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Microtonal music



 
 
Microtonal music is music
Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
 using microtones — intervals of less than an equally spaced
Equal temperament

Equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of Musical tuning in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratios....
 semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.

Terminology
Microtonal music may refer to all music which contains intervals smaller than the conventional contemporary Western semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
. The term implies music containing very small intervals but can include any tuning that differs from the western 12 tone equal temperament.






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Microtonal music is music
Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
 using microtones — intervals of less than an equally spaced
Equal temperament

Equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of Musical tuning in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratios....
 semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.

Terminology


Microtonal music may refer to all music which contains intervals smaller than the conventional contemporary Western semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
. The term implies music containing very small intervals but can include any tuning that differs from the western 12 tone equal temperament. By this definition, the following systems are microtonal: a diatonic scale in any meantone tuning; the traditional Carnatic
Carnatic music

Carnatic music is a system of music commonly associated with the southern part of the Indian subcontinent, with its area roughly confined to four modern states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu....
 system of 22 sruti
Sruti (music)

The sruti is the smallest interval of the tuning system in Indian classical music, contrary to the 12 semitones in conventional Western scales....
; much Indonesian gamelan music
Gamelan

File:Javanese Gamelan.jpgA gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings....
; and Thai, Burmese, and African music which use 7 tones in each (approximate) octave. Hence, the term "microtonal" is used to describe music using intervals not found in 12-tone equal temperament, so these musics, as well as musics using just intonation
Just intonation

In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequency of notes are related by ratios of whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval; in other words, the two notes are members of the same harmonic series ....
, meantone temperament
Meantone temperament

Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, which is a system of musical tuning. In general, a meantone is constructed the same way as Pythagorean tuning, as a chain of perfect fifths, but in a meantone, each fifth is narrowed by the same amount in order to make the other intervals, like the major third, closer to their ideal just intonat...
, or other alternative tunings may be considered microtonal.
Other terminology has been used (and is still used today) by theorists and composers. Micro-intervals is commonly used to speak about intervals smaller than the semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
, and sometimes macro-intervals for non-multiples of the semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
 greater than it. Ivan Wyschnegradsky (and many of those inspired by him) used the term ultra-chromatic for micro-intervals and infra-chromatic for macro-intervals (Wyschnegradsky 1972, 84-87). Ivor Darreg
Ivor Darreg

Ivor Darreg was a leading proponent of and composer of microtonal music or "xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments....
 proposed the term xenharmonic (from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 ?????, foreign, and Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 ?e??a, hospitable) for any scale other than 12-tone equal tempered scale. (See xenharmonic
Xenharmony

Xenharmonic is a term used to describe tuning systems, or music using those systems, which does not conform to or closely approximate the common 12-tone equal temperament....
 music).

Usage

One reason microtonalists explore alternate tunings is that each unique even or uneven division of the octave or non-octave or octave+fifth etc. gives a new world of intervallic connections and thereby new musical content. Just-intonation scales like Partch's 43 tone unequal scale
Harry Partch's 43-tone scale

The 43-tone scale is a just intonation scale with 43 pitches in each octave, invented and used by Harry Partch.The first of Partch's "four concepts" is "The scale of musical interval begins with absolute Consonance and dissonance and gradually progresses into an infinity of Consonance and dissonance, the consonance of the intervals decrea...
 start with the (non-tempered) diatonic Western scale, and many of them extend it, in Partch's case up to the 11th partial
Overtone

An overtone is a natural resonance of a system. Systems described by overtones are often sound systems, for example, blown pipes or plucked strings....
 (Partch 1979, 93, 119-137). Some like the 19 tone
19 equal temperament

In music, 19 equal temperament, called 19-TET, 19-equal division of the octave, or 19-ET, is the Temperament scale derived by dividing the octave into 19 equally large steps....
 or 31 tone
31 equal temperament

In music, 31 equal temperament , which can be abbreviated 31-TET, 31-equal division of the octave, 31-ET, is the Temperament scale derived by dividing the octave into 31 equal-sized steps....
 equal scales may be used close to diatonic scales, but extend them considerably. Other divisions of the octave do not support the diatonic basis for Western musical notation and tonal theory, but have other equally viable intervallic relationships.

History

The earliest music of which a written record exists anywhere on earth appears to be the Hurrian Hymn (Fink 1988; Dumbrill 2000,). This music may have been microtonal, though interpretation of the Hurrian records has been disputed (West 1994).

The Hellenic civilizations of ancient Greece also left fragmentary records of their music—c.f., the Delphic Hymns. The ancient Greeks approached the creation of different musical intervals and modes by dividing and combining tetrachord
Tetrachord

Traditionally, a tetrachord is a series of four tones filling in the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion. In modern usage a tetrachord is any four-note segment of a scale or tone row....
s, recognizing three genera of tetrachords: the enharmonic, the chromatic, and the diatonic. Ancient Greek intervals were of many different sizes, including microtones. The enharmonic genus in particular featured intervals of a distinctly "microtonal" nature, which were sometimes smaller than 50 cents
Cent (music)

The cent is a logarithmic scale unit of measure used for musical interval . Typically cents are used to measure extremely small intervals, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems, and in fact the interval of one cent is much too small to be heard between successive notes....
, less than half of the contemporary Western semitone
Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
 of 100 cents. In the ancient Greek enharmonic genus, the tetrachord contained a semitone of varying sizes (approximately 100 cents) divided into two such smaller, microtonal, intervals; in conjunction with a larger interval of roughly 400 cents, these intervals comprised the perfect fourth (approximately 498 cents, or the ratio of 4/3 in just intonation
Just intonation

In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequency of notes are related by ratios of whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval; in other words, the two notes are members of the same harmonic series ....
) (West 1992, 160–72).

Joel Mandelbaum
Joel Mandelbaum

Joel Mandelbaum is an United States music composer and teacher, most well known for his use of microtonal music . He also has written the first Ph.D....
 has argued in his PhD thesis that scholarship done on the Antiphonarium Codex Montpellier
Antiphonary of St. Benigne, Dijon

The Antiphonary of St. Benigne is an 11th century musical manuscript in a codex that records antiphonal responses of Gregorian chant, one of the earliest surviving pieces of written music....
 suggests that it records microtonal tunings, probably the Greek enharmonic (Mandelbaum 1961, ). In his opinion, this indicates that microtonal tunings survived and were commonly used late into the medieval period.

Meantone tunings date from the early 1490s, as scholars such as Richard Taruskin
Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin is an American musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, fifteenth-century music, twentieth-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism, and analysis....
  and Patrizio Barbieri have pointed out. Since the time of Pietro Aron
Pietro Aron

Pietro Aron, also known as Pietro Aaron , was an Italy music theorist and composer. He was born in Florence and probably died in Bergamo ....
's treatise (Aron 1523), meantone tuning became extremely common and was considered to represent "correct" tuning throughout Europe until 1750 and in England and Spain until 1850. Such meantone tunings sound similar to, but more harmonious than, conventional Western tunings of 12 equal pitches per octave, when performed on an instrument limited to 12 pitches per octave, as long as the composer restricts him/herself to a narrow compass of musical keys close to the root note of the tuning (i.e., if the meantone tuning is tuned starting with C, the keys close to C major will sound like a more harmonious take on conventional Western music; distant keys, however, like Eb minor, will contain highly audibly exotic and sometimes discordant musical intervals.) Some early composers, however, deliberately wandered far afield from the root note of meantone tunings, producing highly microtonal effects in typical renditions of their music. One prominent example is "Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La" by the British virginal composer John Bull
John Bull (composer)

John Bull was an English people composer, musician, and organ builder. He was a renowned Keyboard instrument performer and most of his compositions were written for this medium....
 (composed sometime between the 1580s and 1610, and included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book). Such extensive modulation in meantone tuning on a 12-note-per octave instrument sounds "wolf" fifths and other exotic musical intervals not found in music using 12 equal pitches per octave.

