The Manufacturer's One — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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TEE-ART-RB-PAR-01-M-BK T-Shirt

Piece

The Manufacturer's One Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

In Genesis of a Music, from 1949, Partch rejected the twelve-note scale as a decision made by instrument makers, proposed one of forty-three and built the instruments capable of playing it himself. The print is the two scales set against each other.

A Author

Harry Partch

B Subject

Just Intonation

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

Partch realised that the twelve notes of the piano were chosen neither by nature nor by the ear: instrument makers fixed them, because with twelve you can transpose any melody to any key on a single keyboard. It is an industrial decision from three centuries ago and it has stuck as though it were music itself.

He proposed forty-three, following the exact ratios a string produces when divided, without the adjustment that puts them slightly out of tune so that everything fits.

Since no instrument existed that could play that, he built them: marimbas a metre and a half long, tuned laboratory glass, a zither with forty-seven strings, with names he invented.

He spent part of the thirties riding freight trains and sleeping in camps, and kept a journal of it that is also a work.

The instruments still exist. They have to be learned one by one and they are good for nothing but his music.

Details