Off-grid / on-grid: microtonality and the equal tempered piano : Visiones and Piano Concerto
- Submitting institution
-
University of York
: A - A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - A - Music
- Output identifier
- 67124811
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The motivating question for these two compositions (details of commissions and premieres given in the scores) was how to integrate the non-microtonal piano within a microtonal environment, considered at the small scale in the trio _Visiones_ and in greater depth through the Piano Concerto. Luke Bedford’s _Chiaroscuro_, in which the microtonal mutation of common chords in the strings destabilises the piano before circling back, offers a closed-
process reference point. The interest for the composer, however, is in the possibilities for goal-directed organisation.
In _Visiones_, different approaches to microtonality create a tripartite structure. Initially, the integration ‘problem’ is solved by excluding the piano from the microtonal materials: a stratified texture, with independent registral- and tempo-strands for microtonal and non-microtonal instruments. Microtones occur within cello and clarinet as modal configurations. In the second section the illusion of a microtonal piano is created by clarinet and cello microtones emerging from the piano resonance: a blended texture where microtones function as components of a sonority rather than steps in a scale. Finally, a return to stratification reworks the opening relationships: microtones occur _within_ clarinet and cello extended techniques (colour rather than pitch-class) and previously microtonal melodic content is reprised within 12edo in the piano.
With the Piano Concerto, the relationship between ‘non-microtonal’ and ‘microtonal’ instruments is less starkly delineated: the piano, rather than ‘foreigner,’ is instead presented as one of the originating sources for microtonal expansion of pitch-space by virtue of its harmonic-series-derived sonorities in the first movement cadenza. Nevertheless, the techniques of microtonally-enabled structural momentum from _Visiones_ are explored further. Latent microtonality (glissandi, resonance-type harmonies) within 12edo (I) moves via harmonic-series-derived 12edo modes (II) to become 24edo spectral harmonies (III). Microtones are ‘reabsorbed’ as noise-components of 12edo pitches (IV); the 12edo modes then provide a resource for quasi-tonal ‘root-position’ harmonies (V).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -