Microtonality

[Lawrence Dunn]

Just wondered if anyone composes microtonally, what you compose, and why.

Incidentally, I wish there were another word for 'regular or irregular intervals, or divisions of the octave' that didn't include the word 'tone' or 'tonality'. It seems to me to suggest that microtonality is a deviation from convention rather than a significant aesthetic in itself.

Myself - I have completed a piece for clarinet ensemble and almglocken, where several of the clarinets are detuned justly; I am about to complete a clarinet quintet that makes use of both 12- and 19-TET simultaneously.

L.

[Jeff Harrington]

I compose lots of microtonal music and I'll just add that it's asking for a world of pain, focussing your career on it. I've only recently started writing for instruments with microtones and that was at their request. I once had a teacher say, you should never put microtones in a score until you've had several pieces played by major orchestras. It just won't get played.

While you're in school, you can do what you want, of course, but when you're out in the real world trying to get performed, unless you're very lucky, it's a nightmare. It's sad that that is still the case. I'm sure you know all this and that wasn't what you wanted to talk about so, I apologize for my rambling... ;-)

As for why I compose microtonality - it's to do something new. Every composer, I believe, has to make their mark in some way by doing something that hasn't been done before. That's art. To repeat the past, atonal, complex, tonal, simple, is to be an artisan. They also sound cool. :)

I've just finished a piece for saxophone quartet and is full of quartertones.

http://harrington.lunarpages.com/mp3/Jeff-Harrington-Grigri_for_Sax...

I use them as both decoration, and as harmonic components (more towards the slow section in the middle). I've got lots of microtonal (19ET, quartertone, electronic) music at my website, too. http://jeffharrington.org

Your cymbal piece, you uploaded was very cool, BTW.

[Lawrence Dunn]

Thanks for the responses.

To Jeff:

But there are composers, particularly in Europe, that use microtonality all the time - the French spectral composers - Grisey, Murail, Dufourt, Viver, Radulescu - being the obvious examples; but also Germans Lachenmann, Beat Furrer (he's actually Austrian/Swiss), Matthias Spahlinger, Georg Fredrich Haas, Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger; Brits Brian Ferneyhough, Micheal Finnissy, Richard Barrett, Chris Dench, Benedict Mason; and a huge array of Polish, Dutch, Scandinavian, and other composers.

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm might be largely confined to the States. That said, Tenney seems to be the origin of much of the important theorising in this area. Incidentally, Aaron Cassidy (interesting American composer who writes in a European style) has had a few performances over here recently (see here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juyzJ0s1nUo&feature=related ).

Maybe I am at an advantage being a European, but who knows.

I certainly wont give up writing in this way (or whichever way I feel is aesthetically valid in the future) until I've had 'several pieces played by major orchestras'. If I did that, I might as well give up composition right now.

Thanks for the complements about the cymbal piece!

The sax quartet is interesting - remarkably tonal! The microtones almost sound like 'wrong' normal notes, than discrete pitches in themselves.

I'll up some more of my music soon. Thanks again.

L.

[Jeff Harrington]

Lawrence, yes, I know the Europeans (not everything). And I know Aaron for a while now.

I'm just being, probably over-practical and you should probably ignore any and all advice in this regard. My vibe is that eventually the European privileging of the advanced arts will disappear. It's very government-supported and nobody has money any more. ;-(

But no young person should worry about the future... dream now and write whatever the hell you want to. Just be brilliant and you'll be ok... or not... what does it matter at least you did your best! (And please don't take that as being ironic or cynical even tho it probably sounds that way).

Lawrence Dunn said:

Thanks for the responses.

To Jeff:

But there are composers, particularly in Europe, that use microtonality all the time - the French spectral composers - Grisey, Murail, Dufourt, Viver, Radulescu - being the obvious examples; but also Germans Lachenmann, Beat Furrer (he's actually Austrian/Swiss), Matthias Spahlinger, Georg Fredrich Haas, Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger; Brits Brian Ferneyhough, Micheal Finnissy, Richard Barrett, Chris Dench, Benedict Mason; and a huge array of Polish, Dutch, Scandinavian, and other composers.

