Atrium Display: Tonal Access, the Evolution of the Keyboard
Part I: The Ratio Keyboard Designs of Harry Partch
Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and instrument inventor. He composed in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales. His instruments were created in these tunings for performance of his compositions.
These two diagrams, “Ratio Keyboard Design” 2 & 3, show a 40 note to the octave, color coded, just intonation tuning system array for an eight octave organ designed in 1932. Partch, who was often homeless, lived for a time with the Glasier family and would mail himself drawings to copyright them, leaving them behind, unopened. Jonathan Glasier, publisher and archivist at Interval first published these in the winter of 1986 in Interval volume V, #3 after receiving them from Bertha Knisley, one of Partch’s patrons, after her death, in a sealed envelope dated 8/10/33.
Special thanks to Jonathan Glasier of Interval Journal, from whom these drawings are on loan; to Ian Saxton for realizing the keyboard as a multi touch app in 2015; and to the Internet Archives, for digitizing and hosting these and other vital documents in new music history in partnership with Interval.