Listening to Harry Partch is like going on a surreal archaeological dig through history. Only this is history reinterpreted by someone who has been taking shrooms for two decades. Yet, with the emergence of microtonality in the music of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Angine de Poitrine his works are more relevant today than ever.

Harry Who?

Harry Partch was born on June 24th, 1901 to Virgil Franklin Partch, and his wife Jennie. They were missionaries to China who fled the Boxer Rebellion. His parents settled in Benson, Arizona. He was encouraged by his mother to learn music, and she taught him to read music. He was exposed to music from different cultures including Chinese (via his mother), the Yaqui people, and Spanish songs.

He began studying piano serious in 1913 after his family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also began composing his earliest piano works (which he later destroyed). In 1919 He relocated with his mother to Los Angeles after the death of his father. In 1920 his mother was killed in a trolley accident. Partch studied music at the University of Southern California's School of Music in 1920, but left two years later being dissatisfied with the teachers.

Rejection of Equal Temperament

Sometime during the 18th Century, western music settled on the tuning system known as twelve-tone equal temperament. After reading Hermann von Helmholtz's [Sensations of Tone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SensationsofTone “Sensations of Tone”) in 1923, Partch began to feel that equal temperament had forced music to become more abstract. This abstraction was stifling the true possibilities for expression in music, so he rejected equal temperament in favor of just intonation.

This marked Partch's first step in finding a different direction for musical expression that remains the inspiration for many avant-garde and experimental musicians to this day.

Partch's Journey

Per Wikipedia's entry on Harry Partch, his career can be divided into several periods: Early Work (1919-1947), Academic Period (1947-1962), and his Late Period (1962-1974). These periods roughly correspond with the types of Partch's compositions, and his exploration of tonality.

During the first period, Partch came to reject the system of equal temperament, favoring just intonation instead. His first experiments involved creating paper coverings that indicated just intonation fingerings for violins. In 1930, he decided to break from the equal temperament tradition completely and burned all his previous 12TET (12 tone equal temperament) based compositions. He then devised a 29 tone scale, and had a viola constructed with which to perform works using this scale (the Adapted Viola).

In 1932, he gave several performances of his works in San Francisco, and won the support of a private group of individuals which allowed him to relocate to New York. The Carnegie Corporation of New York granted him the money he needed to continue his studies in England, where he met Kathleen Schlesinger. Schlesinger had been studying ancient Greek music theory, and had recreated a Kithara from an image on a Greek vase. Upon his return to the United States during the great depression, Partch would spend nine years as a transient / hobo. In 1938 constructed his own Kithara approximately twice the size of Schlesinger's and devised a new 43 tone scale. While in Chicago, Partch would design and build a 43 tone reed organ (aka the Chromelodeon).

The second period saw Partch settling into the University of Wisconsin from 1944-1947, during which he lectured, built more instruments, and finished his book Genesis of a Music. He left in 1947 due to not being able to join the permanent staff of the university, and there being a lack of space for his instruments. In 1949, he was offered the opportunity to convert a smithy into a studio by Gunnar Johansen to continue his work. During his work in the smithy, he recorded Eleven Intrusions and several other works. In 1951, he moved to Oakland, CA for health reasons, and put on a performance of his piece King Oedipus, but was unable to make a recording of it due to objections from the Yeats estate. Partch set up his studio / record label Gate 5 in 1953, and would release records via mail order. During this period Partch also started working with the University of Illinois, and was introduced to Danlee Mitchel, who would later become Partch's heir. Partch produced several performances of his works with the University's support. Partch also began what would a six film collaboration with Madeline Tourtelot. Partch left the University due hostility from the music department, despite having support from other departments and organizations.

Partch's final period saw him returning to California, and setting up studio in Petaluma. He composed And on the Seventh Day, Petals Fell in Petaluma. And, in 1969, Columbia Records released The World of Harry Partch, his first major label release. Partch's final theater was The Delusions of the Fury, produced in 1969. His final work was the soundtrack to the Betty Freeman film The Dreamer That Remains. In 1973 Partch retired. He died of a heart attack on September 3rd, 1974.

Partch's Influence

As is, hopefully apparent, Partch's work was both influential and controversial. During his life he was supported by numerous artists, such as Henry Cowell, Otto Leuning, Roy Harris, and Aaron Copeland. He also had the support of numerous foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the League of Composers, the Fromm Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Towards the end of his life, The Harry Partch Foundation was established to handle his expenses, and administer his work. His instruments. Danlee Mitchel served as the Executive Director of The Harry Partch Foundation until his death. Dean Drummond's group Newband undertook the handling of Partch's instruments and performs with them. The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music holds the Harry Partch Archive 1918-1991.

Partch was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1974. In 2004 U.S. Highball was selected by the Library of Congress's National Recording Preservation Board.

Closing

While the work of Harry Partch has not seen wide acknowledgment throughout Europe or Eastern Countries, there is growing interest in his work. Partch's work has established a culture where the exploration of alternate tunings for instruments has become something that is more common.

Groups like Angine de Poitrine, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard haven't rejected the concept of equal temperament in their instrument selection. But, they are using the concept of adding more tones to the scale in ways that are substantive, just as Partch developed whole new scales and made large scale compositions with them.

