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COPYRIGHT 2001 University of Washington
As we wonder what it is that grips us and fills us with foreboding and delight in Chopin's music, we are apt to find a solution that might appear to many as pure fantasy, namely that Chopin's intention was to release upon us a cloud of quarter-tones, which now appear as phantom doppelganger in the shadowy realm within the intervals produced by enharmonic change. Once the quarter-tones are emancipated, an entirely new world of tones will open to us. But since we have been accustomed to the long established divisions into semitones, these new sounds will seem weird, suggesting a splash of discordant waves. Yet the children of the next generation, or the one after next, will suck in these strange sounds with mother's milk, and may find in them a more stimulating and doubly rich art.
Johanna Kinkel
Acht Briefe an eine Freundin uber Clavier-Unterricht
IN 1991, Perspectives of New Music's "Forum: Microtonality Today" was groundbreaking in its clear presentation of the varied methods and accomplishments of several of the most important pioneers of microtonalism. Ten years later I am responding with some thoughts of my own, as one of a small minority of microtonalists referred to by Douglas Keislar in his introduction: composers who use microtones for no reason other than to obtain the stimulating sonorities that are available with the added pitches, and who employ distinct, functional, expanded forms of equal temperament to this end.
If such composers did not figure prominently in the Forum, this is understandable considering their extreme scarcity in recent decades. (1) Today microtones are considered most often as a means of attaining acoustically "correct," pure tunings in scalar, frequently triadic idioms. There also are many composers who, although they may be unconcerned with pure tuning, nonetheless use the added pitches in an incidental fashion, either as mere ornaments to the twelve traditional pitches, or in clusters designed actually to reduce the function of individual tones, in the manner of Iannis Xenakis or Krzysztof Penderecki.
Earlier in the twentieth century bold efforts were made to forge a discrete melodic and harmonic language out of expanded equal temperament, by Alois Haba, julian Carrillo and Ivan Wyshnegradsky. However this path fell into disuse, with very few composers following in their painstakingly-made footsteps. This is surely due largely to the bewildering challenge of making musical sense out of the added pitches, a challenge that largely was not met by these composers, who left no substantial repertoire of inspirational works to affirm the merits and artistic potential of this approach to future generations. (2) Nonetheless, it is my belief that even in this nearly embryonic state expanded equal temperament is actually the most valuable form of microtonalism, and that it carries the most potential for musical innovation.
In 1988 I began several years of private study with Joe Maneri, one of the few composers still developing and advancing expanded equal temperament. Despite near-obscurity and isolation even amid the already marginalized international community of microtonalists, Maneri has been writing with seventy-two-note equal temperament, and has been teaching it with unwavering commitment and passion to students in his microtonal course at the New England Conservatory of Music, since the late 1970s. Although his microtonal oeuvre to date remains small, totaling seven pieces, the beauty and innovation in these works is profound, and provides a rich subject for study.
Through observing Maneri's music, through my years as his student, and through my own subsequent independent composition and study, I have arrived at what I consider to be some simple, essential truths about microtonal composition. With the following essay I have two purposes. In Part 1, I will examine and compare the main currents in modern microtonalism and the vastly contrasting points of view that underlie each, which generally may be grouped into either the pursuit of pure tuning--just intonation being the most popular method, or simply adding pitches, and to show why the second approach has several advantages (practical, artistic--even theoretical) over the first, and further, to advocate the use of distinct equal-tempered microtonal chromatic scales. In Part 2, using excerpts from Maneri's and my own music, I hope to illuminate some practical issues that are fundamental to composition with non-just, microtonal equal temperament, and to suggest how these may affect compositional technique. Although the reader may find the issues, especially in Part 2, to be of a somewhat rudimentary nature, I believe that this in fact is an indication of their pertinence. My hope is that these ideas will serve to complement Perspectives of New Music's Forum of a decade ago, by clearing the air even further about why and how composers use microtones, and providing an alternative perspective.
PART 1: WHY ADD PITCHES?
JUST INTONATION
Musicians using pure tunings represent the largest and most popular trend in microtonalism today, as any web search on the subject of microtonality will demonstrate, and just intonation is by far the preferred tuning model (though neo-meantone and Pythagorean tunings are also used by some). Despite variations in technique, all theorists and composers in this category have in common a philosophical attraction to the notion of obtaining pure (i.e. truly consonant) intervals, regardless of whether they arrive at this practice through the "scientific" ideal of simulating the intervals of the overtone series, or arithmetically, through small whole number ratios. Some have constructed intricate microtonal chromatic scales to facilitate modulation, and most have also expanded the basic practice of triadic just chord construction, based on pure thirds (5/4) and fifths (3/2), to include larger number ratios (higher overtones). Many have formed groups or institutes to further the study and practice of pure tuning.
