Universal Newsreel story (undated) showing Harry Partch conducting a student performance of his music on his instruments at Mills College, Oakland, California, probably late 1950s.
“The creative person shows himself naked, and the more vigorous his creative act the more naked he appears – sometimes wholly vulnerable. yet always invulnerable in the sense of his own integrity.
I am now 69 as this is being said, and I’ve been doing my own thing for more than five and a half decades. This thing began with truth, and truth does exist.
For some hundreds of years, the truth of Just Intonation, which is defined in any good music dictionary, has been hidden. One could almost say maliciously. because truth always threatens the ruling hierarchy, or they think so. Nor does the spiritual, corporeal nature of man fare any better. We are reduced to specialties: a theatre of dialogue without music, and a concert of music without drama. Basic mutilations of ancient concept. My music is visual; it is corporeal, aural, and visual.
The creative man will rise above, he will transcend the mutilations. for every deeply sincere offering there is a corresponding deep and sincere hunger. Not the European chauvinism of New York, nor the mindless caterwauling of Hollywood recording studios, nor the “we-sell-music-by- the-yard,” mood-music people, can suppress either the sincere offering or the sincere hunger.
True creativity is present. It is here, because man is here, in his true, deep, self. Unmutilated.”
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