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c.

2012 Peter Alexander Thoegersen

POLYTEMPIC POLYMICROTONAL MUSIC:


A Road Less Traveled

BY
PETER ALEXANDER THOEGERSEN

THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Music
with a concentration in Music Composition
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012

Urbana, Illinois

Doctoral Committee:
Associate Professor Stephen A. Taylor (chair)
Professor Heinrich Taube
Assistant Professor Reynold Tharp
Associate Professor Chester Alwes

ii

Dedicated to my father, Egil, and Milko, my cat and best friend.


Also, in memory of Astrid and Meash

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Acknowledgements
I would never have even been here were it not for the support of my father, Egil
Thoegersen, and his wife, Suzanne Olsen Thoegersen.
I would like to give thanks to certain individuals without whom my research
would have been much more difficult, in particular my drum teacher Freddie Gruber, for
his having advised me that I had the thinking of a composer way back when, while I was
trying to become the greatest drummer in the world.
I would like to thank Johnny Reinhard for his help in understanding the nature of
Ivess Universe Symphony, and polymicrotonality in general.
I would like to thank the faculty at the School of Music from the University of
Illinois for allowing me back into the fold after a personal period of illness: Erik Lund,
Rick Taube, Scott Wyatt, Steve Taylor, and Reynold Tharp.
I thank my committee for their time and well needed criticism.
I would like to thank John Wagstaff and Chris Pawlicki for helping me in my
queries at the greatest music library in the country, the UIUC Music library.
I would like to thank Rod Butler, now deceased, who was my first composition
teacher at Cal State Dominguez Hills, and who believed in a late starter like me. Also, I
would like to thank Burns Taft, of Ventura College, for his recognition in my interest in
composition very early in my development.
Lastly, I would like to thank John M Kennedy, and Bill Kraft, for both of their
open mindedness regarding my compositional aesthetic. I would also like to thank Kyle
Gann and Brian Ferneyhough for their supportive email correspondences, which have
been very encouraging for me.

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Abstract
This paper introduces polytempic polymicrotonality as a new musical aesthetic.
Microtonality is the basis for its inception, from which the discussion proposes music
with more than one microtonal tuning system. Examples from the literature are discussed
to give an historic framework showing that this tendency has been present throughout
human musical history. Polytempo is a tool for which polymicrotonal structures can
function in relief from its background. Polytempo acts as a frame, or ground structure,
that is multi-dimensional, akin to the advancement of perspective in Renaissance art.
Examples of music literature are displayed for musical precedence in this area, focusing
on Charles Ivess Universe Symphony, unfinished since 1925, and realized recently by
Johnny Reinhard in 1996.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 2: PITCH: Historical Information Leading to the Possibility of
Polymicrotonality: Representative Figures and Works .....................................................11
CHAPTER 3: RHYTHM: Representative Twentieth Century Polytempic Works ...........98
CHAPTER 4: PITCH + RHYTHM: Literature and Compositions Suggesting
Relationships between Microtonal Pitch and Rhythm, in Terms of Tempo,
Leading to the Union of Polymicrotonality and Polytempo; Henry Cowell,
Ivan Wyschnegradsky, and Ben Johnston ...................................................................... 128
CHAPTER 5: The Progenitor Charles Ives, His Universe Symphony and its Legacy:
Polymicrotonal Polytempic Art Music and Its Practice .................................................. 167
CHAPTER 6: Conclusions ..............................................................................................204
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 212

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1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
All traditions belong to me, if I claim them.
Ben Johnston1

1.1. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF POLYMICROTONAL POLYTEMPIC MUSIC


Charles Ivess Universe Symphony is the first, and up to now, possibly the only
polytempic polymicrotonal work. Written between 1915 -1926, the Universe Symphony
lay in disrepair for half a century until two individuals, Larry Austin in 1974, and Johnny
Reinhard in 1996, pieced together the scraps and notes of the score, [in their original
intention, as Ives proscribed in his notes], and, released two vastly different versions. The
version that best suits the scope of polymicrotonality is Reinhards version, from 1996,
whom released the official Universe Symphony score and recording through the
American Festival of Microtonal Music, approved by the Charles Ives Society.2
Within the Universe Symphony, there are three levels of tempi and four different
tunings. These impart a structurally-stratified, deeper, and more powerful listening
experience for the audience than even Ivess Symphony No. 4, which is already a
wonderfully temporally and rhythmically stratified architecture. The differing tunings
yield microtones that go well beyond Ivess Three Quartertone Pieces, and point to a
completely startling, evocative, and pioneering use of pitch color never before heard.
The significance and vast potential of polytempic-polymicrotonal music can be
seen by comparing this phenomenon with the similar polytextuality of the early motets of
the fourteenth century, the Italian trecento. Then polyphony was in its infancy, and

1
2

Johnston, 2006. Maximum Clarity. p. 119.


Reinhard. 2004. The Ives Universe: a symphonic odyssey. Self -Published via AFMM, NY. New York.

2
composers were willing to separate the simultaneous melodies by using differing texts,
which were often polytextual literature (e.g. French and Latin3) in order to create
independence and individuality in the melodic lines. The trecento polytextuality is a
perfect analogy for polymicrotonality, except gradations of pitch are used in the latter to
define the voice part in extreme subtlety; further independence is achieved by setting
each line in a different tempo. Just as it is possible that the trecento composer
experienced a greater freedom than many twentieth-century composers, it is this authors
intent to help define a style that takes Ivess Universe Symphony as a foundation, building
thereon music of an unprecedented freedom for the twenty-first century.

1.2. EXTANT MUSICAL WORKS APPROACHING POLYMICROTONALITY AND


POLYTEMPO AND THE HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF MICROTONALITY

Polytempic structures, found in the works of Conlon Nancarrow, Karlheinz


Stockhausen [Gruppen] Charles Ives, among others, will also be explored culminating in
the actual simultaneous use of multiple tunings and multiple tempi in Ivess Universe
Symphony.

The thirteenth century motet has often been regarded as the most difficult type of composition to
understand and appreciate in the whole history of western music before 20 th century, not only because of
the simultaneous performance of two or more different texts, sometimes in two different languages.
(Harmon, 1958)

1.3. THE GOALS AND CONTENTS OF THIS PAPER

This is not an analytical paper, but rather a type of Hegelian dialectic synthesis by
examining the historical evidence for polymicrotonality in Greece and potentially Europe
from Zarlino to Werckmeister, and building thereupon for a new music for the Twentyfirst century. There will be some examples illustrating tempi and tunings, but there is no
systematic attempt to construct an analytical philosophy, or even a theory of
polymicrotonality or polytempic strata. Composition is the converse of analysis, and this
paper hopes to find its way to elucidate this relatively unknown area of music. I leave it
to future theorists and musicologists to devise an analytical strategy with respect to this
area of music, if it does, in fact, become a genre in its own right. Here, I present a brief
history of microtonality and its theoretical implications, and an original composition: a
polytempic polymicrotonal string quartet, entitled Hypercube, in order to demonstrate the
some of the key ideas in this paper.
The following numbered points will provide descriptions of the materials and
information covered in this paper.

1.3.1. Historical Background of Polymicrotonality and Representative Works: Exclusion


of Certain Historical Figures

This inquiry will briefly cover the Greek Generas divisions of the tetrachord,
which yielded its own unique, microtonal tuning; the obvious question is how it managed
to influence European tuning into the modern era.

4
Just intonation in the early Renaissance through Zarlino will be explored, along
with its influence on tuning by introducing the just third. Among others Mersennes
experiments with split key organs having its influence, in turn, on Vicentinos tunings
including 19 tones to the octave all the way up to Jean Etienne Maries polymicrotonal
work Le Tombeau de Carrillo will also be reviewed.
The curious reader may wonder why Harry Partch or other microtonal pioneers
are not included in this paper. The reason is twofold: one, he is neither polymicrotonal
nor polyphonic in his approach to music, and two, he is similarly not polytempic. Alois
Hba, similarly, will also not receive a more in depth consideration for the same reasons:
he does not fit the scope of this thesis due to their not falling into the class of
polymicrotonal or polytempo composers, and additionally, much literature is already
written about both of these great pioneers. This authors lack of inclusion of both these
composers is in no way meant as deprecation, whatsoever. I do include
Wyschnegradsky, who did employ polymicrotonality along with a rhythmic system based
on the overtone series.
It is understandable that there will be dissension about Harry Partch not being
included in this paper, when in fact he does not fit into this authors discussion with
respect to polymicrotonality and that recently, the notion of undertones as an actual
acoustic reality has been proven false: they do not exist in nature, even if the
mathematical and theoretical implications may be valid.4 Partch, however, does represent
another arm of the influence of Henry Cowell, who actually advocated the notion of
undertones, and who was a seminal influence on Partch.

Rehding, 2003. Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought.p. 16-17.

5
1.3.2. Representative Polytempic Works from the twentieth Century
Nancarrows actual physical representation of Henry Cowells ideas will be
explored as Nancarrow is quite possibly one of the greatest polytempic composers of all
time. His influence on Ligeti is legendary, leading to Ligetis own Piano Etudes, and his
sway is felt still today.
In addition to Nancarrow, Ivess output features several works with polytempic
structures, which will also be examined, as polytempi seem to be a largely American
innovation in twentieth-century music, with a lineage from Ives, to Cowell, to
Nancarrow, and Elliott Carter. With regard to Stockhausens Gruppen, he was influenced
by the work of Cowell in relating rhythmic values to the overtone series. Although
Boulezs Rituel: in memorium Bruno Maderna (1974) is composed of eight different
groups with their own tempos, it is not polytempo so much as it is antiphonal, since the
work is referencing Madernas Quadrivium (1969), which is antiphonal.

1.3.3. Literature and Works Suggesting Relationships Between Pitch and Rhythm
Henry Cowells manifesto New Musical Resources, written at the age of 20,
explores the heart of polytempic polymicrotonality by examining the overtone series
relationships by ratio, and then analogizing them to rhythmic structures ranging from
note duration, through meter, and ultimately to tempo itself, as evinced by Ben
Johnstons string quartets, where his tempo relationships reveal the underpinnings of the
just intoned ratios already in use in his pitch vocabulary. Nancarrow also initially tested
these tempo relationships by way of Cowells erudition and suggestion.

6
Some of the integral serialists, such as Stockhausen, and Messiaen and tonal
composers from Riemann to Stockhausen have all tried in some measure to discover the
direct link between pitch and rhythm. The problem encountered by serializing rhythm
was the connect-the-dot nature of the compositional process, which would preclude
choice on behalf of the composer. The Enlightenment musicians Jean Phillipe Rameau
and Moritz Hauptmann found a relationship between the first few overtone series partials
and simple rhythms for tonal cadences. The serialists tried to pair pitch to rhythm
algorithmically, but it proved inconclusive due to the limitations of serialism, the
negation of choice, and the lack of ability to regulate timbre. Perhaps this idea of a direct
link is a mistaken one: how can you relate what is already the same phenomenon? Or,
rather, why are we thinking of them as different? Frequency is periodic. Frequency is the
periodicity of both rhythm and pitch. Where periodicity concerns rhythm, a slow enough
cycle, under 20 hertz, will be perceived by the ear as discrete beats. Above 20 Hertz,
the periodicity becomes blurred into a low frequency. Therefore, the psychoacoustical
nature of the human animal will perceive the same phenomena of periodicity as two
distinct and separate objects, when in fact, they are the same object at different states.
Karlheinz Stockhausens in How Time Passes presents a "new morphology of
musical time" used originally via Henry Cowell's insight, in his application of the
harmonic overtone series to musical rhythm, and predated Stockhausen's by 35 years.
Stockhausens failure regarding the serial control over timbre, however, was more about
controlling timbre and pitch to rhythmic compositional technique via serial methods.
Stockhausen was more interested in the applicability of this serial composition method to
duration. One can compare Cowell and Stockhausen in their use of overtone series and

7
use of instruments capable of performing according to their rhythmical ideas. So, the
notion of linking needs to be changed to a notion of correspondence, since it is not logical
to link something to itself, as that is a redundancy.
Pitch and rhythm, as the same phenomena, therefore can correspond to itself, and
create a relationship to itself, but the idea that they are separate is an illusion. This
relationship has been a riddle for composers for centuries because the quest has probably
been an erroneous one based on a lack of knowledge concerning basic acoustics that
could only have come about in the twentieth-century through technology. Nevertheless, it
is satisfying to have an organic union between these seemingly disparate parameters of
music. Henry Cowell, Ben Johnston, and Karlheinz Stockhausen have suggested the
systematization of the overtone series to rhythmic groupings and other structures, which
is inevitably arbitrary, since it is like linking water to ice to vapor. It is metaphorical.
Jeff Pressing, in his article Cognitive Isomorphisms Between Pitch and Rhythm In
World Musics presents yet another angle to the linking of pitch and rhythm, considering

human perception by relating perceptual space to one-dimensional arrays of rhythmic


number values as isomorphic, or structurally identical. 5 Pressing makes a case for the
correspondence between twelve note African Ghanaian rhythms from Ewe drumming, to
the twelve pitch classes in Western equal tempered tonality. The commonality here is
actually the number 12, which is an abstract construct. But this authors point is that this
is still somewhat of an arbitrary pairing that does not apodictically necessitate a
relationship. I, on the other hand am seeking, quite literally, a direct relationship between
pitch and rhythm as a physical phenomenon. I maintain that pitch is simply a fast
5

Pressing, Jeff. 1983. Cognitive Isomorphisms between Pitch and Rhythm in World Musics: West Africa,
the Balkans and Western Tonality, Studies in Music 17: 38-61.

8
rhythmic cycle. On the other hand 2212221 does seem to arise as a type of morphogenic
resonance of human consciousness, a cloud of knowledge of a collective unconscious
nature that seems to bind disparate cultures and peoples.

1.3.4. Charles Ivess Universe Symphony and its legacy: Polytempic Polymicrotonal Art
Music

Charles Ives (1874-1954) wrote a masterpiece of unprecedented vision in his


uncompleted Universe Symphony, a work that was actually completed, but just not
assembled. After examining the notes and pages of the Universe Symphony, Johnny
Reinhard acted as the individual agent Ives referred to in posterity, as the one who could,
and would, put together the scraps of paper and notes into a legible and audible form.
Reinhards realization, approved by the Ives Society,6 reveals the deep complexity of
Ivess thought, replete with Pythagorean tuning, quartertones, eighth tones, and just
intonation, along with three competing global tempi and a subdivision of polyrhythmic
percussion into numerous divisions of the whole note, extending up to 43 beats.
The implications of this are astounding. Tantamount to total freedom, both in
pitch and in rhythm/tempo, the restrictive nature of 12-tone equal temperament could
conceivably explode into an infinity of pitch and rhythmic possibilities. While the
rhythmic structure and nature of time itself operate in an unlimited musical universe,
where the Einstein-Rosen bridge even suggests that nature itself is capable of time
manipulation, not to mention the Shapiro7 time delay, where gravity directly slows down

Reinhard. 2004. The Ives Universe: a symphonic odyssey. p. 6.


Shapiro delay is described in (Irwin I. Shapiro, 1964). Gravitational time dilation causes apparent delays
in radar signals.

9
time by proximity while other streams move ahead uniformly, also revealed by Einsteins
general theory of relativity; just as it is in nature, so it is in art.
Rather than despair at the innumerable combinations of pitch and rhythm, the
twenty-first century composer can easily see new approaches to age old problems: form,

and the linking of pitch to rhythm. Aristoxenus of Tarentum adopted the analogy of
infinite space from Euclids geometry, more philosophically than practically, but his truth
is immanent in that there is infinite space between two points. Rhythm has not suffered so
much by this theorem: composers have had much more freedom with respect to new
rhythmic designs due to the limitless nature of rhythm, but even more to pointwhat
composers have allowed themselves to be limited by, by imposing rules and artificial
constraints on their ideas of musical materials. This is the same for intervals. The human
animal is capable of infinite development, including microtonal hearing and even though
there are always boundaries of perception, such as the Just Noticeable Difference, or the
JND, the human animal is capable of greater perception.

1.3.5. Compositional Resources: scale and tuning sources and computer music software
for the composition and realization of polymicrotonality

Limitations of this polytempic polymicrotonality will lie in the area of


instrumentalists resistance to practicing intonation and microtones. This is inevitable and
should be expected. A way around this is software that deals exclusively with microtonal
notation, and playback via MIDI interface.
Scala is a wonderful, free program that transcends the hardwired confines of
popular notation programs and it is open source.

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Musescore is another freeware music notation program with microtonal plugin
capability, in which a composer can print microtonal and polymicrotonal scores for
performers, as well as export midi files that can be realized in more professional sound
synthesis software.

1.3.6. What is the Difference between Tuning and Temperament?

Tuning vs. temperament: what is the difference? A tuning is an unadulterated


system with untouched intervals, whether or not they exist in nature. If a mathematical
system invents a hierarchy of intervallic structures, then all attempts to modify the
structure result as temperament. It seems to be a matter of perspective, which draws fire
from all angles. The overtone series is a pure tuning. Pythagorean is also a pure tuning,
but meantone and equal are both temperaments, due to the tampering of the perfect fifth
from 702 cents, down to 696 cents and 700 cents for mean tone and equal temperaments
respectively.
I highly recommend William A. Setharess book Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale
as it has concise explanations of the various mathematics behind historical tunings and
temperaments and mathematics explaining the phenomenon of noise and the harmonic
spectrum in acoustics. Fast Fourier Transforms and spectra are discussed in a friendly
way that reaches the lay person, such as this author, as he is not a mathematician. This
paper will also not be going into deep mathematical formulas for tunings or
temperaments, but only to describe the nature of human hearing and the inclusion of
microtones through the ages.

