Ring Around the Moon

Spoken Voice and Ensemble

Ring Around the Moon is a composition that is unusual in every way, mixing Partach's satirical and serious intentions with each other, contrasting absurd, nonsensical voices of the spoken voice with intense and complicated harmonic sequences. Although Partch finished this piece only in 1952, he had been working on it since 1949, using different titles. For the first version Tonality Flux no designs are handed down; the second version titled Sonata Dementia was recorded in 1951.