Harry Partch

Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer and instrument builder. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.



Partch also designed and built many instruments from raw materials:

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* The Diamond Marimba was a marimba with keys arranged in a physical manefestation of the 11-limit tonality diamond.

* The Quadrangularis Reversum was an inverted Diamond Marimba with auxiliary keys on either side.

* The Bass Marimba and the Marimba Eroica had more traditional linear layouts, and were very low in pitch.

* The Mazda Marimba was made of Mazda light bulbs and named after the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda.

* The Boo was a marimba made of bamboo.

* The Spoils of War and the Gourd Tree with Cone Gongs are among his many percussion instruments assembled from detritus; the "Spoils of War" included a set of tuned artillery shell casings

* The Cloud Chamber Bowls were glass bowls from a cloud chamber, suspended in a frame.

* The Zymo-Xyl (from the Greek words for "fermentation" and "wood") was a xylophone augmented with tuned liquor bottles and hubcaps. (Partch lamented that there was no Greek word for "hubcaps".)

* The Kitharas (named after the Greek kithara) were large upright stringed instruments, tuned by sliding pyrex rods underneath the strings, and played with felt hammers or sticks. Their sound is one of the most unmistakable in Partch's music.

* The Harmonic Canons (from the same root as qanún) were many-stringed zithers with a complex system of bridges.

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