In 1928 Partch set down his new philosophy in a book, "Genesis of a Music" (eventually published, in a later version, in 1949). Here he developed a musical esthetic derived from an eclectic range of influences, including Yaqui Indians, Chinese lullabies, Hebrew chants for the dead, Christian hymns, Congo puberty rites, Chinese music hall (San Francisco), lumber yards and junk shops.
Partch came to a radical rejection of Western music -- its harmonic system, its equal-tempered tuning, indeed its very notion of autonomous concert music -- in order to create an entirely new kind of music, modeled on the ancient musical cultures of Greece and Asia and employing the "pure" intervals of just intonation. To this end he developed a 43-note scale that could produce pure, untempered consonances. In addition, his new music was to be "corporeal," with the tactile aspects of the performance -- the physical motions of singing and playing -- as important as the actual sounds; and it was to be "monophonic," conceived in terms of the human voice, its spoken words and speech inflections. The instruments had to be specially constructed, not only to permit Partch's special tunings but to project this character of "voice" basic to the entire conception. The first work Partch composd in his new manner was the "Li Po Songs" (1930-33), a setting of seventeen Chinese lyrics for "intoning" voice and "adapted" viola.
Under the impact of the Great Depression, he temporarily stopped composing entirely, living for six years as a hobo wandering back and forth across the United States. Only in 1941 to he begin producing "intoning voice" pieces, now using words drawn from his recent experiences: hitchhiker inscriptions collected from highway railings ("Barstow," 1941), excerpts from a letter written by a hobo friend ("The Letter," 1943), texts collected during a cross-country trip ("U. S. Highball," 1943), and the cries of newsboys ("San Francisco," 1943).
In 1951 he finished a full-scale dramatic setting entitled "Oedipus," based on the play of Sophocles. The major creation of Partch's final years was "Delusion of the Fury" (1966), a large-scale dramatic work based on a Japanese Noh play. As in all of Partch's work, the musicians are expected to perform from memory, for they are as much actors as musicians.
Despite severe financial hardships, he pursued his vision of a new kind of dramatically integrated, performance-oriented music with unswerving dedication, always in the face of professional rejection and public apathy.