Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Anton Rovner microtonal article, Part I

Anton Rovner just wrote an interesting article tracing the history of
microtonality in Russia (and elsewhere). I suggested I was willing
to post it to the list. I realize it's a bit long... (but that's
what the scroll bar is for... :)

Anton Rovner
The Legacy of Microtonal Music in the 20-th Century
The beginning of the 20th century witnessed the emergence of many
different new musical trends, unprecedented by their radical
innovations and by the fact of the simultaneity of their appearance.
At the time when the diatonic harmony, familiar to us, was being
replaced by the new, chromatic harmony, certain composers did not
content themselves with the simple progression from seven notes to
twelve, but continued in search for new and undiscovered harmonies,
falling outside of the familiar 12-note equal tempered scale. They
discovered for themselves the new realm of complex scales and
temperaments, i.e. what we call microtonality.
One of the first accomplishments of microtonality was the appearance
of the rather "simple" scale the quarter-tone scal. It essentially
doubles the familiar twelve-note scale, dividing each semitone in
half. Quarter-tone compositions have been written by the classics of
microtonal music, such as Charles Ives (Three Pieces for Two Pianos
in Quarter-Tones), Alois Haba (his String Quartets and opera "Die
Mutter"), Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Mexican composer Julian Carillo and
German composer Richard Stein. Soon afterwards composers and
theorists turned to new and more complex scales and modes.
Microtonal thinking developed as suddenly and sporadically in
different countries as the many other musical, literary and artistic
innovations of that time. In Germany, the first quarter-tone
composition ever to be published was the Two Pieces for Cello and
Piano by German composer Richard Stein, published in 1906. The famous
pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni in his "Sketch for a New
Esthetic in Music", a philosophical treatise, calling for the
development new and free forms of musical thinking, advocated the use
of third and sixth tones, to expand our musical perception: He
wrote: "Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny. It
will become the most complete of all reflexes of Nature by reason of
its untrammeled immateriality. () all signs presage a revolution,
and a next step toward that "eternal harmony." Let us once again call
to mind, that in this latter the gradation of the octave is infinite,
and let us strive to draw a little nearer to infinitude." Busoni did
not write any microtonal music himself, nevertheless his ideas on the
subject were crucial to the further development of microtonality.
In his article "Quarter-tone Music", published in "Die Musik" in
1923, Richard Stein emphasized the historical significance of the
latest microtonal discoveries: "We, quarter-tone composers, do not in
the least want to impose a new system of composition, as certain
other groups of Neutonerduring the course of many millenia millions
of people expressed their highest forms of happiness and the most
profound sorrows in more or less artistically constructed music,
without using our sound-system, utilized by us during the last two-
hundred years".
Early 20th century Russia had witnessed a flourishing of innovation
in music and the arts. A number of composers and theorists turned to
expanding the realm of pitch. Alexander Scriabin, though having never
actually applied microtonality to his music, has thought about it
extensively, in his strivings to expand and merge together all forms
of art into his cosmic mega-composition, the "Mysterium," which he
has never lived to complete. As witnessed by his biographer, composer
and music critic, Leonid Sabaneyev, Scriabin dreamed of expanding the
12-note equal temperament, in order to utilize in the "Mysterium,"
more complex and refined pitches, falling outside of the standard
temperament.
In his book "Remembrances of Scriabin" Sabaneyev has cited the
following quotations from Scriabin: "By now I already have a certain
feeling that these harmonies do not fit into this temperament. I need
to invent some kinds of signs for these sounds. () Now I feel that
in my harmonies there could result two sounds, for which you couldn't
find a different indication. For instance, this ninth should be lower
than the standard one and much lower ...' Scriabin was clearly
thinking in terms of harmonies derived from the overtone series. 'I
am thinking of indicating with numbers the signs for raising the
pitches, when they cannot be indicated with sharps and flats. For
instance, if I would need the seventh overtone, I would write the
number 7 (...) I feel here, for instance, that this sound () is
higher than G-sharp and lower than A." Sabaneyev claimed to have
traced the origin of Scriabin's "mystic chord" of "Prometheus" to the
1st, 5th, 7th, 9th 11th and 13th overtones.
