Thomas Nicholson

This essay documents some initial speculations regarding how harmonies (might) evolve in extended just intonation, connecting back to various practices from two perspectives that have been influential to my work. The first perspective, which is the primary investigation, concerns itself with an intervallic conception of just intonation, centring around Harry Partch's technique of Otonalities and Utonalities interacting through Tonality Flux: close contrapuntal proximities bridging microtonal chordal structures. An analysis of Partch's 1943 composition "Dark Brother," one of his earliest compositions to use this technique extensively, is proposed, contextualised within his 43-tone "Monophonic" system and greater aesthetic interests. This is followed by further approaches to just intonation composition from the perspective of the extended harmonic series and spectral interaction in acoustic sounds. Recent works and practices from composers La Monte Young, Éliane Radigue, Ellen Fullman, and Catherine Lamb are considered, with a focus on the shifting modalities and neighbouring partials in Lamb's string quartet "divisio spiralis" (2019). Finally, I connect this discussion to my current compositional interests, which have been exploring a method of microtonal modulation through arbitrarily near enharmonic connections in Harmonic Space called "enharmonic proximities".