[NewMusic] Partched

[Matthew Goodheart]

On Apr 24, 2007, at 10:20 AM, Phillip Greenlief wrote:

> I rewatched the BBC series on Partch the last night and they presented
> his reason for the 43 octave tuning so that it was closer to speech
> tones so the "sprechstimme" isn't far off in concept.  His own speech 
> is
> very dramatic and not that disimilar to his melodic writing.  It is
> narrative work really.
>
>
> PG:
> I agree, but I think Matthew's point was that Partch "consciously"
> rejected Schoenberg (one of the purveyors of Sprechstimme), the 12-tone
> system, and other tenets of "modernism"...

Yeah, I just imagine Partch being horrified at any suggested connection 
between him and Shoenberg. There's a similarity, but they're also 
coming from really different philosophies and "Sprechstimme" 
performances still have an "affected" air of a trained singer about 
them, while Partch's stuff avoids that reference completely.

Also, Shoenberg is credited with inventing "Sprechstimme" style for 
Pierrot lunaire, though the related "Sprechgesang" was earlier and 
probably an attempt to emulate a popular style in the late 19th cent. 
(Or so says the Grove. . . )