Partch instruments
The custom-built instruments created by Harry Partch to realize his 43-tone just intonation system, including the Chromelodeon, Cloud Chamber Bowls, and Quadrangularis Reversum.
In Depth
Harry Partch (1901–1974) rejected the twelve-tone equal [temperament](/term/equal%20temperament) system and built an entirely new musical universe based on 43-tone just intonation. Since no existing instruments could play his microtonal scales, he designed and built over 30 unique instruments from scratch. The Chromelodeon is a modified reed organ; the Cloud Chamber Bowls are Pyrex carboys from a nuclear physics lab, hung and struck like bells; the Quadrangularis Reversum is a massive xylophone-like instrument with bamboo resonators. Partch's instruments are beautiful sculptural objects as well as functional musical instruments, and his compositions — including Oedipus (a setting of Sophocles), The Bewitched, and Delusion of the Fury — combine music, dance, theater, and ritual in ways that anticipate performance art. After his death, the instruments were entrusted to various institutions and replicas have been built. Dean Drummond and later Partch ensembles have kept the music alive. Partch remains one of the most radical and original figures in American music — a genuine outsider who built not just new instruments but an entirely new musical system.
Harry Partch built his Cloud Chamber Bowls from Pyrex carboys salvaged from the UC Berkeley nuclear physics laboratory — the same type of vessels used to track subatomic particle trails became hauntingly beautiful musical instruments.