Microtonalism.

You remember the first time you listened to music that made you have to:


a) Stop what you're doing.
b) Consider that in listening to this your mind, conception of music, conception of how sound affects you is expanding.

Wychnegradsky is one such composer whose work displayed mastery over microtonal composition. Microtonal music is music that utilises quarter-tone i.e. 12 semi-tone becomes 24-quartertones. Furthermore one may choose to subdivide the notes differently to produce other microtonal harmonies e.g. subdivisions in fifths, sixths, twelfth, etc.

Wychnegradsky went largely unappreciated in his time, this may have been attributed to audience reactions to the often dissonant nature of microtonal music.

Ex.1

Wyschnegradsky - Quarter-Tone Etude on Density and Volume No. 1 

As you can hear, the music has a dissonance of its own. Now where Wychnegradsky's melodic skill is apt in the non-etude work. The Twenty-Four Preludes In Quarter Tones (1934), no.3 has harmonic sensibilities that recall the chromatic melodicism of Frederic Chopin's Nocturnes, here/hear. What microtonal music offers is broader melodic and harmonic capabilities. 

While the music may sound initially dissonant and strange is because if you listen to music derived from western tonal harmony, (we're talking classical here if the word modernism has crept into your mouth-hand-keyboard-type connection), you can have 12 x 12 notes to create one-hundred and forty-four diads. Then you have a further twelve triads that can be expressed major, minor, diminished etc, all adding to the equation in twelves. The point is that there are a number of combinations that are and have been explored since the beginnings of polyphony.

If one considers that in quarter-tonal based micro-tonality there are five-hundred and seventy-six diadic combinations. All voicings of quarter-tonal triadic harmony, e.g. diminished, augmented and major, are compounded in twenty-fours. Other composers such as Julian Carillo, an exceptional composer and music theorist experimented with other divisions of tone such as fifth-tone (31-tET), sixth-tone (36-tET) divisions. Meaning that once again new harmonic possibilities are created.

Julian Carillo's work shows exceptional integration of microtonal and tonal composition. Movement One of the Balbuceos (1960) synthesises, amongst other things, impressionistic gestures e.g. Debussy style whole-tone arpeggios, Wagnerian harmonic development particularly in creating dramatic expression and his style of micro-tonal composition.

On another note:

Thank you to Jaie, Jasper, Jonti, Jules, Mo-Joe (happy birthday), Lee, Alyx and Freya for the last two days. It was a pleasure playing with you. Kyu and Dark Bells were amazing.

See you on Wednesday and Thursday.

 

Moody.