This setting of Psalm 137 (one of the Psalms most often set by musicians throughout history) is among the earliest of mature compositions by Harry Partch. The composer had rejected (burned in a pot-bellied stove in New Orleans, he later claimed) all his music written in the standard 12-note equal temperament tuning system.

Instead, he adopted just intonation, a system where the frequencies (or string lengths) of given tones are all in integer ratios with each other. For instance, a note an octave above another uses half the length of string and has a frequency exactly twice that of the lower note. That is, their ratio is 2/1. The ratio of 3/2 is a "perfect fifth" and the ratio of 4/3 is a fourth.

Partch initially called his system "monophony," meaning that notes were all described in terms of their ratios to "one tone." (The term monophony is usually used by musicians to mean a piece with only one voice or line.) He built the first of his special instruments, which he called the "monophone." Partch, who was a violist in a semi-professional orchestra in addition to being a proofreader, fitted a cello fingerboard to a viola body, marked it precisely in ratios, and used it to accompany his own singing, which he called "intoning." His melodic lines were meant to follow closely the inflections of natural speech.

Later, he renamed the monophone the adapted viola. Partch wrote this setting of By the Waters of Babylon, for intoning voice and this instrument, in August of 1931, when he was living in Santa Rosa, CA. The piece is written, not in musical notation, but in a succession of ratios, looking like fractions. There is no up and down movement of note-heads in this notation, which is therefore counterintuitive and, moreover, lacks a good way to indicate rhythm. Thus, Partch's various recordings of it became an important secondary source of information about how he intended it to sound. Since Partch's death, it has been transcribed into a staff system devised for just intonation by composer Ben Johnston, a Partch follower.

Partch sang and played By the Waters of Babylon in various venues around the San Francisco area in following years, but its most important performance was probably the one given privately to William Butler Yeats, at the poet's home. This convinced Yeats to permit Partch to make a setting of his version of King Oedipus, which became the first of Partch's major theater works.

Later grouped with The Lord is My Shepherd, as Two Psalms, this work was revised in 1942 when Partch added a part for his reed organ, the chromelodeon. Its final revision was in 1955, when Partch added cello and kithara II. In 1956, when Partch copyrighted some of his works, he grouped it with several others, under the title Summer 1955.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide