[American Avant-garde] Partch, Harry. (1901 - 1974)
Signed LP Cover Photograph
Rare signed paper LP cover, printed in green, "Plectra & Percussion Dances" released by Partch himself on his own private Gate 5 label, this copy boldly signed and inscribed "To Fred Stitt 9/19/60 Harry Partch." The cover only (no record included), in very fine condition.Autograph material is very scarce from the American composer and instrument creator who was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales. He wrote much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation, one of which Partch can be seen playing on the LP's front side photograph.
Partch's "Dance Satire" The Bewitched, is "one of his longest continuous works of music and perhaps the most successful realization of his ideas about ritual theater, which he hoped in vain to make obsolete the "music drama" of Richard Wagner, to be produced and recorded during Partch's own lifetime. Indeed, The Bewitched has an almost Wagnerian scale, but is wildly different in just about every other way. To what extent can be gauged simply by mentally visualizing one of Partch's characteristic scene settings: 'Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room.'" (John Garvey, "All Music") (7555)
Signed Photograph Classical Music