Angela Kucharski

Mary Hays

Rhetoric 105

February 11th, 2016

Illustration over Presentation

The artifact I chose was a letter written to from Harry Partch about . This artifact can be found in the Sousa Archives at UIUC. This letter was written in

October of 1967, John Cage and Harry Partch were both at the time. John Cage was a very forward thinking , always trying to challenge current musical beliefs and write contemporary . Cage composed a song entitled “ 4’33” ” where “the musicians perform with an absence of deliberate sound.”(Pritchett). So, yes, it’s a song of “silence” but Cage’s goal was to challenge the assumptions about musicianship that people had. Cage was also a big contributor to prepared which is “a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers.”(Pritchett). Like Cage, Harry Partch was also a very experimental composer. Along with composing he was also an exceptional theorist and instrument creator.

Partch composed using unequal intervals and microtonal scales, both very new ideas for western works at the time. Harry Partch also created his own instruments that were used directly in his compositions. These were sometimes hybrids of two already existing instruments while others were just bizarre creations. Regardless all of his self created instruments were used exclusively in his music.

So as one can see, Partch and Cage were very similar in their ideas. Both wanted to drive new concepts and create or alter musical instruments for the purpose of their compositions. Their was, however, one key difference that drove Partch and Cage to dislike each other. Their idea of musical notations were very different from one another. Cage believed in the standard idea of notation on his scores, giving tempo, style, and some dynamic notation. While Partch, on the other hand, wanted to make the music as descriptive as possible. Partch would “include specific seating arrangements, footnotes, and descriptive words in the music,” (Corey) along with the things Cage would include to get his musical ideas across. This letter was written after Partch found out that Cage disliked his music for the purpose of his musical notation.

The thesis of this artifact is that Partch firmly believed that scores and parts to a piece of music do not have to be visually appealing over descriptive. One piece of support is that Cage is not the only one that had very neat scores, many composer around this time followed similar notations because it was the standard. A warrant can be that this is an issue because musicians wind up doing a lot of interpretation on their own part which causes discrepancy through a section. Ensembles strive for uniformity across a section of similar instruments so having little description leaves a lot up the mind which can come across very different from person to person.

Another piece of support is that sheet music has been around for a long period of time and will continued to be used. A warrant for this is thorough notation is good to use so that even many years down the road someone will be able to look at this music and see exactly how it is supposed to be played. The final piece of support is that Partch used his own instruments in his compositions. As described earlier, Partch used his own instruments in his works. He gave no one permission to use his instruments in their compositions so these are only seen in his music.

The warrant to strengthen this is his specialized instruments makes detailed notation almost necessary for his compositions because it would give descriptions on how to play these new instruments that people were not exposed to before. There was no backing found in this letter.

Partch’s argument is clear; in the letter he even states that he just wants to “make a record that musicians can turn into sound,”(Partch). In this part of the letter, Partch is saying that he is writing music the way he does for the musicians’ sake, not because he wants to make the music look complicated or messy. Although, what are the faults that Cage can make against this? Well, one qualifier that can be made is that the music can be seen as cluttered because of all the strange music notations all over the page. A fair rebuttal to this is that disarranged music is in the eye of the person reading it but also the “cluttered’ annotation is really just giving more precise directions for the musician. The fact that Cage, along with many others at the time, sparsely notated his music can make it sound very different from performance to performance. Partch’s style will help to keep the music accurate to what he wanted. Another qualifier that can be made is that with all the descriptive notation given, it will not allow the musician enough musical freedom to play. This is a real issue; many people today question musicality in even professional orchestras. A rebuttal is that descriptive notation is meant so that alike instruments will sound similar across the section which is something that is strived for in ensembles. Partch’s goal was not to take out musicality but just to steer the musicians in a better direction.

But why is it that these musicians were stuck in there ways of notation? Why was this a big enough disagreement that these two composers would dislike each other? Well throughout the world of music notation has been something that can be done many ways. Our idea of how music should generally be notated is called the Western approach. Other countries around the world do not notate music even closely to the way we do. Some countries use pictures or diagrams, while others just simply pass down music by ear with no form of notation system. At the time that this letter was being written musical notation was a hot topic. Partch was a man who did a lot of traveling. He realized that he didn't really like the Western idea of teaching and wiring music so he traveled to expand his musical knowledge. Once he returned to the United

States he had all these other forms of notation under his belt. Once he had gotten his start as a composer not many people had seen notation like this before. Musicians, Composers, and Music

Educators were all talking about how Western notation was not the only way to do things. This letter is mainly an artifact because of the time it was written in. This topic got a lot of discussion and made people start to realize there were other ways of doing things.

Looking at this letter, it is clear that Partch felt extremely insulted after Cage started to dislike his music. But the way that Partch notated his music pioneered writing that influenced many composers. Partch’s notation helped steer the musical world in to a whole new era of music. His way of notation helped keep his musical ideas clear, made it easy for his self made instruments to be played, and enhanced musicians to stay unified throughout a section. This artifact overall changed the course of music writing and now people use Partch’s style more and more. The letter as a whole is a great look into the musical mind of Harry Partch and why he wrote music the way that he did. Works Cited

Corey, Charles. “Harry Partch." Harry Partch. Charles Corey, 12 May 2010. Web. 3 Feb. 2016.

Partch, Harry. Letter to John Cage. UIUC Sousa Archives: Partch, 14 Oct. 1967. Print.

Pritchett, James. “”The Piano in My Life.” The Piano in My Life. WordPress and My Life, Jan.

2016. Web. 03 Feb. 2016.

For my artifacts citation I chose to make the person who wrote the letter the author and also the publisher. I chose to make the title of the letter “Letter to John Cage” because the letter was written to this man and is the idea of the whole letter. I made the location UIUC Sousa

Archives because the letter is on display at the archives. I put the date for this citation as the date that is on the letter. Lastly, I chose to say this was a print source because it is printed out in the museum even though it is considered an artifact.