Among some of the other earliest musicians to use microtones,
composer Arthur Lourie wrote a Prelude for piano in quarter-tones in
1915. The music theorist Nicolai Kulbin wrote a pamphlet,
titled "Free music," published in Wassily Kandinsky's "Blaue Reiter
Almanac", where he advocated the use of microtonal intervals to
expand the freedom of musical expression. As he wrote: "The creator
of free music similarly to a nightingale is not limited to tones and
half-tones. He also utilizes quarter-tones, eighth-tones as well as
music with a free choice of tones."
Sabaneyev, in addition to promoting Scriabin's music and ideas, had
developed his own ideas on the subject. He claimed that "as a
science.. music is just born" and due to his interest in acoustics,
called for what he called "ultrachromaticism", which is presently
known to us as "Just Intonation". He claimed that the 12-note equal
tempered scale is obsolete, and must give way to the new "music of
the future" ultrachromaticism. The overtone series was called
the "basic consonant harmony" by him, and in it, he claimed, there
could not be any dissonance, but only degrees of harmonies. He
predicted that ultrachromatic music would use partials, specifically
adapted to the individual scale, which he would call "harmony-
timbres". Sabaneyev proposed presenting higher members of the
overtone series in music. At that time, it was an innovative
proposal, since Western music has used only up to the sixth member of
the series in its repertoire. He also lectured on the 53-tone equal-
tempered system, since, as he presumed, it was closest in its
intervallic content to Just Intonation intervals, and at the same
time, unlike the latter, was equipped to modulate from one key to
another.
A very important figure of the time, Arseny Avraamov has written
numerous articles, published in Russian musical periodicals in the
1910's and 1920's, where he discussed expansion of the pitch domain
by means of microtonality, as well as other innovative ideas.
Avraamov and Sabaneyev were adversaries, who polemicized with each
other on the pages of musical periodicals. However many of their
initial claims were similar. Avraamov's approach was that music
should let science predominate over it, in order to help expand its
horizons. His first articles discussed alternate intervallic
measurements, extending beyond 12-note equal temperament. His
approach swayed towards Just Intonation tuning, based on the harmonic
series, as well as Pythagoren tuning. He also advocated expanding the
rhythmic and the timbral domains into a new, futuristic direction.
His articles in the 1920's advocated the usage of equal temperaments
more complex than the 12-tone scale. His concept of "omnitonality"
embraced wholeheartedly all equal-temperaments. He invented the so-
called "Universal System of Tones," which was the 48-tone equal
tempered scale, which he claimed could reproduce all folk-song modes,
and would contain many intervals found in Just Intonation and
Pythagorean tunings. He wrote about this in his article "Jenseits von
Temperierung und Tonalitat", (published in Melos in 1920), where he
also suggested a Just Intonation system, limited to the seventh
harmonic, which would be limited to a single key. American microtonal
composer Joel Mandelbaum suggested that Avraamov's pitches would fit
into the 41-tone equal tempered scale. This way, similarly to
Sabaneyev's 53-tone scale, Avraamov tried to connect the concepts of
the Just Intonation scales and more advanced equal-tempered scales.
However, in general, musicians who supported the equal-tempered scale
became predominant over those supporting just intonation, since in
the 1920's, the Just Intonation scale proved difficult in terms of
tracing intervals, and modulating to other keys, as contemporary
electronic equipment was not available.
In 1923 Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov founded the Petrograd Society for
Quarter-Tones. He was an exponent of strict adherence toward quarter-
tones in music, as he demonstrated in his article "The Basis of the
Quarter-Tone Musical System" for the Russian publication De Musica.
In 1927 he gave the first public demonstration and concert of quarter-
tone music in Moscow. He researched quarter-tone music and conducted
an ensemble for microtonal music until 1932. he also wrote quarter-
tone compositions, some of which used the quarter-tone harmonium and
the Emiriton.
Other achievements of Avraamov include "graphic sound", i.e.
artificially constructed sound. One of the bases of this discovery
was to go beyond the limits of 12-tone equal tempered scale. In 1930
he began to experiment with generating synthetic sound on the
sountrack of the motion picture film. He was the first to create
artificial sound-recording on film. He used synthetic sound to
preserve folk music, which used non-tempered pitches and intervals.
