Partch's "17 Lyrics of Li Po" - a set of Chinese poems

Li Po (Li Bai)（701－762）is considered one of the most important poets of the Tang Dynasty and when you study Chinese he is the most known poet, Li Po's work has influenced poets and artists across the world, including Ezra Pound, Gustav Mahler, and Patch as well.

His talent was recognized by the emperor. Emperor Xuanzong gave Li Po a position at the Hanlin Academy, where he provided poetry and scholarly advice to the Emperor. However, he did not stay longer than 2 years in the position. Mainly his personality could not work with politics and his poems offended the aristocracy. In the later of his life, wars and rebellions devastate the whole country, he ended up as an alcoholic. His poems are romantic and expressive, at the same time, full of sarcasm to the injustice.

Partch's parents had spent the years 1888-93 and 1895-1900 in China as Presbyterian missionaries, exposed to the Chinese culture (Gilmore,1992). Partch's mother even sang Chinese lullabies. It is funny to find out that Partch did not attempt to set Li Po in the original language even he knew some Chinese. The versions he used were from the book The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet, translated by Shigeyoshi Obata (Gilmore,1992).

Back to Partch's "17 Lyrics of Li Po"(start at 4:54 in the video), it is written for voice and Adapted Viola in a system of microtonally extended just intonation. For vocal music just intonation is the most suitable system, Yang (2015) studied a lot of folk songs in China, echoing the same concept. Chinese is a tonal language. Partch treated the text in the poem is tonal and musical. Every syllable and inflection of the poem can be harmonized by the accompanying instrument. The music in this piece does not have complex harmony or texture. The viola accompaniment follows the melody of the singers. Recalls the heterophonic texture in Chinese music. Partch’s Adapted Viola resemblance performance technique to the Chinese erhu and the Granade (2010) believes such resemblance was inspired by the Cantonese opera. His manual on playing the Adapted Viola he called for a technique he termed “one-finger” in which the musician does not perform with precise, discrete steps, but instead glides between notes, sometimes moving so slowly. 

The tuning of the viola is colorful enough, 37 notes in an octave with unequal steps It lets the audience focus on the lyrics and the timbre. Echoing the idea of Chinese music focuses on timbre.


GRANADE, S. (2010) “Rekindling Ancient Values: The Influence of Chinese Music and Aesthetics on Harry Partch,” Journal of the Society for American Music. Cambridge University Press, 4(1), pp. 1–32. doi: 10.1017/S1752196309990812.

 Gilmore, B. (1992) On Harry Partch’s ‘Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po’. Perspectives of new music. [Online] 30 (2), 22–58.

Yang, Y. et al. (2015) Tuning Features of Chinese Folk Song Singing: A Case Study of Hua’er Music. Journal of voice. [Online] 29 (4), 426–432.

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