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm might be largely confined to the States. That said, Tenney seems to be the origin of much of the important theorising in this area. Incidentally, Aaron Cassidy (interesting American composer who writes in a European style) has had a few performances over here recently (see here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juyzJ0s1nUo&feature=related ).

Maybe I am at an advantage being a European, but who knows.

I certainly wont give up writing in this way (or whichever way I feel is aesthetically valid in the future) until I've had 'several pieces played by major orchestras'. If I did that, I might as well give up composition right now.

Thanks for the complements about the cymbal piece!

The sax quartet is interesting - remarkably tonal! The microtones almost sound like 'wrong' normal notes, than discrete pitches in themselves.

I'll up some more of my music soon. Thanks again.

L.

[adam kondor]

quarter-tones (microtones, even noises) are just part of the language, not using them would be like artificially constraining our vocabulary - at least that's how I feel now.
I've uploaded here my Cello-Piano piece, 'Partita' , in which I think the use of microtones is just self-evident.

(look at the score here)

[Dave Seidel]

All of my work is microtonal, but is rarely if ever scale-oriented -- I'm more interested in the properties of sound, including "absolute" intervals/ratios.

However, I should add that this is a practical approach for me because I am working in the electronic realm, where I produce/perform everything myself, so I have no reliance on other performers. Besides, I'm currently interested in things that would be impossible for physical instruments in any case (e.g., precise tunings, long durations, very gradual changes to timbre and tempo).

[David Beardsley]

"Incidentally, I wish there were another word for 'regular or irregular intervals, or divisions of the octave' that didn't include the word 'tone' or 'tonality'."

Unequal divisions of the octave.

[David Beardsley]

Jeff Harrington said:

I compose lots of microtonal music and I'll just add that it's asking for a world of pain, focussing your career on it. I've only recently started writing for instruments with microtones and that was at their request. I once had a teacher say, you should never put microtones in a score until you've had several pieces played by major orchestras. It just won't get played.

Unless you perform it yourself and/or form your own ensemble. Eventually someone will hear your genius and ask you to write music for them.

[William Robinson]

As I understand, our Pythagoran stacking of fifths, which Harry Partch refers to as the "12 limit," is as arbitrary as any other equal octave division. By stopping at the"12 limit" it yields almost perfect fifths (2 cents flat in ET), but major thirds really suffer, thus the existence of mean-tone temperaments.
The Arabs kept going around the circle, stopping at 17. I have a keyboard which allows me to modulate the keyboard voltage to produce various equal-tempered tunings. To get 17, tune your octave from C past the octave to F. For 19-tone, tune to the G right above, and so on. I've also tried 23, 31, and 43.
I made a 17-tone ET windchime I call "the mosquito-killer chime" because anything flying into those waves of dissonance is doomed. After this experience, and after listening to some Arabic music, I realized that, like our diatonic 7-note scale, the Arabs don't use all 17 notes at once, but construct a scale of selected intervals.
It seems when we speak of microtones, the tendency is to assume clusters of mosquito-killing dissonance; but there is much to explore in using portions of the scale, for expressive nuance, to emphasize a truer third or fifth, etc.
Harry Partch uses a 43-tone scale, but he does it to approximate pure "just" intervals, which 43-tone gets very close to replicating; close enough for all practical purposes.
Jon Catler (of J.C. and the Microtones) of New York had a 31-fret Stratocaster guitar made. The way he uses it, it sounds very similar to a pedal steel guitar as used in country music. I noticed that when steel guitar players tune up, they usually tune the pedal that goes 2-3 to a flatter major third than tempered, which can drive you crazy if you're playing a guitar tuned by an ET electronic tuner.

[David Beardsley]

William Robinson said:

As I understand, our Pythagoran stacking of fifths, which Harry Partch refers to as the "12 limit," is as arbitrary as any other equal octave division. By stopping at the"12 limit" it yields almost perfect fifths (2 cents flat in ET), but major thirds really suffer, thus the existence of mean-tone temperaments.