He saw synthetic music as a means of restoring the natural musical
scale.
Avraamov's experiments with sound-track movie music paved the way for
another invention the ANS synthesizer, conceived of by scientist
Evgeny Murzin in 1938 and built by him by 1958. The instrument, the
name of which spells out the initials of Alexander Nikolayevich
Scriabin, was a result of Murzin's fascination with Scriabin's music
and ideals. Since Murzin knew that Scriabin sought for means to
extend tonality beyond the 12-note equal-tempered scale, Murzin
devised the instrument, so that it would be able to utilize up to 72-
notes per octave, allowing it to use the quarter-tone scale, the
eighth-tone scale, and Just Intonation intervals. Due to the fact
that it was possible to join each pitch with selected members of the
overtone series of the respective note, certain various instrumental
timbres could also be produced. As a result, pitch change (in terms
of the added harmonic partials) affects timbre bringing to life
Sabaneyev's ideas of harmony-timbres.
One of the most important Russian microtonal composers was Ivan
Wyschnegradsky, who together with Alois Haba is considered a founder
of microtonal music composition. His microtonal activity has started
with his immersion into Indian philosophy and mysticism in 1916, and
developing philosophical concepts, similar to Scriabin's. He composed
a giant symphony for orchestra and reciter, "Le Jour de Brahma",
which he later revised and renamed "La Journee de l'Existence".
Similarly to Scriabin and Wagner, the work aimed at achieving a
synthesis of the arts. His first microtonal composition was a piece
for cello and piano, which used two themes from this
symphony: "Meditation on a Theme from the Day of Existence", which
incorporated quarter-tones and sixth-tones. Most of his music
utilized equal-temperaments, most notably quarter-tones, sixth-tones,
eighth-tones and 1/12 tones. These temperaments were used in
compositions for respectively two, three or four pianos. He also
wrote music for two pianos and violin, two pianos and voice and even
two or more pianos and Ondes Martenot.
Unlike the thorists, Avramov and Sabaneyev, who advocated for the
most complex types of abstract systems, Wyschnegradsky, being one of
the first composers in the domain, sensed the responsibility of
carrying out the task of utilizing the new scales creatively in
practice, and advocated for limitation of the quest for new
temperaments to the accessible. He wrote in his diary in
1919: "Because we, upon receiving this new revelation, immerse
ourselves into the domain of the diminished seventh chord, we acquire
quarter-tones, eighth-tones, sixteenth-tones etc. the limit of which
is chaos. Here, harsh discipline is necessary, so not to trangress
the boundaries of what can be practically achieved and not to cut
ourselves off from the past. This is why we must limit ourselves to
quarter-tones."
Only in a small number of his compositions he utilized more complex
scales, such as 31-tones, used in an organ piece written especially
for Adrian Fokker's 31-tone organ in Holland.
Among Wyschnegradsky's other innovations were attempts to invent new
means of notation for microtonal music for instance the 11-lined
staff, designed to notate 1/12 tone music as well as plans for
pianos with many manuals, fit to perform microtonal music two-
manual piano for quarter-tones, three-manual for eighth-tones, four-
manual for twelfth-tones. Wyschnegradsky has had piano makers, like,
for instance, Pleyel in Paris and Grotrian-Steinweg in Germany build
such pianos for him.
He did examine, at least passingly, Sabaneyev's ideas of music based
on the intervallic structure of the overtone series. "If we would
assume that Sabaneyev was right in that Scriabin's Prometheus chord
could be traced to the higher overtones, the question arises
whether quarter-tone of music is the result of the mastery of the
further series of overtones from the 16th to the 32nd."
Wyschnegradsky published a number of treatises on microtonal music,
among which the most famous is the "Manuel d'harmonie des quarts de
ton". Another one is "La loi de la pansonorite", published for the
first time in 1996 by the Wyschnegradsky Society in Paris.