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CHAPTER 2
PITCH
HISTORICAL INFORMATION LEADING TO THE POSSIBILITY OF
POLYMICROTONALITY: REPRESENTATIVE FIGURES AND WORKS

2.1. ANCIENT GREECE


Central to this authors ideas are the three Greek genera: the enharmonic, the
chromatic, and the diatonic. These three genera produce three different tunings of the
tetrachord spanning a perfect fourth; they constitute the basic vocabulary of ancient
Greek music, which was monophonic. There is the characteristic interval, or the IC,
which proscribes the boundaries of the main interval essentially defining the flavor of the
genus. It ranges from a whole tone to a large major third in size. The remainder of the
tetrachord is called the Pyknon and it literally means packed-in space. The pyknon
ranges in size from a semitone, or a limma (remainder), which is defined as an interval of
90 cents, to as little as a quarter tone of 50 cents. The small diesis, a term attributed to
Plato,was a fractional remainder of an intervallic space consisting of 63 cents (otherwise
known as third-tones). These are also used in some of the varying chromatic genera. The
largest pyknon, and the genus that sounds common to Western ears, is the diatonic genus,
which we hear as a perfect fourth with major sounding whole and half steps. It is the pure

12
Pythagorean major sound consisting of two 204-cent major seconds and a 90-cent
minor second.
In ancient Greek tuning systems, intervals have specific names. The apotome is
the result of the 90 cent limma combined with the 24 cent Pythagorean comma (see
below) and amounts to 114 cents. Then there is the limma, under which there are the
greater and lesser dieses, at 63 and 41 cents, respectively. There are two commas. The
Pythagorean comma, at 24 cents, is the remainder of twelve consecutive 702 cent
Pythagorean fifths at the octave; the Syntonic comma is the subtraction of the just intoned
major third from the Pythagorean major third, 408 c. 386 c., equaling 22 cents.

Ex. 2.1.1. Ptolemys example of a diatonic tetrachord amidst three various sized whole
tones.8

Later in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, Zarlino discovered the senarius,
or the first 6 partials of the overtone series. Ren Descartes canonized these in his
Compendium of Music (1656).9 It is at this point in history that the overtone series was
understood to be demonstrable as a scientific reality, thanks to the work of Zarlino,
Mersenne, and Descartes. The senarius is important because it is the 5-limit justly tuned
version of Western tuning that incorporates both Pythagorean (3-limit just intonation)

8
9

Ptolemy.1999. Harmonics, p. 16.


Descartes. 1961. Compendium of Music. p. 17.

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with 5-limit just intonation. This means that the fifth overtone, at 5/4, when converted to
cents (5/4 ln(1731.234)) equals 386 cents, which is the just major third that was
discovered by pipe organ builders in tuning pipe organs and thereafter manifested in
Western ears as pure consonance. Fokker went on to advocate for the septenarius,
which includes the 7th partial, or the Bb, at 969 cents.

Ex. 2.1.2. From Ptolemys Harmonics showing individual differences in the leading
theorists intervals.10

10

Ibid. p. 50.

14

Ex. 2.1.3. and 2.1.4. Graphic display of the various sizes of Greek genera.11

11

Chalmers, John. 1992. Divisions of the Tetrachord. p. 18.

15

Ex. 2.1.4. (continued)

16
According to Canadian microtonal composer Siemen Terpstra, Anaximander, a
pre-Socratic philosopher who lived in Miletus in 560 B.C., believed in the infinite
division of unity (a concept that predates both Euclid and Aristoxenus), which in turn
applied to microtonal divisions of the whole tone in an Aristoxenian sense. Anaximander
said that all and innumerable worlds are infinite in possible harmonies, with respect to
tunings and scales. He believed in a matrix architecture with alternative choices, like the
three genera, and that we would pay the penalty for adhering to just one division, or
tuning, such as 12TET. Chronos the Greek Titan god set the ball rolling and generated all
the tunings. Anaximander believed in a matrix of alternative systems. This is a general
statement, but it certainly applies to tuning.12 Since then, there have been many
developments regarding tuning in Greece, of which the three genera are apparent.
It is quite possible that not just a few tragedies were set to music, such as
Euripidess Orestes (set in the enharmonic genus13) but that all of them might have been
set to music. This new spin puts the classical tragedians in a newly perceived role as
composers, in addition to their traditional standing as poets. Thinking of Euripides as a
composer is a rather new idea, but imagine also thinking of Sophocles, Aristophanes, and
Aeschylus as composers. Are these Greek tragic dramas an early form of opera? In any
case, the Greek genera are the most specific aspect of Greek music theory, due to
monody, which was the standard practice for Greek music.14 According to Pachymeres
(1242-1310), ancient Greek classical tragedy mainly used the diatonic genus, even

12

Siemen Terpstra. personal correspondence of Johnny Reinhard., referencing


http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/anaximan.htm
13
New Grove, Second Edition. 2001.Vol. 10. p. 341. And, West, E.P., (2001). Documents of Ancient Greek
Music.
14
Barsky. 1996. Chromaticism. pp. 2-3.

17
though Euripides was fond of the enharmonic.15 Why would this statement exist if there
were no standard performance and compositional practice? Horizontal music, linear
music, or monody, manifests its complexity in its intervals and rhythms, which can be
profoundly difficult, so as to effect the subtler nuances of mode.16 Greeks call melodies
ekmelik if they are not melodious, and melik if they are. Shades of microtones are called
chroai, and help enhance the melos and ethos of the modes, taught as morally edifying.
August Wilhelm Ambrose, in his Geschichte der Musik, 1881, discovered that melos
came in three varieties: common, mixed and non-mixed.17 Ambrose pointed out five
different accidentals, from , 1/3, , 1/6, and 1/8th tone shades of Greek microintervals.18
According to the Montpellier Code,19 Greek music also has four types of
modulations, called metabolae: genera, tonoi, system, and melos. The genera are the
tetrachordal tunings, tonoi the tone position, system a type of mode or scale, and melos
the way it is sung. There is no right or wrong in Greek musical thought, but only good,
and not good, based on commonly accepted stylistic trends. According to Aristotle, the
function of genus is to indicate the essence of a thing; it is paramount.20 As information
about the Greek genera spread into Europe through Boethius, composers such as Nicola
Vicentino began to reanimate the Greek enharmonic genus, discarded in the Middle ages
as unsingable by the Catholic Church, which had embraced simple 3-limit Pythagorean
tuning. It is through Bulgaria that Greek tuning made its entry into Europe and it is in

15

Ibid. p. 5.
Ibid. pp 5-7.
17
Ibid. p. 8.
18
Ambrose. 1881.Geschichte der Music. p. 11.
19
Barsky, p. 19.
20
Barsky. p. 39.
16

18
Bulgaria, today, where there are still the three Greek genera, plus one more: pentatonic. It
is also Bulgaria that is the link between tunings of Europe and the Middle Eastern
maqam.21 The maqam is a traditional Arabic homophonic melodic system composed of
microtonal tetrachords. The Pythagoreans use of ratios include fractions called epimore22
ratios, where they are super-particular, in that they are of the form n+1/n, in an arithmetic
series.23 Non-super-particular ratios are called epimeres, and are of the form n+m/n.24 To
find intervals between two integers, the Greeks used Katapyknosis, which involved the
insertion of a epimore ratio by setting the lower and upper bounds by multiplication.25 All
these methods were anathema to Aristoxenus, who preferred to find intervals by ear, and
by inherent musicality, than by a mechanical method.

2.1.1 The Pythagoreans

Pythagorass student, Philolaus, ventured beyond the whole tone and semitone by
calculations of fifths and fourths based on instrumental tuning practices. Differences were
all relegated to the chromatic and enharmonic genera.26 The Greeks used tetrachords
spanning a perfect fourth, called tetraktys, where the first and fourth notes, the hypate
hypaton, and the hypate meson, were fixed; while the inner two notes, the hypate
parhypate, and the hypate lichenos, were moveable, just as their stringed counterparts in

21

Ibid. pp 40-41.
For further clarification on the difference between epimere and epimore ratios, consider, for example, 7/6
as epimore, where consecutive numbers define the fraction and 7/5, where a skip in numbers define the
fraction, as epimere.
23
Gibson, 2005. Aristoxenus Harmonics. p. 10.
24
Chalmers. 1992. p. 7.
25
Ibid.
26
G. Assayag. 2002. Mathematics and Music, A Diderot Mathematical Forum. p. 5-7.
22

19
the physical lutes upon which they were modeled. Pythagoras and Philolaus27 were
convinced there was a mathematical basis for consonance, expressed as ratios based on
nodes of a single string called a monochord. It is probable that Pythagoras did not invent
tuning by the multiplication of a tone by the fraction 3/2, but that he was introduced to it
during his period spent in Babylon, which is well known.28

Ex. 2.1.5 Ptolemys Greater Perfect and Lesser Perfect Systems.29

The Greek tetrachord based on the perfect fourth, which is not found in the
overtone series as an actual distance above the fundamental until very far up the series, is
in fact the shadow of the perfect fifth. It is the undertone inversion of the perfect fifth
27

Frazer, 2001. Development of Musical Tuning Systems, p. 1.