It was quite common in the heyday of meantone tuning to find keyboards with "split" keys or special organ stops, often allowing 13-16 pitches per octave of meantone tuning. In this way music by Handel
HANDEL

HANDEL was the code-name for the United Kingdom's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges....
 and many other composers could be played in meantone tuning, maintaining smooth harmony and conventional-sounding melody even as the music modulated to distant keys. Teachers of string instruments, including Leopold Mozart
Leopold Mozart

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gr?ndlichen Violinschule....
, and of wind instruments, including Quantz, expected their students to distinguish all enharmonic pairs of pitches (like F# and Gb) in their playing, with the sharpened version of one diatonic tone being played lower than the flattened version of the next diatonic tone up. So composers in the meantone era who restricted their harmonic compass were doing so largely because they were writing for keyboard or an ensemble that included a keyboard.

Many tunings of meantone temperament can be made to close, in practice, using a manageable number of notes per octave. The 1/3-comma and 1/4-comma meantones close very nearly in 19 and 31 tones per octave, respectively, with better approximations to the 5-limit
Limit (music)

In music theory, limit can refer to a variety of methods used to characterize the harmonies found in a piece of music, genre of music, or by extension, the harmonies that can be made with a particular scale or class of scales....
 thirds and sixths of the diatonic scale than can be found on modern 12-tone instruments. Several French composers of the 17th century made use of this fact by designing keyboards for 19 equal intervals to the octave, which could be played in all keys with no "wolf" intervals. 17th-century Dutch scientist and musician Christiaan Huygens
Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Netherlands mathematics, astronomer, physics, and horology. His work included early telescopic studies, investigations and inventions related to time keeping, and studies of both optics and centrifugal force....
 promoted the use of 31-equal, which also allows meantone in all keys without "wolves", but with better approximations of 7-limit
Limit (music)

In music theory, limit can refer to a variety of methods used to characterize the harmonies found in a piece of music, genre of music, or by extension, the harmonies that can be made with a particular scale or class of scales....
 intervals than in 19-equal. Huygens advocated the use of the just seventh, with pitch ratio 7/4. This interval is very well approximated in 31-equal. In the 20th century, a Dutch school of microtonalists arose around Adriaan Fokker, which sought to use the novel resources of Huygens' 31-tone system as fundamental features of new musical forms, and not merely according to their established functions in common-practice tonality. Many Dutch composers were associated with this school, including Fokker himself under a pseudonym; the best-known was probably Henk Badings
Henk Badings

Henk Badings was a Netherlands composer.Born in Bandung, Java as the son of Herman Louis Johan Badings, an officer in the Dutch East Indies army, Badings became an orphan at an early age....
.

Guillaume Costeley
Guillaume Costeley

Guillaume Costeley was a French composer of the Renaissance music. He was the court organist to Charles IX of France and famous for his numerous chansons, which were representative of the late development of the form; his work in this regard was part of the early development of the style known as musique mesur?e....
's "Chromatic Chanson", "Seigneur Dieu ta pitié" of 1558 used 1/3 comma meantone and explored the full compass of 19 pitches in the octave, making use of audibly microtonal intervals like the 63-cent interval of 1/19 of an octave.

The Italian Renaissance
Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600. Dates of classical music eras, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the 15th century....
 composer and theorist Nicola Vicentino
Nicola Vicentino

Nicola Vicentino was an Italy music theory and composer of the Renaissance music. He was one of the most visionary musicians of the age, inventing, among other things, a microtonal keyboard, and devising a practical system of chromaticism writing two hundred years before the rise of equal temperament....
 (1511-1576) experimented with microintervals and built a keyboard with 36 keys to the octave, known as the archicembalo
Archicembalo

The Archicembalo was a musical instrument constructed by Nicola Vicentino in 1555. This was a harpsichord built with many extra keys and strings, enabling experimentation in microtonality and just intonation....
. However Vicentino's experiments were primarily motivated by his research (as he saw it) on the ancient Greek genera, and by his desire to have beatless intervals (when played with near-harmonic-series timbres) available within chromatic compositions.

Johann Kuhnau
Johann Kuhnau

Johann Kuhnau was a Germany composer, organist and harpsichordist.Kuhnau was born in Geising. He preceded Johann Sebastian Bach as Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig....
's composition "Der Kampf zwischen David und Goliath," composed around 1700 in meantone, makes prominent and aggressive use of the exotic intervals available in meantone—specifically, the "wolf" fifth. The effect of contrasting lightly tempered fifths with the dissonant "wolf" fifth depends on the audible microtonal distinction between the intervals.

Composers such as Beethoven and Schubert made extensive use of the enharmonic
Enharmonic

In modern music and musical notation, an enharmonic equivalent is a note , interval , or key signature which is equivalence to some other note, interval, or key signature, but "spelled", or named, differently....
 modulation cycles possible only in a closed tuning of 12 pitches per octave, and not open-ended tunings like meantone. This led to the demise of meantone thinking in most of Europe by the outset of the Romantic period. Microtonality was not completely lost, however, as some string teachers began to advocate "expressive intonation" in which the enharmonic
Enharmonic

In modern music and musical notation, an enharmonic equivalent is a note , interval , or key signature which is equivalence to some other note, interval, or key signature, but "spelled", or named, differently....
 distinctions of meantone were often reversed, i.e., the sharpened version of one diatonic tone often played higher than the flattened version of the next diatonic tone up.

Jacques Fromental Halévy composed a quarter-tone work for soli, choir and orchestra "Prométhée enchaîné" in 1849, and European composers produced an ever-increasing number of microtonal compositions as the 19th century waned and the 20th century began.

By the 1910s and 1920s, a fad emerged for quarter tone
Quarter tone

A quarter tone is an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone.Many composers are known for having written music including quarter tones or the quarter tone scale, first proposed by 19th-century music theorist Mikha'il Mishaqah , including: Pierre Boulez, Juli?n Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alberto Ginas...
s (24 equal pitches per octave), inspiring composers as Charles Ives
Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American musical modernism composer. He is widely regarded as one of the first American composers of international significance....
, Julián Carrillo
Julián Carrillo

Juli?n Carrillo Trujillo was a Mexico composer, conductor, violinist and music theorist, who discovered the Thirteenth Sound....
, Alois Hába
Alois Hába

File:H?ba.JPGAlois H?ba was a Czech composer, musical theorist and teacher. He is primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones....
, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, and Mildred Couper
Mildred Couper

Mildred Couper , prominent American composer and pianist, was one of the first musicians to experiment with quarter-tone music. She was based in Santa Barbara, California, but her music and influence were felt around the world....
. Such was the popularity of 24 equal during the late teens and 1920s, for example, that Erwin Schulhoff
Erwin Schulhoff

Erwin Schulhoff was a composer and pianist....
 gave classes in quarter-tone composition at the Prague Conservatory
Prague Conservatory

Prague Conservatory, sometimes also Prague Conservatoire, in Czech language Pra?sk? konzervator, is a Czech Republic secondary school in Prague dedicated to teaching the arts of music and theater acting....
. Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók

B?la Viktor J?nos Bart?k was a Hungarian people composer and pianist, considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology....
 came late, and only sporadically, to quartertones (e.g. in his Sonata for violin solo, which uses quarter tones in an essential manner).