Wyschnegradsky developed many interesting ideas related to the
expansion of the sound domain. Among these are his ideas
of "pansonority", the innate substance beyond music, lying at tis
basis, ideas of "cyclical harmonies", which are microtonal versions
of the circle of fifths, ideas of rhythmic acceleration (similar to
Elliott Carter's rhythmic modulation), as well as ideas of color
notation, transfering the Scriabinesque ideas to the microtonal
realm. In Wyschnegradsky's version, each interval corresponds to a
color. The half-tone is red, the 1/12-tone is orange, the 1/6-tone
yellow, the ¼-tone is green, the 1/3 tone is blue and the 5/12 tone
is violet.
Curiously enough, at the height of the Stalin years, there was one
music theorist, who advocated microtonality and alternate tunings.
Alexei Ogolevets examined historical tunings in his two
books "Foundations of Harmonic Language", published in 1941
and "Introduction to Contemporary Musical Thought," published in
1946. The books discussed Pythagorean tunings, Just Intonation, as
well as expanded tonal systems, including 17 and 22 tone equal
scales. They were the most thorough and advanced books of the kind in
the Soviet Union. In the latter book, Ogolevets suggested dividing
music history into four periods, while the present time being a
period of transition between the third and the fourth epochs. The
third era marked the predominance of a single system, the 12-note
equal tempered scale, while the fourth era would mark the appearance
of more complex systems, among which would be the 17 and 22 tone
scales.
Europe and America also witnessed a flourishing of microtonal
composers and theorists. Russian-born American theorist Joseph Yasser
in his book "A Theory of Evolving Tonality" came up with an original
theory of the evolution of musical temperament by means of adding to
the number of the notes of the current temperament the number of
notes of the previous, outmoded temperament. According to his theory,
tonality evolves from the five-note scale (pentatonicism), through
the seven-note scale (diatonicism) and the twelve-note scale
(chromaticism) towards the 19-tone scale (microtonality), which in
turn will evolve in future centuries towards the 31-tone and the 50-
tone scales, strictly following the mathematical progression.
The famous Dutch organist and theorist, Adrian Fokker invented the 31-
tone organ, for which many composers had written, including
Wyschnegradsky. Towards the middle of the century, composers like
Haba, Wyschnegradsky, Carillo and others did not content themselves
with simple microtonal scales like quarter-tones or sixth-tones, but
started to incorporate much more advanced and irregular scales. In
the USA towards the middle of the century new outstanding musicians
appeared, such as Mordecai Sandberg, Ivor Darreg and Harry Partch,
whose musical compositions and theoretical concepts expand beyond the
scope of not only "simple" microtonal scales towards more complex
scales, but beyond the realm of traditional instrumental thinking
altogether. This is especially true of Harry Partch, who invented
exotic instruments and whose musical aesthetics is filled with new
sound worlds, among which are the music of Asian countries as well as
the usage of non-musical objects tin cans and wooden sticks in
the role of musical instruments.
The new generation of European post-war avant-garde composers also
frequently turned to microtonality and alternate tunings in their
quest for unprecedented new sound material. Karlheinz Stockhausen
used microtones in his first electronic compositions. His Studie II
from 1954 was the first to use the non-octave scale 25th root of
five the ratio of 5:1 divided into 25 equal parts (making up 10.767
tones to the octaves). Pierre Boulez incorporated microtones in his
early cantata from the 1940's, "Le Visage Nuptiel" as well as in his
electronic composition from the 1950's, Polyphonie X. Extensive
microtonal writing is present in the works of Iannis Xenakis, most
notably in his chamber composition "Anaktoria". Quarter-tones were
used passingly for coloristic effects in the works of Ligeti and
Lutoslawski. The adherents of the contemporary French Spectral
school, Tristan Murail and Gerard Grisey, in their pursuit of hidden
sonorities, present in each tone, played by different instruments,
extract harmonic blocks from these tones, which utilize quarter-
tones, eighth-tones and sixteenth-tones. Subsequently, these
harmonies are applied to their compositions.
Among the many developments in microtonality from the beginning of
the 20th century was the revitalization of different temperaments,
which existed prior to the ascendency of equal temperament first of
all, Pythagorean tuning, which is based on perfect fifths (implying
raised sharps and lowered flats), as well as the Just Intonation,
developed by musicians since the time of Zarlino in the 16th century,
based on the overtone series (and, consequently, having lowered
sharps and raised flats), the mean-tone temperament and a number of
others. Many composers saw a greater advantage in these organic,
asymetrical constructions, for the most part derived from nature,
over the more "artificial" equal-tempered scales. Despite their
historically remote origins, these "natural scales" are perfectly
viable for usage in a modernist and avant-gardist musical context for
composition of music.
