Largely because of its troubled publication history, Bitter Music—Harry Partch's journal of a portion of his travels as a hobo—has attracted little scholarly or popular attention. This article aims to help elucidate Bitter Music by examining the influence of hobo philosophy on its creation and reception. Certain aspects of the historical and current hobo subculture's ideology—particularly bricolage, anarcho-syndicalism, radical egalitarianism, and non-hierarchical temporal perception—appear to motivate various factors in Partch's creation of the journal and his later attempts to destroy it. Additionally, I examine how hobo philosophy animates Partch's approach to speech, song, and instrumental music, culminating in a close reading of the journal's longest musical-textual entry. The article concludes with an examination of how Bitter Music’s publication history further enhances the resonance of hobo philosophy with the ways in which the journal is apprehended by readers and, in the current century, listeners.

中文翻译：

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“纯音乐美国的源头”：哈利·帕奇苦涩音乐中的流浪汉哲学

很大程度上是因为它陷入困境的出版历史，苦涩的音乐——哈里·帕奇（Harry Partch）作为流浪汉的部分旅行日记——几乎没有引起学术或大众的关注。本文旨在帮助阐明苦涩的音乐通过研究流浪汉哲学对其创作和接受的影响。历史和当前的流浪汉亚文化意识形态的某些方面——特别是拼凑、无政府工团主义、激进的平等主义和非等级制的时间感知——似乎激发了帕奇创建期刊和后来试图摧毁它的各种因素。此外，我研究了流浪汉哲学如何激发 Partch 对演讲、歌曲和器乐的处理方式，最终仔细阅读了该杂志最长的音乐文本条目。文章最后探讨了如何苦涩的音乐的出版历史进一步增强了 hobo 哲学与读者和本世纪听众理解期刊的方式的共鸣。