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Harry Partch - The Bewitched: Scene 5 - Visions Fill The Eyes Of A Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room

from Harry Partch: The Bewitched / Taylor Brook: Block by Harry Partch, Taylor Brook

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    The Bewitched－A Dance Satire (1956)

    Freda Schell, The Witch; The University of Illinois Musical Ensemble, John Garvey, conductor The Chorus of Lost Musicians (in order of appearance): William Olson, Chorus Leader (male solo voice), Marimba Eroica; Warren Smith, Bass Marimba; Thomas Gauger, Boo (Bamboo Marimba); Michael Donzella, Spoils of War; George Andrix, Cloud-Chamber Bowls; Danlee Mitchell, Diamond Marimba; Jack McKenzie, Surrogate Kithara and Gongs; Georgi Mayer, Harmonic Canon (Castor); Barbara Grammar, Harmonic Canon (Pollux); Sanford Berry, Kithara (right side); Jan Bach, Kithara (left side); Warren Birkett, clarinet; Joseph Firrantello, bass clarinet; Charles Delaney, piccolo; Carol Zuckerberg, koto; Peter Farrell, cello; Herbert Bielawa, Chromelodeon

    METICULOUSLY REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL MONO MASTER TAPES!

    The Bewitched was Partch's first work solely intended for dance (and mime-dance at that; he was not overly enamored in his lifetime of so-called "modern dance"). Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also function at times as movers-singers-actors. Such is the case of The Bewitched, where the instruments are the set, in front of (and around) which dancers "dance," but where the onstage musicians also move and sing. Partch's masterpiece has been lovingly remastered from the original mono masters and the 24-page booklet includes never-before-published photographs from productions of The Bewitched. This is the definitive document of this very important work.

    "The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre. It is the opposite of specialized. I conceived and wrote it in California in the period 1952-55, following the several performances of my version of Sophocles' Oedipus. In spirit, if not wholly in content, it is a satyr-play. It is a seeking for release－through satire, whimsy, magic, ribaldry－from the catharsis of tragedy. It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity, in the feeling that the modern spirit might thereby find some ancient and magical sense of rebirth. Each of the 12 scenes is a theatrical unfolding of nakedness, a psychological strip-tease, or－a diametric reversal, which has the effect of underlining the complementary character, the strange affinity, of seeming opposites." —Harry Partch

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Scene 5—Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room

It seems perversely characteristic of the human male to think of his moments of weakness and failure in a female context. He may say: “Today I’m a sick woman,” but he does not intend his work to mean that he has just undergone a sex-changing operation. For the sake of a moment of magic perception let us impose this idea on the defeated side after a game of basketball.

The potentialities are tremendous, because the bewitchment is profound. Now, with women as subjects, an area of group behavior is open to the adventurous watcher that he could never observe in a group of men under similar conditions. With the incorrigible optimism of healthy young women, for example, these very quickly conclude that one defeat in a basketball game (played by themselves as women) is of exceedingly trivial consequence, and immediately thereafter, with a capricious Witch and a conniving Chorus in the background, fling themselves into something really important—a wild dance that makes the shower room ring with adulation for the nude god Hermes (or his clothed TV equivalent), knaviest among the Olympian knaves. The dance becomes more abandoned with each passing moment, until it can end only with a catapulting of the women down into darkness.

The basketball team—now unwitched—has fallen completely under the charming belief that reality contains a compound of both experience and imagination.

credits

from Harry Partch: The Bewitched / Taylor Brook: Block, released September 16, 2022
The Bewitched: Harry Partch, composer

Cast of The Bewitched: Freda Schell, The Witch; The University of Illinois Musical Ensemble, John Garvey, conductor

The Chorus of Lost Musicians (in order of appearance): William Olson, Chorus Leader (male solo voice), Marimba Eroica; Warren Smith, Bass Marimba; Thomas Gauger, Boo (Bamboo Marimba); Michael Donzella, Spoils of War; George Andrix, Cloud-Chamber Bowls; Danlee Mitchell, Diamond Marimba; Jack McKenzie, Surrogate Kithara and Gongs; Georgi Mayer, Harmonic Canon (Castor); Barbara Grammar, Harmonic Canon (Pollux); Sanford Berry, Kithara (right side); Jan Bach, Kithara (left side); Warren Birkett, clarinet; Joseph Firrantello, bass clarinet; Charles Delaney, piccolo; Carol Zuckerberg, koto; Peter Farrell, cello; Herbert Bielawa, Chromelodeon

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Composers Recordings, Inc. Brooklyn, New York

CRI (Composers Recordings, Inc.) was founded in 1954 by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore and Oliver Daniel. CRI was dedicated to the promotion of new music by American composers, releasing over 600 recordings on LP, cassette and CD over its 49 year history, New World Records assumed ownership of CRI in 2006, since which time its entire catalog has been digitized for streaming, download & CD-R purchase. ... more

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