Presently, the microtonal trend in music has obtained a large
quantity of adherents in Europe and in America. In Europe the search
for new timbral effects presume the usage of unstandard temperaments,
which is why quarter-tones and other, more complex microtones have
become standard. In America two camps of microtonal composers exist
those who favor equal temperaments and those who favor historically
generated temperaments. With modern computer technology it is
possible to make the latter tunings more pliable and flexible by
transposing and altering them. Among the contemporary American
composers, who write microtonal music, one could name Johnny
Reinhard, Joseph Pehrson, Joel Mandelbaum, Neil Drummond, Robert
Priest and a host of others. Among the contemporary music ensembles
and festivals, devoted to microtonal music, there is the American
Festival of Microtonal Music in New York, Microfest in California and
a host of others.
There is a new concept of microtonality, labeled by composer Johnny
Reinhard as "polymicrotonality", i.e. the usage of several different
microtonal temperaments in one composition, not limiting oneself to
the constraints of any one temperament. These contrasting trends in
the realm of microtonality create a rich and diverse musical context.
After a hiatus of many decades, microtonal music is currently making
a return to Russia. Starting from the 1960's and 1970's the emerging
Russian avant-gardists, Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov and Sophia
Gubaidulina have used quarter-tones in a number of important
compositions of theirs. At the beginning of the 1960's the
aforementioned ANS synthesizer, the first electronic instrument in
the Soviet Union, was placed in the Scriabin Museum in Moscow the
became available to young composers. Schnittke, Denisov, Gubaidulina,
Eduard Artemiev, Andrei Volkonsky and a host of others, made use of
it to compose electronic compositions, some of which used at least to
a small degree the different microtonal temperaments, available on
the instrument. Separate pieces of more traditional composers like
Sergei Slonimsky have used the cent system devised by Alexander Ellis.
The latest big event in the realm of microtonal music in Russia was a
concert on November 7, 2001 at the Composers' Union Building in
Moscow, which featured compositions for two pianos tuned a quarter-
tone apart. The program featured Charles Ives' "Three Compositions
for Two Pianos", Ivan Wyschnegradsky's "Integrations" (a late work
from 1967), "Cabinet in Quarter-tones" by Swiss composer Roland
Moser, and quarter-tone compositions by three contemporary Moscow
composers, "4 x 4 for direct and reflected sounds" by Igor
Kefalidi, "Several Border-line Conditions" by Sergei Pavlenko
and "Vers Libre" by Victor Ekimovsky. This concert presented itself
as an important step towards the reestablishment in Russia of the
tradition of microtonal music, which had existed there in the early
20th century.

Bibliography
Avraamov, Arseny "Jenseits von Temperierung und Tonalitat", published
in Melos, Vol. 1, 1920, p.131.
Avraamov, Arseny, "The Emerging Musical Science and a New Era of
Music History" Muzykal'ny Sovremennik, St. Petersburg, N.6, 1916
Kulbin, Nicolai, "Free Music", published in Der Blaue Reiter, Berlin,
1911
Busoni, Ferruccio, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, published in,
Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music, Dover Publications, Inc.
New York
Kreichi, Stanislav, "ANS continues to work", Muzykal'naya Akademiya,
N.4, 1999.
McLaren, Brian, A Brief History of Microtonality in the Twentieth
Century
Ogolevets, Alexei, Introduction to Contemporary Musical Thought,
Muzgiz, Moscow-Leningrad, 1946
Sabaneyev, Leonid, Remembrances of Scriabin, Moscow, 2000
Stein, Richard, "Quarter-tone Music", published in "Die Musik", 1923,
reprinted in "K Novym beregam", Moscow, 1923, N.3, p.6-15
Wyschnegradsky, Ivan, The Pyramid of Life, diaries,
Moscow, "Kompozitor", 2001.

Anton Rovner microtonal article, Part I

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