Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Two Papers on Partch's Tuning

   Erv is responsible for showing Partch the possibility of inverting the Diamond of what later became the Quadrangularis Reversum. He also helped Partch construct this Marimba. Erv's drawings is a constant contribution throughout the second edition of Partch's Genesis of a Music . Something one used to his style of drawing becomes easy to pick out. A rare double flute from Bolivia found by Erv's brother was another gift he bestowed upon Harry which he  used prominently in Delusion of the Fury.
   Here are two documents just a few years later commenting on first Partch's use of 392 that he felt too much was being made of, and provides an explanation here. The second paper shows a comparison of Partch's 43 tone scale  to a 41 tone space. Like a similar example also found with Novaro's 7 limit diamond [1927] this lead to reinforce his observations of Moments of Symmetry and Constant Structures as "naturally occurring' tendencies in how people construct scales. The latter he defined as when any interval occurs in a tuning it will always be the same number of steps. He found Partch and Novaro both taking their Diamond structures and intuitively filling the space with as close of a constant structure solution possible. He spoke on more than one occasion how he observed Partch following his ear using many  near pitches to simpler ratios rather than sacrifice a musical inspiration or inclination.
Wilson-On Partch's Use of G 392
Wilson's comparison of Partch's scale with 41 ET