BLOCK

BLOCK was written in 2022 for retuned steel string guitar with optional electronics to accompany the rerelease of the CRI recording of Harry Partch’s The Bewitched by Anthology of Recorded Music.

BLOCK complements and contrasts The Bewitched, taking inspiration from a spoken introduction given by Partch at a performance of The Bewitched in Chicago, 1957. In this introduction, Partch discusses our listening habits, playing on the expression of “in one ear and out the other,” by stating that he wants to create a “block between the ears… and when this block is effective all kinds of wonderful things happen: nerve impulses quicken, the adrenal glands begin to secrete their ecstatic hormones, the pancreatic juices begin to ooze.” Partch achieves this through his corporeal aesthetic, combining sound and sight in the musical theatre works that dominated his late output, The Bewitched among them. For myself, the immersed mental state is more often achieved using sound only — rather than exciting all the senses, focusing in on a single one. Combining the guitar with a corpus-based electronic accompaniment, BLOCK invites the listener to enter the ecstatic experience that Partch describes.

Requirements for electronics version: MAX 8 and Flucoma Library for MAX.