Music: Goblin Music?

Harry Partch is a composer who has most of his critics completely flummoxed: Does he write goblin music, or is he an advance-guard genius? Now 50, California-born Composer Partch decided some 30 years ago that twelve tones to the octave were just not enough for his purposes. He constructed a mathematically more perfect scale of 43 tones; working mostly under University of Wisconsin and Guggenheim grants and fellowships, he also invented instruments capable of playing his 43-tone music. Partch pieces, such as Barstow—Hitchhiker Inscriptions on a California Highway Railing, left the pundits...

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