Alexander John Ellis
Alexander John Ellis

Alexander John Ellis was an England mathematician and philology. He changed his name from his father's name Sharpe to his mother's maiden name Ellis in 1825, based on a condition for receiving significant financial support from a relative on his mother's side....
, who in the 1880s produced a translation with extensive footnotes and appendices to Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone, proposed an elaborate set of exotic just intonation tunings and non-harmonic tunings (Helmholtz 1885, 514–27). Ellis also studied the tunings of non-Western cultures and, in a report to the Royal Society, determined that they did not use either equal divisions of the octave or just intonation intervals (Ellis 1884). Ellis inspired Harry Partch
Harry Partch

File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
 immensely (Partch 1979, vii).

During the Exposition Universelle of 1889, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy

Achille-Claude Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he is considered one of the most prominent figures working within the field of Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions....
 heard a Balinese gamelan performance and was exposed to their non-Western tunings and rhythms. Some scholars have ascribed Debussy's subsequent innovative use of the whole-tone (6 equal pitches per octave) tuning in such compositions as the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra and the Toccata from the suite Pour le piano to his exposure to the Balinese gamelan at the Paris exposition (Lesure 2001), and have asserted his rebellion at this time "against the rule of equal temperament" and that the gamelan gave him "the confidence to embark (after the 1900 world exhibition) on his fully characteristic mature piano works, with their many bell- and gong-like sonorities and brilliant exploitation of the piano’s natural resonance" (Howat 2001). Still others have argued that Debussy's works like L'Isle joyeuse, La Cathédrale engloutie, Prélude ŕ l'aprčs-midi d'un faune, La Mer, Pagodes, Danseuses de Delphes, and Cloches ŕ travers les feuilles are marked by a more basic interest in the microtonal intervals found between the higher members of the overtone series, under the influence of Hermann Helmholtz's writings (Don 1991, 69 et passim). Berliner's introduction of the phonograph in the 1890s allowed much non-Western music to be recorded and heard by Western composers, further spurring the use of non-12-equal tunings.

While experimenting with his violin in 1895, Julian Carrillo
Julián Carrillo

Juli?n Carrillo Trujillo was a Mexico composer, conductor, violinist and music theorist, who discovered the Thirteenth Sound....
 (1875-1965) discovered the sixteenths of tone, i.e., sixteen clearly different sounds between the pitches of G and A emitted by the fourth violin string. He named his discovery Sonido 13
Sonido 13

Sonido 13 is a microtonal music system developed in 1895 by the Mexican composer Juli?n Carrillo while he was experimenting with his violin. As Carrillo was placing his finger over a violin string, he noticed that he could produce different sounds than the ones defined by musical convention....
 (the thirteenth sound) and wrote on music theory and the physics of music. He invented a simple numerical musical notation that can represent scales based on any division of the octave, like thirds, fourths, quarters, fifths, sixths, sevenths, and so on (even if Carrillo wrote, most of the time, for quarters, eights, and sixteenths combined, the notation is able to represent any imaginable subdivision). He invented new musical instruments, and adapted others to produce microintervals. He composed a large amount of microtonal music and recorded about 30 of his compositions.

Major microtonal composers of the 1920s and 1930s include Alois Hába
Alois Hába

File:H?ba.JPGAlois H?ba was a Czech composer, musical theorist and teacher. He is primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones....
 (quarter tones, or 24 equal pitches per octave, and sixth tones), Julian Carillo (24 equal, 36, 48, 60, 72, and 96 equal pitches to the octave embodied in a series of specially custom-built pianos), Ivan Wyschnegradsky (third tones, quarter tones, sixth tones and twelfth tones, non octaving scales) and the early works of Harry Partch
Harry Partch

File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
 (just intonation using frequencies at ratios of prime integers 3, 5, 7, and 11, their powers, and products of those numbers, from a central frequency of G-196) (Partch 1979, chapt. 8, "Application of the 11 Limit", 119–37).

Prominent microtonal composers or researchers of the 1940s and 1950s include Adriaan Daniel Fokker (31 equal tones per octave), Partch again (continuing to build his handcrafted orchestra of microtonal just intonation instruments) and Ivor Darreg (who built the first fully retunable electronic synthesizer capable of any division of the octave, just or equal or non-just non-equal).

Prominent microtonal composers of the 1960s and 1970s include John Eaton
John Eaton

John Henry Eaton was an United States politician and ambassador from Tennessee who served as United States Senate and as United States Secretary of War in the administration of Andrew Jackson....
 (who created his own microtonal synthesizer, the Syn Ket, to produce microtonal intervals), Ivor Darreg again (who augmented his home-built orchestra of instruments to include guitars refretted in equal temperaments 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, and 31, as well as the magalyra series of sub-contrabass steel guitar instruments), Harry Partch, Easley Blackwood (who composed and performed the well-known Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media with compositions in every equal division of the octave from 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 equal pitches per octave) and Augusto Novaro, the Mexican microtonal theorist who composed studies in 15 equal, among others. Barbara Benary also formed Gamelan Son of Lion around this period, and Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison

Lou Silver Harrison was an United States composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat .Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the world music into his work, with a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan musical instrument, including ensembles constructed and tu...
 was instrumental in creating American gamelan orchestras at Mills College
Mills College

Mills College is an independent Liberal arts colleges in the United States Women's colleges in the United States founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men....
. In Europe, the "Spectralists" in Paris created their first works from 1973 on with an extensive use of microtonal harmony. The main composers were Hugues Dufourt
Hugues Dufourt

Hugues Dufourt is a French composer and philosopher associated with the Spectral music. Born in Lyon on September 28 1943, Dufourt studied piano and composition at the Geneva Conservatory....
, Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey

G?rard Grisey was a France composer of contemporary music....
, Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail

Tristan Murail is a French composer associated with the "spectral music" technique of composition , which involves the use of the fundamental properties of sound as a basis for harmony, as well as the use of spectral analysis, FM, ring modulation, and amplitude modulation as a method of deriving polyphony....
 and Michael Levinas; see also the parisian ensemble "L'itinéraire". György Ligeti
György Ligeti

Gy?rgy S?ndor Ligeti was a composer, born in a Hungarian History of the Jews in Romania family in Transylvania, Romania. He briefly lived in Hungary before later becoming an Austrian citizen....
 in Hamburg strongly promoted microtonality and used it in several of his works.

Digital synthesizers from the Yamaha TX81Z (1987) on and inexpensive software synthesizers have contributed to the ease and popularity of exploring microtonal music.

Microtonalism in rock music

Greg Ginn
Greg Ginn

Gregory Regis Ginn is a guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is best known for being the leader of and primary songwriter for the hardcore punk band Black Flag , which he founded and led from 1976 to 1986....
, guitarist of American hardcore punk
Hardcore punk

Hardcore punk is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in North America and the UK in the late 1970s. The new sound was generally thicker, heavier and faster than earlier punk rock....
 band Black Flag
Black Flag (band)

Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1977 in Hermosa Beach, California. The band was established largely as the brainchild of Greg Ginn: the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes....
, made use of microtonal intervals. An example of a song containing microtonal music is "Damaged II," from 1981's Damaged LP. Another is "Police Story," most versions of which end in a cadence played a quarter-tone sharp.