You understand wrong. A Pythagorean tuning is a spiral of 3/2 intervals with a prime limit of three.

[Lawrence Dunn]

Just for general info:

Partch actually used 'real' just intervals. He didn't use an equal-tempered approximation, instead the 43-tone scale is actually based on an 11-limit scale with the remaining notes filled in justly.

Just intervals are those intervals that are defined by simple integer ratios. If you've ever used a keyboard that is tuned to play only the harmonic series, you'll know what these intervals sound like.

The interesting thing about Partch is that, in his effort to rectify the artificiality produced by tempered scales (by re-introducing the just intervals), he had to artificialise his system anyway in order to get tessituras to overlap. If you only have one instrument playing in one register, using just intervals is fine. You can also use this same register replicated at different octaves, but that means you can only ever have one type of tessitura (replicated at various octaves).

Partch actually invented what he called a 'tonality diamond', which is a representation of not only overtones, but undertones - so that a fundamental that actually lies in the middle of the register, and overtones spread out above it, and artificial 'undertones' spread out below it. The intervals between the fundamental and the undertones are still just, it's just that undertones don't exist in nature (you cannot have wavelengths vibrating in on a string that are longer than the string). But what's neat about the system is that the undertones of a higher fundamental become the overtones of a lower fundamental, the scale is completely symmetrical.

In fact, the harmonic series is so symmetrical anyway that we needn't think in this way. Partch attempted to use just interval ratios, but we can approach it the other way and assume that each pitch is a 'pitch class' or overtone of a 'sub-fundamental'. Partch's scales can be generalised as subsets of a harmonic series above a very low (inaudible) fundamental, but without prime overtones that are unique to the high end of the spectrum. This way of thinking - thinking 'spectrally' rather than 'justly' - was used by Horatiu Radulescu, in pieces like the 4th String Quartet. But his preferance for prime, unique partials creates much more complex just intervals - and this makes for an incredibly rich sound world that still adheres to the just 'credo'.

Take a look at Radulescu's graph of the scordatura here on p. 12 (the 4th string quartet is actually for 9 string quartets, 8 of which form a massive 'spectral scordatura' on a low C (1 Hz) that surrounds the audience). Notice the prevalence of prime harmonics - if a harmonic is prime it means it is not a partial of a overtone higher than the fundemental (1 Hz in this case); non-prime harmonics can be seen as being part of subsets of the grand harmonic series, as they are integer multiples of numbers other than 1. http://www.trioscordatura.com/Wild%20Ocean.pdf

Radulescu's resulting pitch structure is wildly more complex than Partch's, because he is able to ascend much further up the harmonic series to higher and higher prime partials, obtaining unique intervals that do not exist at the lower end of the series.

[adam kondor]

Tx for this one, Lawrence, very useful for me!

Lawrence Dunn said:

Just for general info:

[William Robinson]

"As I understand, our Pythagoran stacking of fifths, which Harry Partch refers to as the "12 limit," is as arbitrary as any other equal octave division. By stopping at the"12 limit" it yields almost perfect fifths (2 cents flat in ET), but major thirds really suffer, thus the existence of mean-tone temperaments."

"You understand wrong. A Pythagorean tuning is a spiral of 3/2 intervals with a prime limit of three."

____________________________________________________________________________

I used "Pythagoran" to describe the stacking of fifths ("...our Pythagoran stacking of fifths...") which, if closed at the 12 limit, gives 12 notes within a closed 2/1.

I wasn't defining Pythagoran tuning; I was referring to our 12-note closed-octave tuning, which Partch says is presented today (inaccurately) as the twelve "cycle" or circle of fifths. Remember, we closed the spiral to get 2/1, the octave. Pythagoran fifths were used as the basis of our 12 note ET.

"By stopping at the"12 limit", not continuing the spiral, is the distinction I made.

The various "cycles" (5, 7, 12, 19, 31, 41, 53, 306, and 347) have all been proposed as a basis of temperament.