Ben Johnston on Partch

From an essay in Elliot Schwartz' book _Contemporary Composers on
Contemporary Music_:

"With pretuned instruments, like most of Partch's, one is held to a
gamut of pitches which is strictly limited, sometimes severly so.
The free soaring in an unlimited world of pitches organized into
otonal and utonal hexachords linked by common tones or by simple
interval relations from one sonority to the next is an idea one gets
from his theories but much less clearly from his music. There is no
doubt the the world he envisioned is there for the taking by anyone
with the courage to leave pretuned instruments to a supporting role
or else use them only in special circumstances in full recognition of
the straitjack they impose..."

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jp