Elliott Sharp's groups Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplen make extensive use of just intonation microtonality to intensely dissonant and vibrant effect. Los Angeles guitarist Rod Poole has produced a number of rock-oriented xenharmonic CDs.

The band Crash Worship made use of Ivor Darreg's megalyra subcontrabass microtonal instrument for both xenharmonic and industrial noise purposes.

The Japanese band Syzygys (Hitomi Shimizu and Hiromi Nishida) have released two albums utilizing the 43-tone scale of Harry Partch, using a modified reed organ.

Elaine Walker of Zia has released several albums making use of the Bohlen-Pierce scale
Bohlen-Pierce scale

The Bohlen?Pierce scale is a musical Scale that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Western music and other musics, specifically the diatonic scale....
 and other equal temperaments such as the 19tet
19 equal temperament

In music, 19 equal temperament, called 19-TET, 19-equal division of the octave, or 19-ET, is the Temperament scale derived by dividing the octave into 19 equally large steps....
 and 10tet. Zia performs on electronic instruments that specifically do not reference the standard 12 tone tuning.

Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood

Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood is a BAFTA and Grammy-nominated musician and composer-in-residence for the BBC, best known as a member of England alternative rock Band Radiohead....
, of the alternative rock band Radiohead
Radiohead

Radiohead are an English alternative rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire. The band is composed of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway ....
, has experimented with microtonal music in both his solo material and his work with the band; for instance, the song Climbing Up the Walls, from the band's 1997 album OK Computer
OK Computer

OK Computer is the third album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released on 16 June 1997. Radiohead recorded the album in rural Oxfordshire and Bath, Somerset, during 1996 and early 1997, with Record producer Nigel Godrich....
, includes a recording of sixteen violins playing quarter tones apart from each other to create a droning, atonal 'white noise' effect.

Other rock artists using microtonality in their work include Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca

Glenn Branca is a highly-influential avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, scordatura, minimal music, drone, and the harmonic series ....
 (who has created a number of symphonic works for ensembles of microtonally tuned electric guitars) and Jon and Brad Catler (who play microtonal electric guitar and electric bass guitar).

Microtonality often appears to occur in popular rock music in contexts where it is not notated or explicitly described as microtonal, but is nonetheless quite audible. Examples include the guitar introduction to the The Doors
The Doors

The Doors were an United States rock music band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California by Singer Jim Morrison, keyboard instrument Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger....
' song "The End
The End (The Doors song)

"The End" is a song by The Doors. Originally a song Jim Morrison wrote about breaking up with a long time girlfriend, it evolved through months of performances at Los Angeles' Whisky a Go Go into a nearly 12-minute opus on their The Doors ....
", the extremely microtonal vocal line in Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad O'Connor

Sin?ad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is a Grammy Award-winning Ireland singer-songwriter....
's songs—most notably on "Nothing Compares 2 U
Nothing Compares 2 U

"Nothing Compares 2 U" is a song written in mid-1981 by Prince for The Family . In 1990, a cover version by Sin?ad O'Connor became a number-one hit in many countries, charting in the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Germany....
,"—and in the microtonal bass lines in songs like Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Israel." The November 2004 WSES Official Newsletter for Acoustics, Science, and Technology of Music mentions that "bands from Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth is an American rock music rock band formed in New York City in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Mark Ibold and Steve Shelley ....
 to Art Rock Circus
Art Rock Circus

Key Members * John Miner * * Kelton Manning * Milo ...
 have written music with non-standard and microtonal guitar tunings." Sonic Youth uses alternate tuned guitars
Scordatura

A scordatura , also called cross-tuning, is an alternative tuning used for the open strings of a string instrument. In the Western classical music tradition it is an extended technique to allow the playing of otherwise impossible note sequences or note combinations....
 with several strings tuned slightly different from each other, creating a beating
Beat (acoustics)

In acoustics, a beat is an interference between two sounds of slightly different frequency, perceived as periodic variations in volume whose rate is the difference between the two frequencies....
 sound. In their early period the band played their guitars with screwdrivers, based on the techniques of Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca

Glenn Branca is a highly-influential avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, scordatura, minimal music, drone, and the harmonic series ....
, who took this idea from Harry Partch
Harry Partch

File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
's Kitharas and John Cage's prepared piano
Prepared piano

A prepared piano is a piano which has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers.The idea of altering an instrument's timbre through the use of external objects has been applied to instruments other than the piano; see, for example, prepared guitar....
 .The third bridge
3rd Bridge

The 3rd bridge is an extended technique used on mainly electric guitars such as the Fender Jazzmaster that has the Strings continue through to the tremolo piece....
 technique led to the microtonal scale used on the Yuri Landman
Yuri Landman

Yuri Landman is a Dutch experimental luthier and musicologist who has made several Experimental musical instrument for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars , Jad Fair of Half Japanese and Blonde Redhead....
's Moodswinger and his clarification based on this scale about the physical consonant paradox present in experimental rock
Experimental rock

Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experimental music with the basic elements of the genre, and/or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
 (Landman 2008).

Explicitly microtonal jazz has also made a niche for itself as, for example, in the playing of trumpeter Don Ellis
Don Ellis

Don Ellis was an United States of America jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of unusual time signatures....
, who used a quartertone trumpet built to his specifications, woodwind player Joe Maneri
Joe Maneri

Joseph Gabriel Esther Maneri is an United States jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son.After decades of obscurity, Maneri vaulted to wide praise and relative fame in the 1990s....
, who has mapped what he calls the "virtual pitch continuum" onto the intervals of 72-tone equal temperament, and in albums released by percussionist Emil Richards
Emil Richards

Emil Richards, born Emilio Radocchia on September 2 1932 in Hartford, Connecticut, is a percussionist who plays a variety of different percussion instruments....
, Lothar and the Hand People, the xenharmonic intonational inflexions of John Coltrane, and many others.

Microtonalism in Electronic music

In 1954, Karlheinz Stockhausen built his electronic Studie II on an equal division of 25 parts of the 5th harmonic (51/25). 1986's Beauty In the Beast saw Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos is an United States composer and electronic musician. She gained fame in the late 1960s for playing on the Moog synthesizer, which was a relatively new and unknown instrument at the time....
 experimenting with many microtonal systems including just intonation
Just intonation

In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequency of notes are related by ratios of whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval; in other words, the two notes are members of the same harmonic series ....
, using alternate tuning scales she invented for the album.

Apple's Logic Studio
Logic Studio

Logic Studio is a music production suite by Apple Inc. The first version of Logic Studio was unveiled on September 12, 2007....
 allows the user to alter the intervals in the scale the MIDI notes are assigned to, allowing the user to create and record microtonal MIDI data, with the limitation that only 12 pitch-classes per octave may be used at one time, making Logic ineffective for extended Just Intonation such as the Partch scale, or any other scale system with more than 12 pitches per octave. However, a workaround is possible: One may pitch-bend each note individually, if one were so inclined.