This is the way forward for music. There is an entire world of sound out there waiting to be discovered, or in some cases, rediscovered. Twelve tone equal temperament has been the primary focus of music for centuries. With the advances in synthesizers and sampling over the past several decades, artists have started exploring all sorts of new grounds.

Hopefully, we will see more substantial work done in the field of using just intonation, and other tuning systems.

If you would like to explore the music of Harry Partch, I highly recommend the four volume set: The Harry Partch Collection Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, and Vol 4, along with other recordings of Partch's work on New World Records.

There is also an excellent film of Harry Partch's Studio from around 1950 available on YouTube. This lets you see all of his instruments and provides a deeper understanding of how they were designed. Partch also plays each of the instruments.

Categories: #Music Tags: #experimetnal, #microtonal, #american, #influential License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

This morning I installed a music player that I am unfamiliar with, and decided that the first thing I should listen to is Angine de Poitrine Vol. 1 and Vol. II since I hadn't listened to them in a while. And then I found, by coincidence that they played the Montreal Jazz Festival last Saturday (June 27th, 2026) and broke the attendance record set by Stevie Wonder in 2009. I cannot imagine what the guys behind Khn and Klek are thinking right now. Just a year ago they were relatively unknown, and now they're playing for 200,000 fans in their hometown at the second-largest music festivals in the world.

There have been a couple of things that I keep hearing and reading about Angine de Poitrine that bother me. The first is they are the “Answer to AI” or “AI could never come up with this music”. The second is they are just a fad and won't survive. And, of course, I have some thoughts on both of these topics.

Are They The Answer to AI?

I both agree and disagree with people who say this. There are two ways to look at it. The first way, and this is what most people mean, is that Artificial Intelligence could not create microtonal music based on building loops. The premise is that we don't normally listen to microtonal music, so there is no way an AI could come up with it on it's own.

But, what if I were to say that we do listen to microtonal music, just not nearly as much or as often as we do equal temperament music? We've had groups like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard that have incorporated microtonality into their music for over a decade. True, they haven't risen to the same level of popularity of Angine de Poitrine, but they have proven popular enough to have produced twenty-five albums worth of music.

However, there are other things to consider. For some reason there are a lot of people that seem to assume that “microtonal” means using 24 EDO (Equal Divisions of the Octave), instead of the typical western style of 12 EDO instruments. But that isn't completely the truth. We have had composers and musicians going back as far as the 1940s that used (and often built) instruments with different tuning systems. The most notable was Harry Partch, who came up with his on 43-tone non-EDO tuning system.

But also, we should consider that instruments from other cultures do not adhere to the typical 12 EDO tuning systems. Possibly the most notable being the Sitar, which uses a tuning system that is unlike western tuning systems. Of course Indian Raja's have been reasonably known in the west, especially after George Harrison introduced the instrument on several Beatles songs.

Given that all of these types and styles of music are likely known to AI's, which have been fed vast catalogs of music, it's quite possible for one to come up with a form of microtonal music. The reason an AI hadn't come up with something that incorporated microtonality isn't because of the AI itself.

The reason that I agree with this statement is that Angine de Poitrine is more than just their microtonal music. They have an absurdist aesthetic combined with dadaism. They invented some lore for themselves as aliens that have come to earth and love rock music. Their music is more about making fun or parodying pop-rock music.

All of this is a complete package that would require someone with the imagination and artistic knowledge to have come up with. And, that's why there is no AI equivalent of Angine de Poitrine. The majority of the people prompting AI agents to create music don't have the level of knowledge and imagination.

Are They A Fad?

This is a more difficult question to figure out. There is one side of me that thinks the “gimmick” is likely to get old after a while. But, how long will that be? I don't know, and I don't think anyone really knows. If someone thinks they know they are likely just guessing. I mean, after all, how long did KISS go with their makeup and outfits? How long did Angus Young wear his schoolboy outfit in AC/DC?

In Japan, it's not at all unusual for music groups to adopt some form of aesthetic. Band Maid has been going for over ten years now wearing maid costumes. And I won't even get into the Visual Kei artists and their adoption of varying types of costumes. There is a whole culture in Japan which links visual aesthetic and artistry in a way that isn't a gimmick, it's expected and accepted.

What could be a bit trickier is where they go musically. Right now it seems that a lot of people see 24 EDO based sound as a novelty, instead of being a serious form of music. But I don't think that is an issue. There is still a lot of ground for them to explore musically with microtonality.

But I do think they will need to find some way to change up their format. Right now they have a uniquely identifiable music style. They will need to find a way to iterate on this style. They will need to find a way of keeping it fresh, while not alienating their current fans. I could speculate on several ways they could do this, but I am not them. I don't have the same thought process they do. After all, they've been playing together since they were thirteen years old. It's only for them to figure out where they want to go next.

So, in the end, are they a fad? Who knows, and who really cares? Just ride along with them. If they fail, they fail. If they succeed, then they succeed. I'll keep listening and decide when and if I want to stop listening. That's all you can do.

[Edit: 2026-07-03: fix mistakenly calling Montreal the hometown of Angine de Poitrine. It's actually Saguenay, Quebec.]

Categories: #Music Tags: #microtonal, #antiai, #rockmusic, #parody, #dada License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.