Renegades

Harry Partch, the rigorous wild man of American music, wrote, in 1935, “This isn’t Germany, and this isn’t the eighteenth century, and I’m trying to give myself, and others, a good basis for a new and great music of the people.” Partch was arguing, with his usual pugnacity, against the Germanic tradition and against American dependence on that tradition. His urge to break with the past led him, at the height of the Depression, to assume a hobo life, travelling the rails and notating hobo songs. He emerged with an incorrigibly radical musical language, at once intricate in method and rugged in manner. Partch wrote, “In the early days of presenting my music, the mere mention of the words Bach or Beethoven, twin gods of classical musicians, turned on a faucet of revolt in me.”