See also

  • Musical scale
    Musical scale

    In music, a scale is a group of musical note collected in ascending and descending order that provides material for or is used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical work including melody and/or harmony....
  • 3rd Bridge
    3rd Bridge

    The 3rd bridge is an extended technique used on mainly electric guitars such as the Fender Jazzmaster that has the Strings continue through to the tremolo piece....
  • Arab tone system
    Arab tone system

    The modern Arab tone system, or system of musical tuning, is based upon the theoretical division of the octave into twenty-four equal divisions or 24-tone equal temperament , the distance between each successive note being a quarter tone ....
     and maqam
    Maqam

    Maqam is a musical mode structure that characterizes the art of music of countries in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. In this area we can distinguish three main musical cultures which all belong to the Maqam family, namely the Persian, the Arabic and the Turkish....
  • Harry Partch's 43-tone scale
    Harry Partch's 43-tone scale

    The 43-tone scale is a just intonation scale with 43 pitches in each octave, invented and used by Harry Partch.The first of Partch's "four concepts" is "The scale of musical interval begins with absolute Consonance and dissonance and gradually progresses into an infinity of Consonance and dissonance, the consonance of the intervals decrea...
  • Fokker periodicity blocks
    Fokker periodicity blocks

    Fokker periodicity blocks are a concept in tuning theory used to mathematically relate musical intervals in just intonation to those in equal temperament....
  • Bohlen-Pierce scale
    Bohlen-Pierce scale

    The Bohlen?Pierce scale is a musical Scale that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Western music and other musics, specifically the diatonic scale....
  • Genus (music)
  • Harmony
    Harmony

    In Western music, harmony is the use of different pitches simultaneously, and chord s, actual or implied, in music. The word is related to the word "harmonic" which implies related wavelengths of waves....
  • Just intonation
    Just intonation

    In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequency of notes are related by ratios of whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval; in other words, the two notes are members of the same harmonic series ....
  • Lucy Tuning
    Lucy tuning

    LucyTuning is a meantone temperament musical tuning system, derived from p, in which the fifth is 600 + 300/p ? 695.49 Cent s, approximately 4.5 cents flatter than that of 12-tone equal temperament....
  • Microtuner
    Microtuner

    A microtuner or microtonal tuner is an electronic device or software program designed to modify and test the tuning of musical instruments with Microtonal music precision, allowing for the design and construction of microtonal scales and just intonation scales, and for tuning intervals that differ from those of common Western equal te...
  • Quarter tone
    Quarter tone

    A quarter tone is an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone.Many composers are known for having written music including quarter tones or the quarter tone scale, first proposed by 19th-century music theorist Mikha'il Mishaqah , including: Pierre Boulez, Juli?n Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alberto Ginas...
  • Raga
    Raga

    Raga refers to musical mode used in Indian classical music. It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made. In the Indian musical tradition, ragas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons....
  • Scala
    Scala

    Scala may refer to:* Scala & Kolacny Brothers, a Belgian girls' choir* SCALA, the Student Chapter of the American Library Association* FF Scala and FF Scala Sans, typefaces by Dutch typeface designer Martin Majoor...
  • Music of India
    Music of India

    The music of India includes multiple varieties of folk music, popular music, pop music, and Indian classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic music and Hindustani music, has a history panning millennia and, developed over several eras, it remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religio...


Western microtonal pioneers

Pioneers of modern Western microtonal music include:
  • Henry Ward Poole
    Henry Ward Poole

    Henry Ward Poole was an American surveyor, civil engineer, educator and writer on and inventor of systems of musical tuning. He was brother of the famous librarian William Frederick Poole, and cousin of the celebrated humorist, journalist and politician Fitch Poole....
     (keyboard designs, 1825–1890)
  • Charles Ives
    Charles Ives

    Charles Edward Ives was an American musical modernism composer. He is widely regarded as one of the first American composers of international significance....
     (U.S.A., 1874–1954, quartertones)
  • Julián Carrillo
    Julián Carrillo

    Juli?n Carrillo Trujillo was a Mexico composer, conductor, violinist and music theorist, who discovered the Thirteenth Sound....
     (Mexico, 1875–1965) many different equal temperaments, look or (mostly Spanish but some English too)
  • Béla Bartók
    Béla Bartók

    B?la Viktor J?nos Bart?k was a Hungarian people composer and pianist, considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology....
     (Hungary, 1881–1945, rare uses of quartertones)
  • George Enescu
    George Enescu

    George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conducting and teacher, preeminent Romanian musician of the 20th century, and one of the greatest performers of his time....
     (Romania, France, 1881–1955) (in Śdipe to suggest the enharmonic genus
    Enharmonic genus

    The enharmonic genus has historically been the most mysterious and controversial of the three Greek genus . Its characteristic interval is a major third, leaving the remainder of the tetrachord to be divided by two intervals smaller than a semitone ....
     of ancient Greek music, and in the Third Violin Sonata, as inflections characteristic of Romanian folk music)
  • Karol Szymanowski
    Karol Szymanowski

    Karol Maciej Szymanowski was a Poland composer and pianist....
     (Poland, 1882–1937, used quartertones on the violin in Myths Op. 30, 1915)
  • Percy Grainger
    Percy Grainger

    George Percy Grainger was an Australian-born composer, pianist and champion of the saxophone and the concert band, who worked under the stage name of Percy Aldridge Grainger....
     (Australia, 1882–1961, particularly works for his "free music machine")
  • Edgard Varčse
    Edgard Varčse

    Edgard Victor Achille Charles Var?se, whose name was also spelled Edgar Var?se , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
     (France, U.S.A., 1883–1965, quartertones)
  • Luigi Russolo
    Luigi Russolo

    Luigi Russolo was an Italian people Futurism painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises .He is often regarded as one of the first experimental musicians and experimental composers....
     (Italy, 1885–1947, used quartertones and eighth tones on the Intonarumori, noise instruments)
  • Mildred Couper
    Mildred Couper

    Mildred Couper , prominent American composer and pianist, was one of the first musicians to experiment with quarter-tone music. She was based in Santa Barbara, California, but her music and influence were felt around the world....
     (U.S.A., 1887–1974, quartertones)
  • Alois Hába
    Alois Hába

    File:H?ba.JPGAlois H?ba was a Czech composer, musical theorist and teacher. He is primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones....
     (Czechoslovakia, 1893–1973, quartertones and other equal temperaments)
  • Ivan Wyschnegradsky (U.S.S.R. (Russia), France, 1893–1979, quartertones, twelfth tones and other equal temperaments)
  • Harry Partch
    Harry Partch

    File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
     (U.S.A., 1901–1974, just intonation)
  • Eivind Groven
    Eivind Groven

    Eivind Groven was a Norway microtonal composer and music-theorist. He was from the fylke of Telemark in southern Norway and had his background in the folk music of the area....
     (Norway, 1901–1977, 53ET)
  • Henk Badings
    Henk Badings

    Henk Badings was a Netherlands composer.Born in Bandung, Java as the son of Herman Louis Johan Badings, an officer in the Dutch East Indies army, Badings became an orphan at an early age....
     (The Netherlands, 1907–1987, 31ET)
  • Maurice Ohana
    Maurice Ohana

    Maurice Ohana was a France composer of Sephardic Jewish origin.Ohana was born in Casablanca, Morocco. He was a British citizen until 1976, as his father had been born in Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory....
     (France, 1913–1992, third tones (18-equal) temperament and quarter tones (24ET) most particularly)
  • Giacinto Scelsi
    Giacinto Scelsi

    Giacinto Scelsi , Count of Ayala Valva was an Italy composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French language.He is best known for writing music based around only one pitch , altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonics allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his revolutiona...
     (Italy, 1905–1988, intuitive linear tone deviations, quartertones, eighth tones)
  • Lou Harrison
    Lou Harrison