Pythagorean Knowledge in Ancient Babylonia. Accessed 3/5/12.
http://www.egyptorigins.org/babpyth.htm. Also, Pythagoras may have spent some time in Babylon, Iraq,
and had learned much of his mathematics in Babylon.
29
Ptolemy, p. 76.
28

20
in relation to the second octave of the fundamental and it is the main organizing principle
for all Greek music. The tetrachord is also used in the Middle East in the Arabic maqam
in much the same way it was spread by Ptolemy.30 Greek music did not make deliberate
use of the octave, so the scales, harmoniai, and modes, tonoi, seem to have come later
towards the first century C.E., under Ptolemy, from whom Boethius rewrote their
essential functions for use in European musical theory.31 The monophony of the Arabic
maqam comes much closer to the sound and use of the Greek tetrachordal system,
according to O Wright.
Pythagorean tuning is essentially 3-limit just intonation. The only overtone series
partials used are the fundamental and the second overtone, the perfect fifth (3:2), which,
at 702 cents, is pure. Archytas then improved 3-limit just intonation to include ratios
beyond the fourth partial, such as the fifth partial, which is the just major third, at 386
cents, making Pythagorean tuning 5-limit inclusive.32 Archytas also explored
proportional means and proposed three methods of octave divisions: arithmetic, 12:9:6,
geometric, 12:6:3, and harmonic, 12:8:6.33
What does this have to do with microtonality, let alone polymicrotonality? A
great deal, since the Greek genera, the diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic, were divided
by these means to produce intervals of a profound diversity, ranging from the comma, at
24 cents, to a large whole tone at 231 cents. Each genus was a type of tuning that was
defined by the size of the pyknon, or remainder, of the tetrachordal divisions after the
major thirds, minor thirds, and whole tones had been designated. The pyknon was the

30

Wright, 1978, the modal system of Persian and Arabic music, 1250-1300. p. 32.
Chadwick. 1981. Boethius, the consolations of music, logic, theology, and philosophy. p. 89.
32
G. Assayag, 2002, p. 7.
33
Ibid.
31

21
densest region of the non-diatonic genera, the chromatic and enharmonic genera equal to
less than half of the span of the perfect fourth.34 The lichanos is the indicator, as the third
note from the bottom, of the genus in question and indicates the CI, or characteristic
interval within the pyknon, that tells the genus type.35 The CI width, therefore, indicates
the genus.36 According to Richard Crocker, Pythagoras, Archytas, and Aristoxenus all
had different views regarding the size of the lichanos. Archytas believed the lichanos to
be 28/27, or 63 cent third tones; Pythagoras believed it to be the limma, at 90 cents; and
Aristoxenus believed it to vary between 50-100 cents.37 In fact, Andres Barbera created a
formula called the rate of change for the lichanos: (lichanos2 lichanos1/ parhypate2
parhypate1).38 The Lyre was used to unequally divide the pyknon in Aristoxenuss
time. Historical studies by classicists have organized groups of tetrachords and their
microtonal ingredients, placing them into categories and have also found that there was
modulation between the genera.39
The prototypical diatonic genus can be found in Platos Timaeus; called the
Timaeus scale, it contains the characteristic limma, at a ratio of 256/243, which is 90
cents.40 The Timaeus tetrachord contains the following ratios: 256:243:216:192, which
corresponds to 90 cents, 204 cents, and 204 cents, which is a half-step, and two whole
steps.41 This was given to Plato from Pythagorus to Philolaus to Archytas, who was then
a contemporary of Plato. The pinnacle of Greek scalar achievement lies within the
Immutable Perfect System, which contains 15 steps and covers two octaves, beginning
34

Chalmers, 1993. Divisions of the Tetrachord.p. 18.


Ibid., p. 47.
36
Schlesinger. 1970. The Greek Aulos. p. 161.
37
Chalmers. 1993. p. 48.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid., p. 52.
40
Godwin, 1993. Harmony of the Spheres. p. 3-9.
41
Aristides Quintilianus, first century AD1983. p. 161.
35

22
with the Proslambanomenos, typically at pitch class A, descending/ascending42 through 5
tetrachordal series: hypate tetrachord, meson tetrachord, synemmenon tetrachord,
diezeugmenon tetrachord, and the hyperbolaion tetrachord, each with specific steps:
hypate hypaton, parhypate hypaton, lichanos hypaton, hypate meson, parhypate meson,
lichanos meson, mese, trite synammenon, paramese, trite diezeugmenon, paramese,
paramete diezeugmenon, nete diezeugmenon, trite hyperbolaion, paramete hyperbolaion,
nete hyperbolaion, corresponding to: A,B,C,D,E,F,G,a,b-flat,c,d,e,f,g,a.43 All of these
Greek names refer to lyres from ancient Greece. The Immutable Perfect System is
composed of two smaller systems: the Greater Perfect System, and the Lesser Perfect
System, where the standing notes are the proslambanomenos, and the mese, and the
mutable notes are the lichanos and the parhypate, as discussed earlier.44
Nicomachus of Gerasa, first century A.D., took Platos Timaeus very seriously in
his The Manual of Harmonics.45 Nicomachus believed that the properties of musical
intervals were governed by number, as in Pythagorean thought, and that there was
something to be said of octave equivalence, where a tetrachord is paired with a
pentachord, disjunctly.46 The term diezeugmenon means disjunct, and synemmenon
means conjunct, where these terms indicate the combining of tetrachords. The disjunct
tetrachord is separated by a whole tone and the conjunct shares the same pitch. In
building the Immutable Perfect System, both techniques of tetrachordal combinations
were employed, as both the diezeugmenon and synemmenon tetrachords were the

42

It has been customary for Greek scales to be spelled downwards, starting at the top and climbing the
scale down; however, Xenakis claims this is erroneous, and has since reversed the opinion of this matter.
43
Schlesinger. 1970. p. 139.
44
The New Grove, 2001, pp. 663-665.
45
Nichomachus, 1994, p. 99.
46
Ibid.

23
distinctions used to determine the Greater from the Lesser Perfect Systems,
respectively.47 The heptachord is the result of the seven-note set made from combining
the synemmenon and the meson tetrachords, as they were conjoined, or conjunct; while
the octachord is formed by the diezeugmenon and meson tetrachords, which are disjunctly
separated by a 9/8 whole tone, thus creating the two species of the Perfect System. When
combined they form the Immutable Perfect System.48
Nicomachus reveals that Plato had realized all the scale degrees for the diatonic
scale in Timaeus: 1/1, 9/8, 81/64, 4/3, 3/2, 27/16, 256/243, 2/1, which is 3-limit
Pythagorean tuning, from Archytas.49 Plato had also canonized two of the methods for
string divisions: harmonic mean, b = 2ac/a+c, and arithmetic, b = a+c/2, which, along
with geometric mean, is the resultant root of the number of multiplicands.
Nicomachus also invented the term identity with respect to concordancy,50 or
consonance; this brings to mind Stockhausens Stimmung, in which the performers must
achieve equivalence by ear, which is ultimately an Aristoxenian principle (see section
2.1.2 below). As a side note, Platos Republic, at the end of book III, discusses the ethos
of the modes in feeling and character: Lydian, as mournful; Dorian, as cheerful; Ionian,
as happy; and Phrygian, as self-restrained.51 Nicomachus also helped pave the way to
polymicrotonality by his combined genera scale, whereby the Immutable Perfect
System is infused with all three genera.52 Examples are shown above. McClain notices

47

Ibid.
Ibid. p. 110-112.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid., p. 182.
51
Plato, The Republic, pp. 157-59.
52
Nicomacchus, p. 176.
48

24
that Albert von Thimus had created the Thimus-Nicomacchian Table, as a model of
Pythagorean thinking, which yielded a 19-tone per octave scale.53
Aristides Quintilianus (2nd century A.D.), incidentally, in his De Musica in three
books, invents the characters Florentius and Eusebius (Schumanns imaginary
characters, possibly) who are found in a Platonic dialogue utilizing both Pythagorean and
Aristoxenian ideas. Aristides also borrowed the tri-generic Immutable Perfect System
from Nicomachus. Aristides was essentially a follower of Aristoxenus, who advocated
six shades in excess of the three genera, utilizing third tones.54 The third tones of
Aristidess system come from Aristoxenuss soft chromatic genus. Modulation of genera
is discussed in connection with alteration of the underlying scale and character of the
melody.55 Modulation also was accomplished by concordance of interval sizes within
corresponding genera.56 This type of modulation between genera is tantamount to
microtonal modulation, or polymicrotonal use of multiple tuning systems in one setting.
According to Aristides, melos, was divided into four areas: genus, scale, tonoi,
and rhythm, in which the three genera were the most important element of modulation.

