From: mclaren
Subject: Warren Burt's performance of
"Bitter Music"
--
One or another subscriber to this forum
has criticized Warren's performance of
"Bitter Music," originally done for
Australia radio and now released on
"Bitter Music," originally done for
Australia radio and now released on
the Innova Partch archives 4-CD set.
It's true that Warren is one of the more
cheerful people alive. He radiates good
humor as much as the state of California
radiates incarceration, or as a politican
radiates corruption.
Thus Warren's performance of "Bitter Music"
occasionally gives the listener the weird
sense that Harry Partch has been whisked
away to the Planet of the Cheerful People.
On the other hand, "Bitter Music" is a journal
of such unbearable degradation that I find
myself grateful to Warren's light-hearted
performance for revealing the humor and levity
in the text--and there is some, thank the gods.
Otherwise "Bitter Music" would be impossible
to endure. The section in which Partch describes
Otherwise "Bitter Music" would be impossible
to endure. The section in which Partch describes
being forced to clean out a sewer in a men's
work camp...well, you can imagine how that section
makes me feel.
It's impossible to think of a more remarkable mind
treated worse by society than Harry Partch, with
the possible exception of Evariste Galois.
And when you realize that "Bitter Music" is a record
of a small fraction of the 8 years that Partch spent
homeless, wandering from federal homeless shelter
to federal homeless shelter, it makes your blood boil.
(Partch was later to claim that his hobo years were
voluntary--a fig-leaf of microscopic size to cover
the inconceivable humiliation of this period. No one
chooses vountarily to be homeless.)
Various subscribers to this forum have lamented
their vile treatment by the twelve-one Tammany Hall
of academia.
their vile treatment by the twelve-one Tammany Hall
of academia.
However, no one subscribing to this forum has *anything*
to complain about compared to the living hell Partch
endured for 8 years. If Parch had committed murder, his
8 years in men's work camps would have been declared
unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment--yet
Partch's "crime" was imagination and enthusiasm (always the
most savagely punished of all offenses against the state).
Compared to what Partch went through, we've
got it easy.
--mclaren
