724 THE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
uinely American and the most original. Independent and iconoclastic, he spent
part of his life as a hobo during the Depression. He was at the same time a most
knowledgeable musician and highly literate academic who taught, held research
posts, and accepted grants. His musical theater pieces (original as they are) have
something in common with those of the European Carl Orff, whose musical treat-
ments of Greek tragedy have a powerful, theatrical impact. Partch's dramatic
break with European and American musical tradition came in 1930, when he
burned his own previous compositions (fourteen years' worth) in an iron pot-
bellied stove. He would turn his back on the traditional, forge a new music to
be played on new instruments of his own making, and train musicians for per-
formance. He explains:/ am first and last a composer. I have been provoked into becoming a musical theorist,
an instrument builder, a musical apostate, and a musical idealist, simply because I have
been a demanding composer. I hold no wish for the obsolescence of the widely heard in-
struments and music. My devotion to our musical heritage is great—and critical. I feel
that more ferment is necessary to a healthy musical culture. I am endeavoring to instill
more ferment.^23Partch called his new musical language "monophony," built upon a forty-
three-tone-to-the-octave just scale. He designed the original instruments re-
quired to play his unique compositions from fuel tanks, Pyrex jars, and a wide
variety of modified musical instruments. His music and his musical theater are
as much influenced by the Far East as by Western Europe. His Oedipus and Rev-
elation in the Courthouse Park are classical in their inspiration, and his Delusion of
the Fury is Oriental; its themes, including the release from the wheel of life and
death, come from Japanese Noh drama and West African folktale.^24
Partch originally used the translation of W. B. Yeats for his setting of Oedi-
pus (1952), which was entitled Sophocles' King Oedipus. Because he could not get
permission from Yeats' literary agent to release a recording, in 1954 he revised
the score for enlarged instrumentation, setting it to his own translation; the fi-
nal revision of his operatic dance-drama Oedipus was made in 1967. His treat-
ment confirms the reason he was attracted to mythology: "There's so much ba-
sic in it." Yet he felt that his Oedipus was too firmly rooted in the ancient past,
and he wanted to strive for more contemporary relevance—hence his Ameri-
canization of Euripides.
Partch's Revelation in the Courthouse Park (1960) is based on the Bacchae of
Euripides. He wrote his own controversial libretto, in which the character of
Dionysus is depicted in the image of Elvis Presley, but based the text for the
choruses on Gilbert Murray's translation.
Because of the many difficulties involved in a performance of Revelation in
the Courthouse Park (with its unorthodox score and orchestra requiring the play-
ing of unorthodox instruments), any staging of the work is a rare and momen-
tous theatrical event; and so when it was elaborately produced in Philadelphia