2.1.2 The Aristoxenians


Vindictive and polemical in his book, Harmonics,57 Aristoxenus of Tarentum (4th
century B.C.) disapproved of the Greek harmonicistsa school of theorists who based

53

McClain. 1978. The Pythagorean Plato. p. 146.


Aristides Quintilianus, first century AD1983. On Music. p. 77-88.
55
Ibid., pp.83-85.
56
Ibid., p. 89.
57
Aristoxenus. 2005. Harmonics. trans. Sophie Gibson, p. 1-4.
54

25
their music on one genus, the diatonic, emphasizing octave equivalence.58 Aristoxenus
derided the harmonicists notion of scale as mechanical and soulless, even though a
synthesis of scale and genera would yield many more than 7 species of mode, as shown
by Eratocles.59 Aristoxenus, however, claimed that scales were useless and that notation
was similarly pointless. Aristoxenus believed in the motion of the voice in actual
performance, where the tetrachord, alone and with modulations, was the basic musical
unit; the perfect fourth was its most essential interval. It is Aristoxenus who first hailed
voice leading as the most important principle of music.60 Aristoxenus did not resort to a
cosmology, as did Pythagoras, and also rejected the ratios of Pythagoras by stating that
we do not perceive sound as ratios or relative speed.61
Aristoxenus stated that the smallest melik interval to be sung was the quartertone,
at 50 cents.62 Anything smaller was considered ekmelik, or unsingable, even though the
comma was sung as embellishment.
For Aristoxenus, there were six shades of archetypal genera:
Table 2.1.2.1
Enharmonic

3 quartertone 50 c.

3 quartertone

24 large major third

Chromatic mild

4 third tone 63 cents

4 third tone

22 smaller major third

Chromatic hemiolic

4.5

4.5

21

Chromatic whole tone

18 minor third

Diatonic mild

6 limma, 90 cents

15 small minor third

Diatonic intense

6 limma, 90 cents

12 whole tone 204c.

12

58

New Grove, second edition, Volume 10, p. 336.


Ibid., p. 337.
60
Ibid.
61
Aristoxenus (Gibson). 2005. Harmonics. p.16.
62
Ibid., p. 339.
59

26
These tetrachordal divisions by 30 intervals were invented by Cleonides, a
follower of Aristoxenus, who tried as judiciously as possible to give an idea of
measurement to the divisions Aristoxenus envisioned (which were supposed to be
immeasurable approximations).63 The tetrachord, when extended into a full octave, would
yield 72 divisions of the octave by Cleonidess divisions. Even though they were purely
theoretical, some have taken these measurements literally. Aristoxenus defined the
pyknon as three notes bounding two small intervals, where tonoi was the position of the
voice.64 The modulation of genera pivoted on the mese, an immovable note from which to
jump to other tetrachords.65 The modulation to other genera is considered melik, a
standard of Greek practice very similar to Arabic maqam. According to Aristoxenuss
adoption of Euclids philosophy of geometry, there are infinite points on a line, and so
there are infinite lichanoi between two pitches. The enharmonic retuning of the lichanos
is called eklysis.66 The Delphic Hymns, according to Aristoxenus, featured modulations
of three different types: by genus, by system, and by key.67 Ethos, in Aristoxenus, was the
act of modulation, in which Cleonides managed four systems of modulation: by genera,
system, key, and melos. Additionally, there were retunings that Aristoxenus advocated,
which were the 13 tonoi, or modes, as progenitors of the modern day key. These were
also distinguished by genera tuning as well as by position in a system, or scale. 68

63

Ibid., p. 339, and Chalmers, p. 7.


Ibid.
65
Ibid., p. 341.
66
Barsky, Chromaticism, 1996, p. 3-5.
67
Winnington-Ingram, 1936. Mode in Ancient Greek Music. p. 33.
68
Ibid., p. 74.
64

27
2.1.3 Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy, 2nd century A.D.) was born in Alexandria. In
addition to the Almagest, his famous treatise on mathematics and the cosmos, Ptolemy
was a brilliant music theorist who solidified all of ancient Greek theory in his writings.69
Ptolemy explored and defined Pythagorus, Aristoxenus, and Archytas, and combined the
ideologically opposing schools of thought regarding the historical divide between
Pythagoras and Aristoxenus.
Ptolemy further clarified the methodology for the divisions of intervals by
arithmetic: 4-8-12-16, a process of adding 4; harmonic, 6-8-12-18-27, a process of adding
1/3 the proportion of each number; and geometric, 2-4-8-16-32, simple multiplication by
2, including the notion of square roots, not available to Greeks without a mesolabium.70
Although each means of division allowed variance between the cents value of each
interval, the overall differences are slight. Consonance was determined as the smallest
and simplest ratio.71 Ptolemy also acknowledged modulation by genus, in which outer
notes, the hypate and mese, remained stationary at a perfect fourth, while the inner notes,
the parhypate and lichanos, were moveable, and therefore able to modulate, metabolae,
to other genera where a unity could be achieved.72
Ptolemy, with regard to Aristoxenus, created a chart of the latters genera in broad
strokes: the enharmonic was defined with quartertones; the soft chromatic, with third
tones; and the diatonic with semitones.73 Ptolemy cites Archytas as having equated the

69

Ptolomy, first century A.D. Harmonics. Trans. Jon Solomon. 2000.


The mesolabium was a tool for extracting roots and constructing geometric means in ancient Greece.
71
Ptolemy, p. 9-16.
72
Ibid., p. 39.
73
Ibid., p.41.
70

28
third tones to a ratio of 28/27, at 63 cents; however, in Archytass system, the third tone
was found in more than just one genus.74 The idea of polymicrotonality holds more
efficaciously if one follows a particular Greek theorist. In the case of a polymicrotonal
paradigm, Aristoxenuss criteria for his genera hold very well; and since he was a major
Greek figure, aside from Pythagoras, in holding a theoretical stance with weight.
Ptolemys classifications are as follows:75
Table 2.1.3.1
Enharmonic

5/4 (just third)

24/23 (1/3 tone, 63 c.)

46/45 (38 cents)

Soft Chromatic

6/5

15/14 (apotome)

28/27 (third tone)

Intense Chromatic

7/6 (266 cents, third tone) 12/11

22/21

Soft Diatonic

21/20

Tonic Diatonic

8/7 (231 cent large whole 10/9


tone)
9/8
8/7

Intense Diatonic

10/9

16/15

9/8

28/27

These ratios are, as Ptolemy decreed, within both reason and perception for musicians in
second century Greece.76
Ptolemy himself recommended that the enharmonic genus modulate to the soft
chromatic and then to the intense chromatic by the congruence of pyknon sizes and
intervallic unity.77 This proves that genera modulations were not just supported by
Aristoxenus alone, but widespread enough that Ptolemy recognized the performance
practices of composers and musicians of his day. If we still agree that genera are the
Greek equivalents of tuned systems of pitch, then this is tantamount to poly temperament.
And since these genera involve microtonal intervals, they are polymicrotonal by
74

Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid., p. 50.
76
Ibid., p. 52.
77
Ibid., p. 58.
75

29
definition, despite their limitations to monophonic textures. For during the course of one
work, two or more genera will be used, thus allowing a species of polymicrotonality:
what Ivor Darreg called immigration,78 rather than modulation, since modulation refers
to a relative position within one tuning scale, as opposed to leaving the tuning altogether.
We can also see that Ptolemy was 11-limit inclusive in just intoned ratios that venture out
well beyond Pythagorean 3-limit tuning. Also in Ptolemys system, the renaming of a
pitch, in the Greater Perfect System, for example, changed its function, which would then
change its genus. All genera can modulate.79 In studying Ptolemy, we find that
intervallic re-spelling was not an original idea in Western chromatic theory. Ptolemy
termed modulation by genera to be metabolic modulation.80 In fact, a modulation in
genera, from the diatonic to chromatic genus, causes a change in melos.81

Table 2.1.3.2 Ptolemaic comparative table of the enharmonic genus from Archytas,
Aristoxenus, Eratosthenes, Didymus, and Ptolemy.82
Archytas

Aristoxenus

Eratosthenes

Didymus

Ptolemy

5/4

3 (Cleonides's
indications)

19/15

5/4

5/4

36/35 (perfect
quartertone)

39/38

31/30

24/23

28/27

24

40/39

32/31

46/45

Ptolemy, in fact, had raised just intonation to the 11th limit, quartertones, and had never
espoused equal divisions for either the octave, the tetrachord, or the whole tone.83
78

From a personal correspondence with Reinhard: Johnny Reinhard knew Ivor Darreg, part of the San
Diego contingent of microtonalists, and Ivor referred to modulation of one tuning to another as
immigration, since it was akin to going into foreign territory.
79
Ibid., p. 75.
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid., p. 78.
82
Ibid., pp. 99-123.