    Lou Silver Harrison was an United States composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat .Harrison is particularly noted for incorporating elements of the world music into his work, with a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan musical instrument, including ensembles constructed and tu...
     (U.S.A., 1917–2003, just intonation)
  • Ivor Darreg
    Ivor Darreg

    Ivor Darreg was a leading proponent of and composer of microtonal music or "xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments....
     (U.S.A., 1917–1994)
  • Jean-Etienne Marie
    Jean-Etienne Marie

    Jean-Etienne Marie was a french composer of contemporary music. He is an important figure in the history and exploration of Microtonal music and electroacoustic....
     (France, 1919–1989, many different equal temperaments: 18ET, 24ET, 30ET, 36ET, 48ET, 96ET most particularly and polymicrotonality)
  • Franz Richter Herf (Austria, 1920–1989, 72-equal temperament, "ekmelic" music)
  • Iannis Xenakis
    Iannis Xenakis

    Iannis Xenakis was a Greeks modernist composer, musical theoretician, and architect. He is regarded as an important and influential composer of the twentieth century....
     (Greece, France, 1922–2001, quarter and third tones most particularly, occasionally eighth tones)
  • György Ligeti
    György Ligeti

    Gy?rgy S?ndor Ligeti was a composer, born in a Hungarian History of the Jews in Romania family in Transylvania, Romania. He briefly lived in Hungary before later becoming an Austrian citizen....
     (Hungary, 1923–2006, Ramifications in quartertone tuning, natural harmonics in his Horn Trio, later just intonation in his solo concertos)
  • Luigi Nono
    Luigi Nono

    Luigi Nono was an Italy avant-garde composer of classical music, one of the most important composers of the 20th century....
     (Italy, 1924-1990, quartetones, eighth tones and 16th tones)
  • Claude Ballif
    Claude Ballif

    Claude Ballif was a France composer.His music is known as a combination of tonality and serialism - a system that he named metatonality....
     (France, 1924-2004, quartertones)
  • Tui St. George Tucker
    Tui St. George Tucker

    Tui St. George Tucker was an United States composer and recorder player.She was born in Fullerton, Orange County, California and attended Eagle Rock High School in northeast Los Angeles, California, graduating in 1941....
     (1924–2004)
  • Pierre Boulez
    Pierre Boulez

    Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music and Conducting....
     (France, b. 1925) (first attempt of serial music with quartertones in his pieces Visage Nuptial and "Polyphonie X", but soon after abandoning microtonal elements)
  • Karlheinz Stockhausen
    Karlheinz Stockhausen

    Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries....
     (Germany, 1928–2007, in his electronic works many microtonal concepts, non-octaving scales in Studie II, just intonation in Gruppen
    Gruppen (Stockhausen)

    Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known works of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music ....
     and Stimmung
    Stimmung

    Stimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale K?ln....
    , microtonal instrumental and vocal writing throughout Licht
    Licht

    Licht , subtitled "The Seven Days of the Week," is a cycle of seven operas composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen which, in total, lasts over 29 hours....
    )
  • Ben Johnston (U.S.A., b. 1926, extended just intonation)
  • Ezra Sims
    Ezra Sims

    Ezra Sims is one of the pioneers in the field of microtonal composition. He invented a system of music notation which was adopted by many microtonal composers after him, including Joseph Maneri....
     (U.S.A., b. 1928, 72-tone equal temperament)
  • Erv Wilson
    Erv Wilson

    Ervin Wilson is a Mexico/United States music theory whose work, outside of the academic community, is noted for its breadth and originality....
     (b. 1928)
  • Alvin Lucier
    Alvin Lucier

    Alvin Lucier is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma....
     (U.S.A., b. 1931)
  • Joel Mandelbaum
    Joel Mandelbaum

    Joel Mandelbaum is an United States music composer and teacher, most well known for his use of microtonal music . He also has written the first Ph.D....
     (U.S.A., b. 1932)
  • Krzysztof Penderecki
    Krzysztof Penderecki

    Krzysztof Penderecki is a Poland composer and conducting of European classical music....
     (Poland, b. 1933, quartertones)
  • Easley Blackwood (b. 1933)
  • Alain Bancquart
    Alain Bancquart

    Alain Bancquart is a French composer. He had his musical formation at the "Conservatoire national sup?rieur de musique de Paris" with Darius Milhaud....
    (France, b.1934) (quarter tones and 16th tones)
  • James Tenney
    James Tenney

    James Tenney was an United States composer and influential music theory....
     (U.S.A., 1934–2006, just intonation, 72-tone equal temperament)
  • Terry Riley
    Terry Riley

    Terry Riley is an American composer associated with the minimalism school....
     (U.S.A., b. 1935, just intonation)
  • La Monte Young
    La Monte Young

    La Monte Thornton Young is an United States composer and musician.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalism composer, and one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, despite having little in common formally with Glass or Reich....
     (U.S.A., b. 1935, just intonation)
  • Douglas Leedy
    Douglas Leedy

    Douglas Leedy is an United States composer, performer and music scholar....
     (b. 1938, just intonation, meantone)
  • Wendy Carlos
    Wendy Carlos

    Wendy Carlos is an United States composer and electronic musician. She gained fame in the late 1960s for playing on the Moog synthesizer, which was a relatively new and unknown instrument at the time....
     (U.S.A., b. 1939, non-octaving scales)
  • Bruce Mather
    Bruce Mather

    Bruce Mather is a Canadian composer and pianist of contemporary classical music.He is one of the most notable Canadian composers of microtonal music....
     (Canada, b.1939, different equal temperaments, following Wyschnegradsky)
  • Brian Ferneyhough
    Brian Ferneyhough

    Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an England composer of contemporary classical music. His complex, multi-layered music is always distinctive when performed, and led Pierre Boulez to refer to it as a 'polyphony of polyphonies'....
     (Great Britain, b. 1943, quartertones, 31ET in Unity Capsule for solo flute,1976)


Recent microtonal composers

  • Clarence Barlow
    Clarence Barlow

    Clarence Barlow is a composer of European classical music and electroacoustic music works. He was born in Calcutta, a member of the anglophone minority, of British and Portuguese descent....
     (b. 1945)
  • Jonathan Glasier (b. 1945)
  • Gérard Grisey
    Gérard Grisey

    G?rard Grisey was a France composer of contemporary music....
      (1946-1998) (spectral approach to microintervals, quartertones, eighth tones)
  • Charles Lucy (b. 1946) (Lucy Tuning)
  • Max Méreaux
    Max Méreaux

    Max M?reaux is a French composer. He was born in October 1946 at Saint-Omer, near Calais, where he took music lessons. After gaining his baccalaureate in philosophy he studied musical analysis at the Paris Conservatoire under Jacques Cast?r?de....
      (b. 1946)
  • Tristan Murail
    Tristan Murail

    Tristan Murail is a French composer associated with the "spectral music" technique of composition , which involves the use of the fundamental properties of sound as a basis for harmony, as well as the use of spectral analysis, FM, ring modulation, and amplitude modulation as a method of deriving polyphony....
      (b. 1947) (spectral approach to microintervals, quartertones, eighth tones)
  • Claude Vivier
    Claude Vivier

    Claude Vivier was a Canada composer.Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family....
     (1948-1983)
  • Glenn Branca
    Glenn Branca

    Glenn Branca is a highly-influential avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, scordatura, minimal music, drone, and the harmonic series ....
     (b. 1948)
  • Warren Burt
    Warren Burt

    Warren Burt is an Australia-based composer of American birth. He is known for composing in a wide variety of new music styles, ranging from acoustic music, Electroacoustic, Sound installation, and Sound poetry....
     (b. 1949)
  • Manfred Stahnke
    Manfred Stahnke

    Manfred Stahnke is a Germany composer and musicologist from Kiel. He writes chamber music, orchestral music and stage music. His music is notably known for his use of Microtonal music....
     (b. 1951)
  • Kraig Grady
    Kraig Grady

    Kraig Grady is a US-Australian composer/sound artist. He has composed and performed with an ensemble of microtonal instruments of his own design and also worked as a shadow puppeteer, tuning theorist, filmmaker, world music radio DJ and concert promoter....
     (b. 1952) (invented acoustic instruments in just intonation & recurrent sequences)
  • David First
    David First

    David First is an American composer. His music most often deals with drones and interference Beat s, the latter aligning his music with that of Alvin Lucier....
     (b. 1953)
  • Bill Wesley (b. 1953)
  • James Wood
    James Wood (composer)

    James Wood is a British composer, percussionist and conductor ...
     (b. 1953)
  • Paul Dirmeikis
    Paul Dirmeikis

    Paul Dirmeikis is a Francophone poet, composer, performer and painter. He is member of the Lithuanian Composers Union....
     (b.1954)
  • Pascale Criton
    Pascale Criton

    Pascale Criton is a French musicologist and a composer of contemporary music, more specifically microtonal music. She is particularly known for exploiting very dense microtonal scales such as 1/12 tone or 1/16 and beyond for the particular perception properties they imply....
     (b. 1954) (different equal temperaments, most particularly very dense ETs such as the 96ET)
  • Kyle Gann
    Kyle Gann

    Kyle Eugene Gann is an American composer and music critic born in Dallas, Texas, Texas. As a critic for The Village Voice and other publications he has been a supporter of progressive music including such Downtown music movements as postminimalism and Totalism ....
     (b. 1955)
  • Pascal Dusapin
    Pascal Dusapin

    Pascal Dusapin , is a French composer born in Nancy. He studied fine art, science and aesthetics at the Sorbonne in Paris. One of France's best-known living composers, his works have been performed worldwide....
     (b. 1955) (different equal temperaments, notably the 48ET)
  • Johnny Reinhard
    Johnny Reinhard

    Johnny Reinhard is a microtonal music composer and virtuoso bassoonist. He employs many avant-garde techniques in his bassoon performance such as glissando and multiphonics, as well as using just intonation and other microtonal tuning systems....
     (b. 1956) (different equal temperaments, just intonation, polymicrotonally)
  • Eric Mandat
    Eric Mandat

    Eric P. Mandat is a leading composer and performer of contemporary clarinet music.Mandat began his clarinet studies under the tutelage of Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony....
     (b. 1957)
  • Erling Wold
    Erling Wold

    Erling Wold is a San Francisco based composer of opera and contemporary classical music. He is best known for his later chamber operas, especially A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil and his early experiments as a Microtonal music....
     (b. 1958)
  • Martin Smolka
    Martin Smolka

    Martin Smolka is a contemporary Czech Republic composer of European classical music....
     (b. 1959)
  • Georg Hajdu
    Georg Hajdu

    Georg Hajdu is a Germany composer of Hungary descent. He is considered among the first composers of his generation dedicated to the combination of music, science and computer technology.After studies in Cologne and at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies , he received his Ph.D....
     (b. 1960)
  • Daniel James Wolf
    Daniel James Wolf

    Daniel James Wolf is an American composer of serious music and a musicology.Wolf studied composition study with Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, and La Monte Young, as well as musical tunings with Erv Wilson and Douglas Leedy and ethnomusicology....
     (b. 1961)
  • François Paris
    François Paris

    Fran?ois Paris is a France composer and professor born in 1961 in Valenciennes.He is known for being part of the young generation of composers using microtonal music in the continuation of the spirit of the pioneers of this music....
     (b.1961)
  • Harold Fortuin
    Harold Fortuin

    Harold Fortuin is an American composer, pianist, and designer of hardware and software for electronic music. He has written both traditional instrumental and vocal music as well as electronic and computer music, and has a number of performances and recordings to his credit....
     (b. 1964)
  • Richard D. James
    Aphex Twin

    Richard David James , aka Aphex Twin, is an electronic musician who has been described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music." He founded the record label Rephlex Records in 1991 with friend Grant Wilson-Claridge....
     (b. 1971)
  • Adam Silverman
    Adam Silverman

    Adam Benjamin Silverman is a composer of contemporary classical music. His works include the opera Korczak's Orphans , chamber and orchestral music, and music for the theater....
     (b. 1973)
  • Yuri Landman
    Yuri Landman

    Yuri Landman is a Dutch experimental luthier and musicologist who has made several Experimental musical instrument for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars , Jad Fair of Half Japanese and Blonde Redhead....
     (b. 1973)
  • Kristoffer Zegers
    Kristoffer Zegers

    Kristoffer Zegers is a Dutch people composer.Taught by Gilius van Bergeijk, Jan Boerman, Martijn Padding, Clarence Barlow, Diderik Wagenaar at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag....
     (b. 1973)
  • Geoff Smith
  • Shaahin Mohajeri
    Shaahin Mohajeri

    Shaahin mohajeri or Shahin mohajeri , born 26 July 1971 in Tehran, Iran is a Tombak player, Tombak Researcher and Microtonal music composer....
     (b. 1971) (different systems such as the 96-EDO,ADO,EDL,...)


Microtonal researchers

  • Christiaan Huygens
    Christiaan Huygens

    Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Netherlands mathematics, astronomer, physics, and horology. His work included early telescopic studies, investigations and inventions related to time keeping, and studies of both optics and centrifugal force....
     (1629-1695)
  • Julián Carrillo
    Julián Carrillo

    Juli?n Carrillo Trujillo was a Mexico composer, conductor, violinist and music theorist, who discovered the Thirteenth Sound....
     (1875-1965)
  • Adriaan Daniël Fokker (1887-1972)
  • Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979)
  • Alois Hába
    Alois Hába

    File:H?ba.JPGAlois H?ba was a Czech composer, musical theorist and teacher. He is primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones....
     (1893-1973)
  • Harry Partch
    Harry Partch

    File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
     (1901-1974)
  • Alain Daniélou
    Alain Daniélou

    Alain Dani?lou was a France historian, intellectual, musicologist, Indologist, and a noted western convert to and expert of Shaivism Hinduism....
     (1907-1994)
  • Jean-Etienne Marie
    Jean-Etienne Marie

    Jean-Etienne Marie was a french composer of contemporary music. He is an important figure in the history and exploration of Microtonal music and electroacoustic....
     (1917-1989)
  • Erv Wilson
    Erv Wilson

    Ervin Wilson is a Mexico/United States music theory whose work, outside of the academic community, is noted for its breadth and originality....
     (b. 1928)
  • Joel Mandelbaum
    Joel Mandelbaum

    Joel Mandelbaum is an United States music composer and teacher, most well known for his use of microtonal music . He also has written the first Ph.D....
     (b. 1932)
  • James Tenney
    James Tenney

    James Tenney was an United States composer and influential music theory....
     (1934-2006)
  • Clarence Barlow
    Clarence Barlow

    Clarence Barlow is a composer of European classical music and electroacoustic music works. He was born in Calcutta, a member of the anglophone minority, of British and Portuguese descent....
     (b. 1945)
  • Georg Hajdu
    Georg Hajdu

    Georg Hajdu is a Germany composer of Hungary descent. He is considered among the first composers of his generation dedicated to the combination of music, science and computer technology.After studies in Cologne and at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies , he received his Ph.D....
     (b. 1960)
  • Bob Gilmore
    Bob Gilmore

    Bob Gilmore is a musicologist, educator and keyboard player, born in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland in 1961. He studied at York University, England, Queen's University, Belfast , and, on a Fulbright Scholarship, at the University of California, San Diego....
     (b. 1961)


Bibliography

  • Aron, Pietro
    Pietro Aron

    Pietro Aron, also known as Pietro Aaron , was an Italy music theorist and composer. He was born in Florence and probably died in Bergamo ....
    . 1523. Thoscanello de la musica. Venice: Bernardino et Mattheo de Vitali. Facsimile edition, Monuments of music and music literature in facsimile: Second series, Music literature 69. New York: Broude Brothers, 1969. Second edition, as Toscanello in musica . . . nuovamente stampato con laggiunta da lui fatta et con diligentia corretto, Venice: Bernardino & Matheo de Vitali, 1529. Facsimile reprint, Bibliotheca musica Bononiensis, sezione 2., n. 10. Bologna: Forni Editori, 1969. . Third edition, as Toscanello in musica, Venice: Marchio Stessa, 1539. Facsimile edition, edited by Georg Frey. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970. Fourth edition, Venice, 1562. English edition, as Toscanello in music, translated by Peter Bergquist. 3 vols. Colorado College Music Press Translations, no. 4. Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press, 1970.
  • Barbieri, Patrizio. 1989. "An Unknown 15th-Century French Manuscript on Organ Building and Tuning". The Organ Yearbook: A Journal for the Players & Historians of Keyboard Instruments 20.
  • Barbieri, Patrizio. 2002. "The Evolution of Open-Chain Enharmonic Keyboards c1480–1650". In Chromatische und enharmonische Musik und Musikinstrumente des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts/Chromatic and Enharmonic Music and Musical Instruments in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft/Annales suisses de musicologie/Annuario svizzero di musicologia 22, edited by Joseph Willimann. Bern: Verlag Peter Lang AG. ISBN 3039100882
  • Barbieri, Patrizio. 2003. "Temperaments, Historical". In Piano: An Encyclopedia, second edition, edited by Robert Palmieri and Margaret W. Palmieri. New York: Routledge.
  • Barbieri, Patrizio, Alessandro Barca, and conte Giordano Riccati. 1987. Acustica accordatura e temperamento nell'illuminismo Veneto. Pubblicazioni del Corso superiore di paleografia e semiografia musicale dall'umanesimo al barocco, Serie I: Studi e testi 5; Pubblicazioni del Corso superiore di paleografia e semiografia musicale dall'umanesimo al barocco, Documenti 2. Rome: Edizioni Torre d'Orfeo.
  • Barbieri, Patrizio, and Lindoro Massimo del Duca. 2001. "Late-Renaissance Quarter-tone Compositions (1555-1618): The Performance of the ETS-31 with a DSP System". In Musical Sounds from Past Millennia: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Musical Acoustics 2001, edited by Diego L. González, Domenico Stanzial, and Davide Bonsi. 2 vols. Venice: Fondazione Giorgio Cini.
  • Barlow, Clarence
    Clarence Barlow

    Clarence Barlow is a composer of European classical music and electroacoustic music works. He was born in Calcutta, a member of the anglophone minority, of British and Portuguese descent....
     (ed.). 2001. "The Ratio Book." (Documentation of the Ratio Symposium Royal Conservatory The Hague 14-16 December 1992). Feedback Papers 43.
  • Burns, Edward M. 1999. "Intervals, Scales, and Tuning." In The Psychology of Music, second edition, ed. Diana Deutsch,. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-213564-4.
  • Don, Gary. 2001. "Brilliant Colors Provocatively Mixed: Overtone Structures in the Music of Debussy". Music Theory Spectrum 23, no. 1 (Spring): 61–73.
  • Dumbrill, Richard J. 2000. The Musicology and Organology of the Ancient Near East, second edition. London: Tadema Press. ISBN 0953363309
  • Ellis, Alexander J
    Alexander John Ellis

    Alexander John Ellis was an England mathematician and philology. He changed his name from his father's name Sharpe to his mother's maiden name Ellis in 1825, based on a condition for receiving significant financial support from a relative on his mother's side....
    . 1884. "Tonometrical Observations on Some Existing Non-Harmonic Musical Scales". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 37:368–85.
  • Fink, Robert. 1988. "The Oldest Song in the World". Archaeologia Musicalis 2, no. 2:98–100.
  • Helmholtz, Hermann von
    Hermann von Helmholtz

    Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a Germany physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science....
    . 1885. On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, second English edition, translated, thoroughly revised and corrected, rendered conformable to the 4th (and last) German ed. of 1877, with numerous additional notes and a new additional appendix bringing down information to 1885, and especially adapted to the use of music students by Alexander J. Ellis. London: Longmans, Green.
  • Hesse, Horst-Peter. 1991. "Breaking into a New World of Sound: Reflections on the Austrian Composer Franz Richter Herf (1920–1989)". Perspectives of New Music 29, no. 1 (Winter): 212–35.
  • Howat, Roy. 2001. "Debussy, (Achille-)Claude: 10, 'Musical Language'". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
  • Jedrzejewsky, Franck. 2003. Dictionnaire des musiques microtonales [Dictionary of Microtonal Musics]. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 2-7475-5576-3.
  • Landman, Yuri
    Yuri Landman

    Yuri Landman is a Dutch experimental luthier and musicologist who has made several Experimental musical instrument for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars , Jad Fair of Half Japanese and Blonde Redhead....
    . [2008]. "Third Bridge Helix: From Experimental Punk to Ancient Chinese Music and the Universal Physical Laws of Consonance". . (Accessed 6 December 2008)
  • Lesure, François. 2001. "Debussy, (Achille-)Claude: 7, 'Models and Influences'". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
  • Mandelbaum, M. Joel. 1961. "Multiple Division Of the Octave and the Tonal Resources of the 19 Tone Temperament.". Ph.D. thesis. Bloomington: Indiana University.
  • Partch, Harry
    Harry Partch

    File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
    . 1979. Genesis of a Music, 2nd edition. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80106-X.
  • West, Martin Litchfield. 1992. Ancient Greek Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198148976 (cloth) ISBN 0-19-814975-1 (pbk)
  • West, Martin Litchfield. 1994. "The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts". Music and Letters 75, no. 2 (May): 161–79.
  • Wyschnegradsky, Ivan. 1972. “L'Ultrachromatisme et les espaces non octaviants”. La Revue Musicale nos. 290–91:71-141.


External links

  • Aikin, Jim. 2003.
  • Anon. [n.d.]. "". IVO: Sacred Music in the Italian Cinquecento outside Venice and Rome, edited by Chris Whent. Here Of A Sunday Morning website. (Accessed 19 August 2008)
  • at the Open Directory Project
    Open Directory Project

    The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content Web directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a virtual community of volunteer editors....
  • Chalmers, John.
  • Solís Winkler, Ernesto. 2004. "". (Accessed 19 August 2008)
  • Barbieri, Patrizio. . (2008) Latina, Il Levante Libreria Editrice.