"Petals fell on Petaluma" refers to a piece called And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma by composer Harry Partch (1901-1974), a bizarre and controversial figure who, by all accounts, was wildly iconoclastic, stubborn, and creative - much like Andy himself, only more so. Partch's music is scored for instruments which he built himself out of junk, and uses a "microtonal" scale - sometimes up to 43 tones to an octave. "Petals," which appears in two versions from 1964 and 1966, includes instruments with names like chromalodeans, gubagubi, drone devils, Mazda marimba, and zymo-xyl.
Source: gleaned from the Partch websites listed below.
Contributed by Natalie Jacobs.
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