source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 12:56:53 +0200 Subject: Digest 1090, 1092: Partch and dissonance From: Daniel Wolf It's instructive to look at _Dark Brother_ as a source for Partch's treatment of dissonance. This piece and _Even Wild Horses_ are the most diamond oriented of his scores. In fact the score copy of DB with which Iam familar includes an added notation of a harmonic analysis in terms of the diamond (16/9O, 11/8U etc.). However, the score includes frequent dissonances in the form of passing tones or suspensions, and the introduction features microtonal passagework on the chromelodeon deliberately designed to get particular rates of beating. Partch's conception of dissonance was early on a broad one, and included everything from clusters and beating to more traditional uses of non-harmonic pitches. Interestingly, on the last point, Partch appeared to have a contextual conception of what constituted ''non-harmonic'' or ''inharmonic''. For example, the 15 identity might be used on a slide guitar uniformly but Partch considered it ''inharmonic'' because it was not available throughout his ensemble, and although most listeners would probably find it more consonant than the 11 identity. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:28 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA23213; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:28:09 +0200 Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:28:09 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA23143 Received: (qmail 17842 invoked from network); 9 Jun 1997 00:21:24 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 9 Jun 1997 00:21:24 -0000 Message-Id: <970608201652_1342915226@emout19.mail.aol.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu