Microtonal News from the AFMM

Happy Holidays to all from the AFMM. At this time we are all preparing
for the 70-piece orchestra premiere performance of Charles Ives' Symphony
#5 (Universe Symphony) with its polymicrotonality...and more. The first
percussion rehearsal of 12 players took place at Skip La Plante's loft on
Dec. 10th. They divide up the basic unit of the piece (B.U.) into 16
seconds into whole rational numbers up to 43).

Bang On A Can is co-presenting the Ives premiere as part of their 10th
anniversary series, doing advertising and publicity.

On Christmas Day - from 11 am to 3 pm on WKCR-FM 89.9 FM is the 8th
annual Microtonal Bach radio show.

On Jan. 29th Ensemble 2e2m is presenting the European premiere of Edgard
Varese's Graphs and Time with graphic notation demanding microtonal
interpretation. The AFMM has presented it 3 times in NYC and I am
travelling to Paris to conduct the Varese at the Pompideu Center. Like
the Ives, I completed the work from sketches.

2 microtonalists in France to learn about are 2e2m's director Paul Mefano
(who has championed the music of Ivan Wyschnegradsky with a wonderful new
CD, as well the music of Alain Bancquart, and his own), and Gad Barnea
(publisher of Musicales Europeenes and a microtonal composer just
now stretching...to just from quartertones).

2 AFMM concerts previously scheduled for April 29 and May 6 in NYC have been
postponed, allowing for the magnitude of the Ives performance on June 6,
1996 at Alice Tully Hall - Lincoln Center. (Jon Catler is playing
overtone machine, Nina Kellman is alternating to Just Intonation harp).

Mayumi has been scheduled for a concert of her music on April 15th using
microtonal harpsichords by harpsichord builder Bobby Buecker (long
associate of AFMM flutist Andrew Bolotowsky). And we have recroded in
the studio Mayumi's Bassie and Knishtet.

Compositionally, I have now completed a solo alto recorder work Eye of
Newt, and a short work for contrabassoon solo: Klingon Raccoon. Both are
polymicrotonal.

New works will be under consideration for next year. All the very best
to all of you "Betweeners."

Johnny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@styx.ios.com


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I am certainly no expert on the K2000, but a friend of mine at work has been
wrestling with it (on his K2500), and he has concluded, possibly falsely that
you can retune notes these ways:
1. You can can tune a CONSTANT gap between ALL pairs of adjacent keys. In
other words you can set a gap between a pair of adjacent keys, but it has
to be the same between all adjacent-key pairs. He said that its resolution
was two-cent, not single cent.
2. Simultaneously in some sense, you can set the pitch of each key to much
higher resolution provided that the tuning repeats in octaves of 12 keys.
This works fine for tuning, for example, 12-toned JI or meantone scales. Or it
will work fine for tuning all keys to an equal-temperament whose step-size is a
multiple of 2 cents. What it will not work for is such things as laying 19-tone
equal-temperament "linearly" across the keyboard, such that the octave above a
given C is the G visually a twelfth above it. That seems to be a very popular
approach, although I'll be darned if I can figure out how so many people
(including Harry Partch) can function that way.

The third thing you can do is to individually duplicate each ... forgive me I
only know the Ensoniq term ... wavesample across a single key and then tune each
wavesample as needed.

Correct me if I'm incorrect. I'm sure my friend would be pleased to find out
if he's missed something.


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