Harry Partch - The Bewitched 2 lp microtonal experiment

$

50

Here we have a two l.p. vinyl pressing of Harry Partch - The Bewitched (CRI – U.S.A. 1973). This is the first edition of the complete recording of this fantastic opera by a highly influential maverick composer. There was a prior pressing but it was one l.p. only & was incomplete. This CRI pressing was recorded at the University of Illinois at the university's Champaign-Urbana campus in 1957. The gatefold cover has extensive liner notes on the inside & is graded at VG(+). It has general wear & seam wear. The vinyl is Near Mint. It plays great and shows but a few insignificant paper scuffs. Below is the track listing & various reviews I found on the internet. This is definitely not my genre of music & wasn't sure how to describe it myself. I wasn't sure about the category to list it in either & rock had experimental which this definitely is to my ears.

1. Harry Partch - Prologue - The Lost Musicians Mix Magic (18:21)
2. Harry Partch - Scene 1 - Three Undergrads Become Transfigured In A Hong Kong Music Hall (05:34)
3. Harry Partch - Scene 2 - Exercises In Harmony And Counterpoint Are Tried In A Court Of Ancient Ritual (05:11)
4. Harry Partch - Scene 3 - The Romancing Of A Pathological Liar Comes To An Inspired End (05:38)
5. Harry Partch - Scene 4 - A Soul Tormented By Contemporary Music Finds A Humanizing Alchemy (05:43)
6. Harry Partch - Scene 5 - Visions Fill The Eyes Of A Defeated Basketball Team In The Shower Room (04:22)
7. Harry Partch - Scene 6 - Euphoria Descends A Sausalito Stairway (04:20)
8. Harry Partch - Scene 7 - Two Detectives On The Trail Of A Tricky Culprit Turn In Their Badges (05:34)
9. Harry Partch - Scene 8 - A Court In Its Own Contempt Rises To A Motherly Apotheosis (05:31)
10. Harry Partch - Scene 9 - A Lost Political Soul Finds Himself Among The Voteless Women Of Paradise (06:00)
11. Harry Partch - Scene 10 - The Cognoscenti Are Plunged Into A Demonic Descent While At Cocktails (07:16)

From the internet: “From the late 1930s onward, after living as a transient hobo, Partch developed instruments based on his own revolutionary tuning theories (considered the first in the field since Pythagoras). he composed in isolation within the musical universe he created, but he blazed the same trails as Alois Haba, Julian Carrillo, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, and Charles Ives, drew from percussive eastern music such as Gamelan, American folk, Native American, and African music, Hebrew and Christian hymns, and ‘lumber yards and junk shops’, and would become influential to experimental and microtonal composers like John Cage, Steve Reich, Lou Harrison, La Monte Young, Ben Johnston, Easley Blackwood, Glenn Branca, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, John Eaton, James Tenney, Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, Henk Badings, and others from the avant garde. His instruments relate to the 'structures sonores' of Bernard and Francois Baschet and Jacques Lasry and the sound sculptures and homemade instruments of Harry Bertoia, Max Neuhaus, Z'ev, Donald Knaack, Paul Panhuysen, Bill Fontana, Mario Bertoncini, Bruce Nauman, Robert Rutman, etc.”.

Complete recording of this intense epic "satyr-play" microtonal work performed by the University of Illinois Musical Ensemble, divided into parts with insane names like 'Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room' and 'Exercises in Harmony and Counterpoint are Tried in a Court of Ancient Ritual'. In the words of the composer, "The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre... It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity, in the feeling that the modern spirit might thereby find some ancient and magical sense of rebirth..." Performers include Danlee Mitchell on diamond marimba, percussionist-composer Jack McKenzie on surrogate kithara and gongs, and John Garvey conducting. The Partch instruments marimba eroica, spoils of war, cloud-chamber bowls, harmonic canon, and chromelodeon are featured, and some more traditional classical instruments also make appearances (piccolo, bass clarinet, cello, and the Japanese koto).

Sick of the seriousness of "the dance" and theater, American iconoclast Harry Partch wrote this "dance-satire" from 1952 to '55. Set in the mystical realm of the University of Illinois, Partch's 10 vignettes catapult the absurd into the life of the everyday student and audience member--and that life, in turn, on stage, is snapped right back into the absurd (representative titles: "Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room," "The Cognoscenti Are Plunged into a Deep Descent While at Cocktails"). While the musicians and dancers intermingle indiscriminately on stage (the former performing on Partch's notorious carefully constructed and invented microtonal instruments), the theater rings with the cadences inspired by Chinese musical theater, erratic to the Western ear. That as the foundation becomes punctuated, when necessary, by wild percussion swirls, the odd screaming frenzy, solemn-march patterns, and scatters of bells: all in a delightfully shameless unpredictable fashion. --Robin Edgerton

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