1 

"Harry was a very responsible person. He could scream at people toward the end of his life for doing dumb, immature things. He would fly off the handle -- but not for long or too deeply -- when people wouldn't carry out a job in the most efficient amount of time. He was a completely unrepressed individual, never holding back any reaction to his environment, never suppressing anything. And yet you always knew where you stood with Harry. His tantrums would end, and later he would apologize to you with an equal amount of concern and care. Harry would never use something like guilt as a weapon of power. In fact, he hated all games of that sort. He was probably the most sane person you'd ever run across, and his fierce dedication never worked to the detriment of someone else. Harry labored his whole life on his own vision, knowing it would never be embraced as a musical fashion. He continued anyway, always faithful to his principles and to his method of disciplined belief."

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 2

"Harry Partch is dead, six months, another fall-winter-spring gone by, we listen to his music, now as then, except now there's a big hole -- once there was Harry Partch, he was alive and so long as he was, a real alternative to the stifling and constipated world, both social and musical, that we found ourselves born into. Above and beyond his rantings, there was the work, each piece strong, bright, each a facet of another universe, thought-out and unified, and dared, through all the mass of conformity, to be lived. his life seems almost the greater challenge: the confluence of Asia and America in his childhood family and surroundings in Arizona, a stubbornly self-taught musician, laborer, dishwasher, the hobo camps, trains, the constant traveling, with or without money, the places: Barstow, San Diego, Chicago, Big Sur, Sausalito, Evanston, Solana Beach (all on the final page of Barstow) . . . and who else, besides Artaud, gave back to, is that Partch created a world, he was not suicided by society, like his lost musicians, or Artaud . . . Delusion of the Fury and The Bewitched, works of such all-embracing scope and power, are unique and powerfully original -- but so is all his work -- and I say there were no flaws, like some (the "sophisticated") have claimed: here was a man and his music, raging, fanatic, humorous, gentle, drunk, at times nostalgic, philosophical, he lived through it with apologies to no one, and a clear vision of what he wanted to do. and again, it all comes down to that, he did it: a reality, both in the outer world and the imagination, that one can shape with one's own hands."

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  3 

"Harry Partch created not only musical compositions but also the instruments for which they were written, the scale to which those are tuned, the theory behind the design of both music and instruments, and the very circumstances for making music, which he believed should not have an existence independent of poetry, drama, dance, sculpture. This is an essential aspect of corporeal art. In a fully realized Partch production there are spoken words wedded to music without the abstraction typical of singing; there is a dramatic story expressed though action in a theater space not excluding visible actions of performing musicians as well as those of dancer-actor-singers; there is a setting which significantly includes, as sculptural objects, the hand-made instruments themselves. Music functions as part of a many-faceted art-work."

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 4 

" . . . shit, that's the easiest thing to say about Partch, his 43 tones, his own self-invented/constructed orchestra, his bumpy crazy hobo pieces, the monumental (no word seems to convey the scope better) quality of his theater spectacles (which place him as one of the central figures in a rejuvenation of theater in the West, from the abyss which it had fallen into, of stupid household dramas) . . . he talked about a music that had become so rarefied that it rarefied itself right out of our lives -- culture's got to be the ground of things, and there have been times and places where culture has been such a daily mode of going about business, with so much more quality and grace than ours, the Maya for one, ancient Greece certainly -- Partch knew that as a musician he had to sink deeper down into this earth, into the streets, our own bodies, of course it comes down to that, none of this "serial", "avant garde", "chance" stuff -- we should be talking about our own beings, in fact we should be doing less talking and a little more . . . action . . . "

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  5 

"Well, when Harry showed up for the first rehearsal, he asked me if I had any questions about the part, and I said, 'Yeah, there's this passage here.' I played the section, trying to pump, and said, 'Is this what you want?' And Harry goes, 'Oh, no, no, no, man! Lemme just show you!' He sits down and starts pumping and puts the flats of both hands on the keyboard, just slaps them down, and yanks that son of a bitch up and back down again! It made this vrrawww! And I went, 'Whoa!'

That one instance influenced the way I approached the instrument forever. I became much more raw with it: I fought with it, I was more savage with it. I developed a real freewheeling personal relationship with the instrument. Before, I was playing in a very distanced, academic, respectful manner. I was Apollonian, and Harry Dionysed me."

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  6 

"Hell, man, I don't care where I am. If I were in the North Pole I'd go on writing. I don't care if I'm in euphoria or despair -- I go on producing. It doesn't make any difference. I went to Hawaii when I was 20, and everyone said: 'You won't do a thing in Hawaii.'

Well, I never wrote so many fugues in my life."

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  7 

"That Harry Partch is no ordinary person is obvious. If his accomplishments in music had been slight, perhaps it could all end here -- but on the contrary, his accomplishments have been considerable. Anyone who has sat in a room, surrounded by Partch's many instruments, and listened to his music -- this complete and, to many, alien world of sound and drama -- knows what an intimidating experience this can be. The very thought of adopting a philosophical position diametrically opposed to a well-entrenched existing tradition, building a theory of tonal relationships and the instruments to realize this theory, composing the music, staging the drama, rehearsing and bringing it all to performance, recording the result -- all in the face of an uncomprehending public -- and then having the perseverance (perhaps obstinacy would be a better word) to continue all this for the better part of a lifetime, is a staggering thing to contemplate. Perhaps it is not so staggering if you consider Harry Partch's ideas about music. Partch and his music are very close to being one and the same thing."

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  8 

MG: "What do you think of Harry Partch?"

FZ: "I like the sound of the instruments, and I like parts of the compositions, but I think that the stuff goes on and on and on and on and on too long. There's too many repetitions. But the idea of it appeals to me a lot."

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  9 

"Harry Partch has profoundly affected me, but I've not been able to demonstrate what I've learned from this man. For instance, I've always wanted to put out my own records, like Mr. Partch did, but I've never had the money. His book would also be very inspirational, and my move to build instruments would come from Mr. Partch's example. I think he's a great composer too; he's so underrated in this period it's a damned shame. It's an indictment of America that there's no understanding of, or respect for, this man's music."

"The fact that he would look back to the ancients to understand better what music is, and then build a system based on the fundamentals -- this is what connects me to Harry Partch because that's exactly what I've been doing. And if I'm allowed to do my work in the future that's exactly what I'll continue to do: go to the ancients and to the scientists to understand better the route of a given information line and the transformational potential of music. Harry Partch short-circuited the whole post-Webern continuum and established a whole other area for investigation. The dynamic implications of his music, as well as its actual beauty, affected me and helped me develop the mind-set to begin looking at my own evolution."

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