30

2.2 EUROPE: THE MIDDLE AGES, RENAISSANCE, AND BAROQUE

The intervals in use in Gregorian chant did come smaller than the semitone,
according to the Montpellier antiphonary codex.84 The diesis (63 cents), smaller than the
limma (90 cents) somewhere in the area of a third tone (also 63 cents) showed that the
Greek enharmonic genus was still in use. The Greek genera and the new European
diatonic flavor had overlapped during the dark and middle ages and classifications of
intervallic systems of the middle ages were based on the Greek genera and Greater
Perfect System.85 Eventually, the theoretical diatonic/chromatic systems of the later
Middle Ages, beginning with the Ars Nova, fluctuated between 12, 14, 17, and 19 pitches
per octave, all based on extended Pythagorean tuning.86 Carl Dalhaus called this variance
the lower and upper limits of available resources via monochord divisions by
mathematics.87 In fact, even Guido de Arezzo had insinuated the existence of the diesis.88
Philippe de Vitrys Ars Nova in (1320) alluded to a 14-tone per octave system that
had double leading tone cadences. In fact, the term leading tone was first seen in the
writings of Ptolemy.89 The extended Pythagorean tuning of 17 tones per octave in the
system of Prosdocimus de Beldemandis involved dividing all scalar whole tones into two

83

Ptolemy, Harmonics, (first century AD), trans. Jon Solomon, 2000.


Barsky, p. 20.
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
87
Ibid. p. 20.
88
Ibid.
89
Ptolemy, p. 53.
84

31
parts so that each tone had upper and lower leading tones.90 But first we should explore
Boethius.
Boethius (Rome, 480-524), in his De Institutione Musica, which is an incomplete
and only a cursory translation of the works of Nicomachus and Ptolemy,91 was the last
European vector of Greek musical theory to the West until Guido de Arezzo.92 Boethius
called music musica mundana, an all-pervasive force. He believed in ratios, as in
Pythagorean theory, and Greek modal theory, which is the progenitor of scales in the
Western understanding, complete with misidentifications of Dorian and Phrygian as
reversed. The classical Greek modes are not discussed here because they are not issues
particular to tuning; nevertheless, they are a circumstance of the various diatonic genera
they contain. Moreover, they represent more of the beginnings of Western tonality. The
writings of Boethius were revived by the Carolingian renaissance, three centuries later.
The Greek theory and genera bequeathed by Boethius to the compilation of the French
codex by Cassiodorus was an ongoing process that extended through 150 codices during
the Middle ages. During the late 9th century there was a Boethian revival.93 The
Pythagorean system espoused by Boethius was adopted by the Catholic Church, who
focused solely on the diatonic genus because it was readily adaptable into chant and
liturgy. Initially, there were discrepancies between Boethiuss interval ratios and the
chant melodies--- incongruities that arose from conflicting systems, yielding potentially
two simultaneous tuning systems of unintentional polymicrotonal effects. 94

Barsky. 1996. Chromaticism. p. 21, this is referencing Carl Dahlhauss work on Johannes Ciconia.
Chadwick, The consolations, 1981, p. 89.
92
New Grove. Vol. 3, pp. 784-786.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid., p. 785.
90
91

32
Musica Enchiriadis is a curious document due to its anonymous authorship and
its proposed use of just intonation up to the 7th limit (chapter ix).95 The treatise was
written in Germany in the ninth century, by way of Frances Carolingian renaissance. In
an age that was completely dominated by Pythagorean tuning up to the third limit, or the
perfect fifth, this document stands in isolation against the prevailing logic of its time. It
obviously must have influenced a great deal of musicians in Germany, and therefore it
coexisted with the common Pythagorean tuning, leading to speculation that at least two
tuning systems were competing for wide spread use: Pythagorean and 7-limit just
intonation.96 Curiously, the document is filled with Greek intervallic terms: limma, diesis,
and colon, which are two commas (roughly equal to a quartertone). The tuning system of
Musica Enchiriadis is based on the 9/8 Pythagorean sesquioctava, the epogdoos, initially
referred to as the sonus.97
The official stance of the Catholic Church was that it had dispensed with the
enharmonic and chromatic genera in favor of the diatonic for its liturgical chant, due to
the small intervals.98 In France, musicians were training on the monochord, using the
three methods of means: namely the arithmetic mean; the geometric mean; and the
harmonic mean. These were in opposition to the Pythagorean methods of spiraling fifths,
so ratios were coming into focus.99 In Spain, Al Farabi (872-950) had spread his theory
based on the ratios of Archytas and Aristoxenian approximations,100 symbolizing the
simultaneous use of both arithmetic and geometric means, or rather the simultaneous use

95

Musica Enchiriadis, Ninth century---rewritten in 1976 at the University of Colorado.


Ibid., chapter ix.
97
Ibid., p. 10.
98
Ferreria, p. 13-16 (G. Assayag, 2002).
99
Ibid., p. 17.
100
Ibid., p. 18.
96

33
of the Byzantine method of discrete ratios and continuous approximations that Xenakis
valued.
Early medieval music theory, therefore, was about the simultaneity of competing
tuning systems around all of Europe, from just ratio, to Pythagorean, to the Aristoxenian
approximations by ear, until the Catholic Church settled on strict, simple Pythagorean
tuning, which remained intact until Zarlino. Johannes Ciconia, ca. 1400, had thoughts
about the fusion of certain tuning aspects of the Ars Nova with the Italian trecento, where
Pythagorean tuning would be fused with the 17th harmonic, the sesquiseptima, at the
ratios of 17/16, and 18/17, semitone of 105 cents, showing already a desire to break away
from strict Pythagorean tuning.101 In fact, Marchetto of Padua, in his Lucidarium (1317),
had written about the justly tuned major third, or the fifth harmonic, in 5-limit just
ratios.102 In fact, the Luciderium was filled with divisions of the whole tone into nine
parts which was a carry-over from the theories of Al Farabi, who had brought the maqam
to the West. The maqam had been subjected to an octave division of 54 tones in Turkish
practice by the teachings of both Archytas and Ptolemy, except that Ptolemy did not
advocate equal divisions.103 Also, via Byzantine music, we get the chrysanthos, the
practice of the ancients, systematizing Greek modes with elements of Turkish music that
divided the whole tone into 9 parts, or commas, as seen in the writings of Marchetto and
Johannes Ciconia.
The confluence of the many different paths that by which Greek theory was
introduced into the West (and their concomitant inaccuracies) led to Renaissance
revivials of Greek practices that were based on spurious information; this incremental
101

Johannes Ciconia, de proportionibus and Nova Musica, p. 109.


Marchetto of Padua, Luciderium, trans. Joe Herlinger, p. 115.
103
Ibid., pp. 131-149.
102

34
digression inevitably happens over the course of centuries, yet this is how fundamental
change and growth occur in artthrough mistakes. Nevertheless, it is on Marchettos
Luciderium that Ciconia based his work, incorporating the 17th partial into Pythagorean
tuning.104 Also, the reduced set of diatonic tones had been increased to 12, by 1300, by
the use of multiple leading tones from the practice of Ars Nova and potential
polymodality, where clausulae were essentially polymodal, for example, by containing
both Phrygian and Dorian modes with their concomitant leading tones, as well.105
Although modes had infiltrated Europe through Boethius, it is not wholly true that mode
names originated solely with Glareans Dodecachordon. Polymodality can be seen as a
musical and ideological precursor to polymicrotonality. It appears in the music of Bartk,
for example, in the early twentieth century, alongside Ivess Universe Symphony.
Around the sixteenth century, at the height of the Renaissance, chordal harmony
began to break away from the strict Pythagorean tuning found in organum, discant, and
motets. Musicians began looking back to the Greeks, a pattern of revival that has been
brought to this authors attention, as well as to Barsky, prior to this research. Nicola
Vicentino and Gioseffo Zarlino were Greek revivalists, both of whom in the 1550s used
just ratios, and rediscovered the three Greek genera, again, after Boethius had transmitted
them to Europe 1000 years earlier. The Frenchman Marin Mersenne, in his Harmonie
Universelle, 1637 had promoted the Greek systems of chromatic and enharmonic genera
as easy and necessary to musical composition.106

