a fire in rocks when an old woman who tends a goat herd approaches, searching for a lost kid. Later, she finds the kid, but -- due to a misunderstanding caused by the hobo's deafness -- a dispute ensues. Villagers gather and, during a violent dance, force the quarreling couple to appear before the justice of the peace, who is both deaf and near-sighted.
"Following the justice's sentence, the Chorus sings in unison, 'Oh, how did we ever get by without justice?' and a voice offstage reverts to the supplication at the end of Act I."
The two sections of the work featured here are performed on the following instruments: Cloud-Chamber Bowls, Spoils of War, Gourd Tree and Cone Gongs, Zymo-Xyl, Diamond Marimba, Quadrangularis Reversum, Bass Marimba, Chromelodeon I and II, Marimba Eroica, Blue Rainbow, Castor and Pollux, Harmonic Canon, Adapted Guitar II, Kithara I and II, Crychord, Koto, Bass Drum, Eucal Blossom, and Bamboo Marimba (Boo).
Harry Partch (1901-1974) holds a unique place in music from the United States. Partch rejected the tradition of equal temperament in Western music, and devoted his life to creating a system of just intonation he referred to as 'monophony,' which eventually grew to consist of 43 tones per octave (or gamut). To realize this music, he adapted and invented an array of new instruments and developed new systems of notation.
Partch was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the southwestern United States. The son of former Presbyterian missionaries to China, Partch's earliest musical experiences were the hymns and Chinese songs his mother performed and the abundance of musical instruments and records in his household. In his teenage years he began to write music and accompanied silent films on piano and organ. He moved to California in 1920 and spent many years studying music theory and history, primarily in public libraries; one of his most significant discoveries was Hermann von Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone (1863). Throughout the 1920's Partch experimented with modifying instruments and developed his treatise Exposition of Monophony.
In 1930, Partch destroyed almost all of his previous music and began to compose and perform his first 'monophonic' works. He went to England in 1934 on a Carnegie grant to research the history of tuning, and in the process met a number of writers and artists including Arnold Dolmetsch, Edmund Dulac, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats. He returned to the US a year later in the midst of the Great Depression, and spent the next nine years as a hobo, travelling across the country by rail and recording his experiences, all the while continuing to compose and build new instruments. Partch's life as a transient ended when he received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1943; from 1944 to 1947 he was associated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Back in California, Partch published his treatise Genesis of a Music in 1949, worked with composer Ben Johnston, and presented large-scale 'corporeal' performances with his Gate 5 Ensemble, also recording them on his Gate 5 record label. In the late 1950's, he produced two more large-scale works at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and collaborated on three films with Madeline Tourtelot. From 1962 he spent the rest of his life in California, with his final 'corporeal' work Delusion of the Fury (1965-1966) receiving its first and only performance in 1969. Practically all of Partch's music is available on the innova and New World labels, and has also been recorded on Bridge, Nonesuch, and Tzadik.
related websites
http://www.corporeal.com
Danlee Mitchell is one of the foremost performers and conductors of the music of Harry Partch. The two met at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1956, when Mitchell performed in the premiere of Partch's The Bewitched (1955-1956). From 1958 until the composer's death in 1974, Mitchell served as Partch's assistant, ensemble manager, music director, and personal consultant. As executive director of the Harry Partch Foundation, he has produced and directed many premiere performances, recordings, and films of Partch's work across the United States and in Europe. Since 1964 Mitchell has been on faculty at San Diego State University in California, and performs as a percussionist and timpanist with the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera, and San Diego Chamber Orchestra.
related websites
http://www.composerjohnbeal.com/Danlee.html
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