American composer Harry Partch could be described as the father of American modern just intonation. He expanded the range of acceptably small ratios from 5 to include the numbers 7, 9 and 11, and developed a forty-three note, symmetrical chromatic scale whose tones form intervals with the fundamental using ratios within this "11-limit." Partch influenced subsequent generations of American composers, most notably former students Ben Johnston, who has further expanded the range to include prime numbers as high as 31, (3) and Lou Harrison, an especially outspoken advocate of just intonation who is well known for the justly tuned non-European instruments and scales he frequently uses in his music. (4) Partch has recently gained popularity in Europe as well, as evidenced by the numerous performances there by Newband (an ensemble whose unique instrument collection includes instruments made by Partch, as well as some replications), and the creation of the Harry Partch Society in England in 1995. (5)
In the Netherlands in the 1950s, Dutch physicist Adriaan Fokker initiated a revival of the 31-note equal temperament of 17th-century scientist and theorist Christiaan Huygens. This method modifies the infinitely ascending fifths of meantone tuning, by enlarging them slightly from 696.578 cents to 696.774 cents, resulting in a series that closes at the 31st fifth, and from which fifths, minor thirds, major thirds and minor sevenths may be derived that do not deviate from the pure intervals by more than about 6 cents. Although today the government-funded Stichting Huygens-Fokker (founded by Fokker in 1960) provides a forum for a variety of microtonal disciplines, the influence of Fokker's ideas is apparent in the high number of Dutch (and some non-Dutch) musicians who write or perform in 31-note equal temperament. (6)
In Salzburg the Richter-Herf Institut fur Musikalische Grunglagenforschung (Institute for Basic Research on Music) was founded by the late theorist and composer Franz Richter-Herf in 1972, under the aegis of the Mozarteum Academy. In the 1970s Richter-Herf and fellow theorist Rolf Maedel conducted studies at the acoustical laboratories of the Mozarteum which were concerned with the perception of musical intervals and chords. Richter-Herf advocated, and used, seventy-two-note equal temperament as a means with which to obtain comfortably close approximations of the pure intervals. The Institut was formed "in order to integrate the musical, theoretical and psychoacoustical research of bases as a scientific foundament [sic] into the education at the Hoch-schule 'Mozarteum.'" (7) Directed today by musicologist Prof. Horst-Peter Hesse, the Institut's activities have expanded, not so much to function as an umbrella to varying types of microtonality like the Stichting, but to encompass the broader field of psycho-aco ustics, of which pure tuning (termed "ekmelic music" by Richter-Herf) is one aspect.
It is my belief, first, that there are serious, fundamental weaknesses in the theoretical premise of just intonation. It is true that holes in a composer's theory or logic may not always result directly in flaws in his/her music, as can be seen in some superb pieces written by "just" composers--a matter I will address later. Nonetheless I feel it is necessary to reexamine this premise because of its considerable influence today in the microtonal "mainstream," and because its assertions are grave and misleading, with regard both to our understanding of existing music and to the creation of our own music. Second, and more importantly, there are certain fundamental practical limitations inherent in the application of just intonation principles. And third (and this is admittedly a subject which involves even more overtly biased views), I also believe that the artistic premise for just intonation warrants examination.
THE THEORETICAL PREMISE OF JUST INTONATION AND THE GENERAL ISSUE OF DISSONANCE
At the heart of just intonation theory lie certain presumptions about consonance and dissonance which can be summed up more or less as follows: the intervals available to us through the great compromise of standard Western equal temperament are merely phony representations of the "natural," "pure" intervals, and are incorrect, flawed and dissonant, whereas the pure intervals are the correct ones, are truly consonant, and must be--indeed are--better to listen to. Arguments are frequently made about "what the ear is equipped to hear," etc.
Such views are unambiguously expressed by most proponents and practitioners of just intonation. For example, Harry Partch's popular book Genesis of a Music is full of statements like the following: "the prime faculty of the ear is the perception of small number intervals." (8) Ben Johnston cites as the original source of his interest in just intonation his sudden realization in college that "we had developed a music that was not based on the real scientific nature of sound," (9) and Lou Harrison simply refers to justly tuned intervals as "real intervals" and equal-tempered ones as "fake intervals." (10) An even more elaborate declaration of such views can be found in the website of the Just Intonation Network, under "What is Just Intonation?," a description for newcomers which includes the following statements:
The simple-ratio intervals ... are what the human auditory system recognizes as consonance, if it ever has the opportunity to hear them in a musical context.
and
Twelve-tone equal temperament was ultimately adopted ... because it made all of the intervals of a given type equally out of tune, thus avoiding the contrast between in-tune and out-of-tune intervals that characterized some earlier temperaments. (11)
Horst-Peter Hesse, in his essay for the Forum on Richter-Herf, cites experiments on test subjects (though without many details given as to the variables of said experiments), which reveal simultaneously played major thirds to be perceived as "impure, rough and strained" when tuned to wide Pythagorean tuning (408 cents) and "pure and clear, smooth and resolved" when tuned to exactly 5/4 (386 cents). Hesse concludes that the pure intervals "enjoy a special position in human perception due to their sonance. From this it can be seen that not all musical intervals can be treated in the same way. This fact was temporarily denied in twentieth-century music theory." (12) And Adriaan Fokker, albeit in a slightly more diplomatic tone than many of his colleagues, wrote in 1955:
No doubt this equal temperament with its perfect cyclic symmetry has rendered great services in the evolution of Western musical civilization. One must recognize this. On the other hand, many musicians are aware of the deficiency of the chords sound [sic] on the pianoforte and the organ that have been tuned according to the duodecimal temperament. (13)
Obviously it is a certain abhorrence of perceived or suspected random dissonance that is the source of the controversy. Not only do most proponents of just intonation, motivated by their beliefs about dissonance to renounce traditional equal temperament, reject other types of non-just microtonal music as well, such as quarter-tone music, (14) but they are also implicitly--though not outwardly--at odds with all non-just music, of any kind. Because of this rarely addressed issue,...
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