Delusion of the Fury

A ritual of dreams and delusion – the subtitle of Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury pretty accurately describes the kind of performance this is: a ritual in which Partch's unearthly music plays

the lead. The German ensemble musikFabrik premiered the music theatre production on 23 August 2013 as the opening performance of the Ruhrtriennial in Bochum's Jahrhunderthalle.

A unique figure in 20th century music, Harry Partch was a self-taught composer who stood outside the American musical tradition, mostly following an individual path. Delusion of the Fury (1965-66) is Partch’s masterpiece, but there are a number of practical obstacles which prevent the work from being performed regularly, the most important of these being that the instruments are missing: they are in the United States and in such a bad state that they cannot be played. Partch composed his music almost exclusively for a wonderful array of fascinating custom-made instruments most of which have specific tunings and which as well as being playable instruments are also valued as sculptures, like his Gourd Tree for instance, a strange, curved desert tree of which the fruits are tuned calabashes. To Partch, a musical performance was more than just that; it was also theatre, a visual spectacle. Partch also developed his own tonal system based on just intonation, in which every octave consisted not of 12 equal intervals – as on a modern piano – but 43 small intervals of differing sizes. Partch's idiosyncratic use of microtones makes his music difficult to perform; without the right instruments, it becomes impossible. As the original instruments are either very fragile or part of collections which are not easily accessible, a creative solution had to be found to resolve this problem. Led by percussionist and musical instrument maker Thomas Meixner, all the instruments that were needed were replicated – an unbelievable feat.

Moreover, Meixner's efforts have not been in vain, as the musicians of Ensemble musikFabrik took a whole year to master the unorthodox techniques required, gaining an impressively 'natural' mastery of Partch's instruments. The result is a captivating performance of sound and vision. Although Partch's tonal system is theoretically complex and his scores difficult to perform, his music does speak directly to the ear and the heart.

Delusion of the Fury consists of two parts, preceded by a prologue and intersected by an interlude. The first part is loosely based on a theme from the Japanese noh theatre, the second is based on an Ethiopian legend, but Partch has pointed out that the performance is neither set in a specific time nor in a specific place, both myths being no more than a point of departure from which to create – Partch claimed the privilege to appropriate elements from foreign cultures to use for his own objectives. With the exception of the koto, a Japanese zither, the universe of sounds of Delusion of the Fury is not bound by time or place.

In the first part the action revolves around a confrontation between a murderer and the ghost of his victim; in the second part, a deaf tramp is caught up in a misunderstanding with a group of villagers. The parts are played without any breaks, the titles of each scene indicated by a spooky motel neon sign in the background.

The direction of this first ever European production of Delusion of the Fury is by the artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale Heiner Goebbels. As the opening of the triennial, it proved a great success with the audience as well as with the press. The set is a mix of a rundown gold rush town, an abandoned theme park and an existentialist movie by Ingmar Bergman; the costumes combine a medieval with a futuristic look. There are inflatable sculptures, a pilgrim with an Opel hubcap for a hat and a mock fight with scaffolding. The musicians do more than just play their instruments; they are in all aspects part of the ritual. Partch himself has said: 'When a player does not put maximum effort into his role visually and as an actor, in my view he spoils his part as much as he would if he spoilt every note in the score.'