Partch

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Harry Partch was an American composer who wrote microtonal music and built his own unusual instruments to play it
2. The surname of an American composer and theorist famous for experimental tuning systems and handmade instrumental creations
3. A name belonging to the twentieth-century American musician who devised new scales and invented custom instruments for them

Etymology: Harry Partch, an American composer born in 1901, rejected the twelve-note scale of the piano and built his own instruments to play music in just intonation, tuned to pure frequency ratios. Because no commercial instrument could play the scale he wanted, he made them himself, from reed organs he altered, marimba-like keyed instruments, and others he called by names of his own invention, such as the kithara. His system used 43 tones to the octave. His book "Genesis of a Music" (1949) laid out the theory behind this work and the instruments he built to perform it. Where the word appears in English, it nearly always refers to him or to the music and instruments associated with him, not to any older general sense.