104

Ibid., p. 157.
Barsky, p. 80.
106
Egan, Marin Mersenne: Traite de L'Harmonie universelle: a critical translation of the second book ,
1962, p. 11.
105

35
Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590) brought Europe into just intonation by vociferously
leading tuning away from Pythagorean methods; thus it is odd that Pythagoras was to
become a tremendous influence on Zarlino.107 Zarlino expanded the overtone series to
include the fifth partial, or the justly tuned third, at 5/4, or 386 cents. In fact, it was
Zarlino who had established the senarius as the first six overtones to be the fundamental
components of Western tonality.108 Interestingly, it was Galileos father, Vincenzo, who
led the foray against Zarlino, in an effort to rid music of numbers, (as Aristoxenus had
tried to do in defiance of Pythagorus), when Zarlino proclaimed that Galileis relativism
was an assault on Gods Plan.109
Zarlino wrote his Le Istitutioni Harmoniche in 1558 and declared the major scale
as the following ratios: 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 15/8, and 2/1, which is 5-limit just
intonation.110 Zarlino was also skeptical about ratio precision in intervals that necessitated
the use of geometric ortogonio for dividing intervallic space visually, using the
mesolabio, invented by Eratosthenes.111 In the early seventeenth century (ca. 1620),
Zarlinos opponent, Vincenzo Galilei, proposed 12 pitches at the intervallic ratio of
18/17, or roughly, 99 cents, which would have predated Simon Stevins later discovered
12th root of two (12TET). Even Descartes rejected equal temperament in favor of rational,
perfect intervals, if not for the sake of purity itself.112 Ultimately, Descartes discovered
the overtone series, which would unleash a third tuning approach to the already
disheveled system of tuning held by Renaissance music theorists, who were still
107

Isacoff, 2001-2003.Temperament: how music became the battleground for great minds of Western
civilization. p. 136-137.
108
Levarie, Levy. 1968. p. 30.
109
Isacoff. p. 142.
110
Zarlino. 1558, 1965. Le Istitutioni Harmonice. p. 51.
111
Ibid. p. 52.
112
Isacoff, p. 175.

36
grappling with just and Pythagorean tunings. Zarlino, Kepler, and Descartes all hailed the
overtone series as natures divine plan.113 Zarlino sought to improve the Pythagorean
thirds. At 408 cents he held they were too wide, rejecting them in favor of just thirds, at
386 cents, 22 cents narrower, and an interval itself referred to as the syntonic comma.114
Zarlino would come to deny genera modulation, advocating the coming hegemony of the
diatonic genus,115 free from polymicrotonal implications, as the diatonic status quo of
Europe.
Medieval and early Renaissance composers had fallen under the spell of the
Greek Perfect Immutable System, composed of the Lesser Perfect System, hypaton,
meson, and synemmenon tetrachords, plus the Greater Perfect System, hypaton, meson,
diezeugmenon, and hyperbolaion tetrachords, resulting in a 5 tetrachordal system. Many
medieval music treatises have this scheme, including all the Greek note names, from
Proslambanomenos to the hyperbolaion nete. Heinrich Glarean, in his Dodecachordon,
1547, had referred to the three Greek genera.116 In fact, in Europe, tetrachords still existed
well into the sixteenth century; Pythagorean tuning had admitted just intonation by the
use of the 5/4 major third, the splitting of the 9/8 whole tone, and the use of the 17th
overtone, all in order to round out and make certain intervals more consonant in
polyphony. As mentioned earlier, the whole tone divided into 9 equal parts was also
discussed in Glareans treatise, with weight given to certain parts of the nine divisions.117
Nicola Vicentino (1511-1576) can be considered the first microtonalist in
European music. He invented a 36-key-per-octave Archicembalo, which influenced
113

Ibid., p. 179.
Zarlino, The Art of Counterpoint, p. xx, terze part.
115
Ibid., p. 273.
116
Klein, 1989. Die intervallehre in Deutche Musiktheorie in des 16 Jahrhunderts. p. 32.
117
Heinrich Glarean, 1965. Dodecachordon. pp. 90-91.
114

37
Gesualdo and Frescobaldi, among others, on which one could play all three Greek
genera.118 Vicentino rediscovered Ptolemy and Boethius and their discussions of the
tetrachords. Archytas, Didymus, Aristoxenus, and Eratosthenes, again, became influential
in the early Renaissance, even though Vicentino was more Aristoxenian in his approach.
Vicentino desired more microtonal shading for text interpretation.119 The split key
Archicembalos of Vicentino were able to reproduce the enharmonic and chromatic
genera, and included the just ratios up to the thirteenth limit. Vicentinos default tuning
was comma meantone, where 5.4-6 cents are shaved off four of the fifths to produce
roughly 8 useable keys.
In Vicentinos Lantica Musica (1555) he diagrammed several keyboard layouts
for a 44-fret lute, a 19-tone per octave keyboard, a 17-tone per octave keyboard, and his
36/octave Archicembalo.120 He was a prophet of the nascent Baroque. In Libro Quinto,
chapter five, he transformed the notation of small enharmonic intervals from the Greek
genera, into a Renaissance ideology, thus transforming ancient Greek musical theory into
a Renaissance aesthetic. In Libro Primo he discussed a 38-tone per octave written system,
including Quattro diesis intervals, and also a 24-tone per octave system, though not
equal, but rational.121

118

Alves, 1989.The Just Intonation System of Nicola Vicentino. p. 1.


Ibid., pp. 1-4.
120
Vicentino, Lantica Musica, 15651959, index.
121
Ibid., pp. 12-13.
119

38

(Ex. 2.2.1 cited below)

39

Ex. 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 Nicola Vicentinos 31-tone to the octave pitch and interval list122

Don Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), Prince of Venosa and the Count of Conza, has
been called a mannerist.123 Like Vicentino, he departed from the standard Renaissance
122

Alves. 1989. The Just Intonation System of Nicola Vicentino. pp.4-5.

40
aesthetic practice by leading into the Baroque creating his highly expressive madrigals
that employed some microintervallic tunings.124 Mannerism, according to Watkins, was
the act of producing art that did not represent nature, or natural logic, and was for its time
a type of maximalism.125 For this purpose, Vicentino was also a mannerist, and had
profound influence on Gesualdo. The mannerist no longer sees the canon of nature as
immutable, said Gesualdo according to Watkins, as he strove for the unnatural.126
Gesualdos use of the notes Gb, G, G#, Ab, A, A#, Bb, B, B#, Cb, C, C#, Db, D,
D#, Eb, E, E#, F, F#, which included no Fb, accounted for a circa 20-21/octave scale
from extended Pythagorean tuning. Again, the enharmonic genus was in full use, as no
spelling duplicated any pitches. In terms of hyperchromatic art, Gesualdo surpassed
Vicentino, even though Gesualdo used his 36/octave Archicembalo.127 From here, this
paper moves on to Marin Mersenne, who was the next historical figure in the
development of new microtonal frameworks.

Marin Mersenne, 1588-1648, was a scientist and a friend of Ren Descartes.128


Mersenne dealt with the overtones from the monochord and discovered up to the 27th
partial, noting the sequence of the first, second, and third partials, and their concomitant
significance in European tonality.129 Mersenne also found the same series in brass
instruments, thus leading to the first hypothesis of the overtone series, (even before

123

Watkins. 1973. Gesualdo: the man and his music. p. 294.


