PAUL GALLAGHER

The music Paul Gallagher left to the world speaks uncannily to our time. Open conflict is ascendant. The planet and those who inhabit it seem at war with each other. Is tuning meaningful for today? 

Starting in 1980 – when tuning outside the standard 12 equally divided pitches to the octave was even more unfamiliar to audiences than it is today – Paul Gallagher developed an original approach to just intonation that extended the ratios of the natural harmonic intervals to all elements of the composition.

"From the outset," he wrote, "it was clear to me that the quality and richness of these harmonies, drawn untempered from the overtone series, would demand their own language and syntax...so I began to develop a style that unfolds from the intervals themselves and the way they relate to each other. Rhythms, melodies, phrase structures, etc., were all derived from the same proportions as the harmonies."
 

"Thus the material – melodic, harmonic, rhythmic – reflects itself in the overall structure and at all levels between."

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His compositions generally use 19 tones to the octave, occasionally up to 32, with his primary scale the 8th through 16th partials of an overtone series with C as the fundamental. His modal variations are built on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th partials of that series.

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Though illness limited his active composing period to the 1980s and 1990s, his legacy includes a rare feat, a symphony for full orchestra in just intonation, the premiere of which was enthusiastically received at the American Festival of Microtonal Music in 1987. Premiering at the following year's festival was his composition for solo flute, "Lure." His other just-tuned instrumental compositions include two works for piano and another for piano and violin, a work for trumpet with woodwinds and vibraphone, a wind orchestra, and a single-movement work for chamber orchestra.

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A tenor and vocal coach, Paul Gallagher also focused heavily on writing music and lyrics for accompanied and unaccompanied voice in just intonation. Several such pieces for solo tenor and soprano, alto, tenor, and bass quartet were eventually woven into a choreographed oratorio that was performed in New York in 1998, with his paintings and photo-intarsia projected as backdrops.

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Like many just intonation composers, Paul Gallagher was captivated by the tuning system's clarity. With pitch intervals dictated by natural frequency relationships, just intonation produces what proponents consider pure, uncompromised sound not achieved through traditional tunings tempered into equally divided octaves to facilitate modulation and transposition. And like microtonal frameworks in general, just tuning permits wide experimentation outside the constraints of the prevailing European classical tuning system. 

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In addition to these advantages, Paul Gallagher prized another: its poetic, metaphoric appeal.

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"My use of just intonation stems from an interest in harmony both aurally and philosophically," he wrote. "Each partial of an overtone series is itself a fundamental, casting its own series of partials. Yet, this myriad of partials and fundamentals is not heard as a complexity but as a single composite sound."

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Like the themes of universal inseparability, indigenous worldviews, and rites of awareness animating several of his narratives on existential harmony, the tuning itself contributed a layer of relevance that infused the act of composing with meaning.

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"In each facet of Being can be seen both its fundamental identity and its relative or partial identity," he wrote. "To observe that each facet constantly embraces both poles is to see that they are in fact a single identity and to understand harmony as an inevitable reality."