Music as Communal Practice and the Problem of White Joy in Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices

Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices (2009–11) is a largely diatonic work with an infectious groove that has rocketed Shaw to stardom, earning her a Pulitzer Prize at the age of 30. But Partita’s accessible surface belies its complexity and its close relationship to the New York Schools of both music and art. Following in the footsteps of her experimental forerunners, Shaw’s notations are indeterminate and, therefore, situated in a community of musicians that become co-creators with Shaw. The graphic notations that Shaw employs are largely an attempt to indicate timbral variety, as Shaw borrows from a wide variety of global vocal techniques for this piece. The focus of this study is on the problems Partita poses as a result of its timbral variety and the graphic notations that function as instructions for the group of highly-trained ‘insiders’ performing it, namely, Shaw’s own Roomful of Teeth. Communities of insiders rely on boundaries that also exclude, and the work has faced criticisms of cultural appropriation, most famously in 2019 from the Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. This study problematises the sense of joy that this piece excites in the body of the white listener—joy created in the absence of bodies of marginalised musicians.