Harry Partch's (1901-74) cycle of Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po (1930-33) marks a turning point signaling his so-claimed rejection of Western classical music traditions and adoption of "monophony," which he defined as the organization of musical materials expanding from unity. Existing research often examined this work through the lens of speech transcription, centered on fidelity to the rhythms of spoken English. However, attention has yet to be focused on how Partch employs characteristic tuning elements combined with melodic contour to convey the emotional expressive meaning and imagery of the poetry.

This study proposes that, in his setting of Seventeen Lyrics, Partch systematically employs his theories of "otonality" and "utonality" along with the classification of intervals, specifically in the piece "One-Footed Bride" for text painting. By mapping certain ratios to certain lyrics, Partch intentionally deploys certain types of ratios to convey semantic meaning. To visualize the melodic contour of "The Long-Departed Lover," my graphs plot melodic contours for each stanza, identifying each syllables ratio, cent deviation, frequency, equal-tempered note equivalent, and interval type. It is also important to concede that Partch utilizes melodic contour to strategically emphasize certain specific ratio choices to express the overall semantics of the poem.

This song demonstrates that Partch chooses microtonal pitches not solely to imitate the intonation of natural speech but also to achieve text-painting, whereby the types of ratios used convey emotional-semantic content; this correlation facilitates new insights into the text-painting techniques in Partchs vocal compositions employing unconventional tuning systems.