Ibid. p. 196.
125
Ibid. p. 97.
126
Ibid., p. 102.
127
Ibid., pp 201-294.
128
Ludwig, 1935, p. 11.
129
Ibid., pp. 41-42.
124

41
Descartes).130 Mersenne also had synesthesia, which led him to note specific colors to
specific pitches.131 Mersenne ratified Zarlinos senarius, and also made a case for the 7th
partial, the septimal ratios, as consonant, years ahead of Adriaan Fokker. Mersenne also
discovered that multiples of ratios were also consonant, so the pitch palette could be
considerably expanded.132 Mersennes combination of systems led to his 24/octave
quartertone system in order to encompass the three Greek genera.133
In his Traite de Lharmonie Universelle (1627), Mersenne describes the Greek
genera, but misrepresents them. He claimed the diatonic genus had 9 pitches and 8
intervals; the chromatic had 16 pitches and 15 intervals; and the enharmonic had 25
pitches, and 24 intervals.134 These former figures, of course, are incorrect, and are based
on a heptachordal octave, plus accidentals, which the Greeks never used. Mersennes
format and style, for his treatise, adopted Euclids geometry, replete with theorems, and
axioms comparing intervals with geometry, a format also adopted by Spinoza in his
Ethics.135 The Timaeous Tetrachord, important as a prototype diatonic genus tetrachord,
also appears in his treatise, which was faithfully rendered: 256:243:216:192.
Finally, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), the Dutch genius, invented his
31/octave meantone system, described by Fokker as the composition of the future.136
Huygens created tuning from the overtone series, with comma tuning as his reference.
In the construction of his 31-tone system, Huygens used logarithms rather than geometric
roots in order to find consistent mean proportions, in order to preserve the 31-tone
130

Ibid.
Ibid., p. 44.
132
Ibid., p. 63.
133
Ibid., p. 75.
134
Marin Mersenne, trans. Egan, 1962, p. 11.
135
Ibid.
136
Hays, 1977, p. 18.
131

42
systemthe first in Europe. He had made it perfectly circular, so that a full chromatic
modulation was possible, even in the mid 1600s.137 He also advocated Vicentinos
Archicembalo and had one built. Huygens, probably the first theoretical acoustician, as
well as microtonalist, also discovered that singers sing in a separate and distinct tempered
tuning that was not pure.138 On the polymicrotonal path, Huygens asked how can we
reconcile multiple tunings?139 Again, there is precedence for polymicrotonality and this
is also a part of Huygenss legacy, just as well as Ives, Marie, and Carrillo.
In Huygenss Le Cycle Harmonique, 1691, meantone temperament is the focal
point as the practical tuning system of Europe. He presents multitudes of meantone
tuning methods: 2/7 comma meantone, comma meantone, and equal divisions of the
octave as well. Huygens had drawn a design for a 19-tone keyboard in 1676, for
meantone transpositions between 12 and 19 tones per octave.140 Huygens had discovered
the meantone connection between both 19 and 31 tones to the octave, which became a
symbol of Dutch tuning, which is espoused by Fokker, as well. Huygens was the first
to break from the senarius.
Joseph Saveur and Jean-Phillippe Rameau both supported Huygenss overtone
discoveries, instigating a new approach to European tonality via the overtone series.
Saveur was, in fact, Huygenss true successor as advocate for the new science of
acoustics.141 Saveur had also discovered beating with respect to consonance and
dissonance, as scientific measurement of intervals started to become a source for a
genuine music theory. Like Huygens, Saveur had traveled up the overtone series to the
137

Ibid., p. 22.
Ibid., p. 27-29.
139
Ibid., p. 30.
140
Huygens, 1691-1986, pp. 46-76.
141
Farrar, 1956, p. 51.
138

43
32nd partial, quartertones, and he gave numbers to what organ tuners had known all
along.142
On the other hand, Rameau had retreated from all the adventurous tuning methods
discovered by his predecessors by favoring the senarius, and consequently basing his
musical theories on only the first 6 partials in his Nouveau Systme. The senarius is a
fundamental concept on which we all have become slavishly dependent, even until the
present day. Rameau called the first partial the Fundamental Tone143 in his reductionist
attempt at forming a legitimate music theory. Rameau was in favor of 12 equal divisions
of the octave and was opposed to both Well Temperament and meantone temperament.
Rameau criticized Zarlino, Jean Jacque Rousseau (who advocated larger tuning systems),
and even Ptolemy, the patriarch of Western tuning theory.144
Baroque tuning was based on a number of treatises, including Werckmeisters
Musikalische Temperatur, Marpurgs Anfangsgruende der Theoretischen Musik, Johann
Gottfried Walthers Praecepta der Musicalischen Composition, the writings of Bachs
student Kirnberger, and even Kelletats Zur Musikalische Temperatur inbesonders bei
Bach. Johnny Reinhard has written a very insightful work on tuning in the time of Bach,
who based his views on the tuning theories of Werckmeister and the German
Thuringians, of whom Reinhard feels were very microtonal by nature.145 Further
explorations of this topic will only produce redundancies in the quest for the most
practical tuning that facilitates chromatic modulations. But the addendum for the
Thuringian aesthetic is that it should reflect microtonal differences enough within the

142

Ibid.
Keane, 1961, p. 45.
144
Ibid., p. 176.
145
Reinhard, 2009.Bach and Tuning. p. 94.
143

44
modes that each mode has its own specific sound, due to the irregularity of the intervallic
structures. Hence, the notion of Well Temperament was not about the equality of the
sizes of the interval, but of making a workable 12-tone circle of modulation, while still
maintaining the integrity of each modal tuning.
Lewellyn Lloyd, the great acoustician, stated that string quartets and choirs are
the acid test for chromatic shading that reaches for differences of a comma.146 Lloyd
also stated that 12, 19, 31, 50, and 53-tone equal temperaments are all circular in design,
and all have a tempered fifth. They are irregular in that they are tempered, rather than
pure, at 702 cents per fifth.147 Lloyd also stated that better players do demand a greater
degree of pitch accommodation,148 rather than the poorer player. Lloyd is alluding to a
phenomenon that has actually been happening for a long time: the fact that we have
actually always been polymicrotonal. Strings always play in Pythagorean tuning. Singers
sing justly toned intervals. Brass plays the overtone series. These are three different
tuning approaches that, therefore, culminate theoretically into polymicrotonality, except
that it has been an unconscious phenomenon for centuries, at least until the primacy of
12TET, which took off in the common practice period. Another point of interest is that
singers, who initially sang in Pythagorean, began to sing justly intoned.149
Andreas Werckmeister (1645-1706), a Thuringian like Bach, wrote his
Musikalische Temperatur in 1691. In it he discussed his experience as an organist and
master tuner, OrgelProbe (1681), which influenced Marpurg and Huygens conceptions
of tuning. Werckmeister also settled on the senarius of Zarlino and developed a

146

Lloyd, 1963, 1978, p. 109.


Ibid., p. 163.
148
Ibid., p. 164.
149
Ibid., p. 170.
147

45
classification for consonances in terms of disonance, where all his intervals came from
the monochord. Excluding the monochord, this is reminiscent of Paul Hindemiths
intervallic classifications regarding his continuum of intervals from consonance to
dissonance.150 Werckmeister considered just intonation to be pure tuning, so he tried to
incorporate as much of just intonation into the meantone system at the time. There were,
in fact, circa 150 different meantone tunings before settling on 12TET. In terms of
microtonal intervals, Werckmeister approved of the syntonic comma, at 22 cents, the
diesis, at 41 cents, the Pythagorean comma, at 24 cents, and the diaschema, at 20 cents.151
Werckmeister is known for six major tuning systems: a 20/octave just system, a standard
meantone system, four correct temperaments based on his Well-tempered theories, and
lastly, a septenarius (based on the inclusion of the seventh partial) tuning. Even
Werckmeister utilized the 9-comma whole tone, introduced by Al Farabi via Turkey.
Commas and dieses were called grad, or degrees, and these systems were all tempered,
or tampered, as a more appropriate analogy. Werckmeister III is known as the correct
tuning and became the standard Bach used, as Werckmeister III was a closed circular
system, allowing a full chromatic tour of the 12 semitones.152 This is what is called well
tempered tuning. Werckmeister was against subsemitonia, which is the addition of
microtonal keys for the keyboard, as in the case of Vicentinos Archicembalo; therefore
the Halberstaedt Plan, 12 notes per octave for keyboards, was adhered to.153
Werckmeister III was thus: C, 0 cents, C#/Db, 90 cent limma, D, 192 c., D#/Eb, 294 c., E,

150

Werckmeister.1691. Musikalisches Temperatur. pp. 8-19.


Ibid., p. 20.
152
Werckmeister, p. 26, for a full description of the six Werckmeister tunings, please see Rudolf Raschs
version of Werckmeisters Musikalische Temperatur. Also, please download from the internet Johnny
Reinhards self-published Bach and Tuning, as it describes Werckmeisters work in clarity.
153
Reinhard. 2009. Bach and Tuning, p. 53.
151

46
390 c., E#/F, 498 c., F#/Gb, 588 c., G, 696 c (the comma meantone), G#/Ab, 792 c., A,
888 c., A#/Bb, 996 c., B, 1092 c.154 Nevertheless, the Werckmeister III gamut produced a
total of 39 microtonal intervals to the octave, but only 12 are used at a time. Another
advocate for circular unequal tuning was J.N. Forkel, from Gttingen, where German
musicians post-Werckmeister preferred 1/6 comma meantone tuning, even with its Wolf
fifths 16 cents sharp.155 Telemann also had a tuning system of 55/octave, in equal
divisions, used for strings, winds, and singers, which equated with the 1/6th comma
meantone in favor for these particular German composers. [Why is this not talked about
in academic theory books? Why is there a blackout of this vital information?] There is
literature out there now that discusses the variance of tunings during the Renaissance and
Baroque music of Germany and are listed in this papers bibliography. Nevertheless,
Bach in fact fully supported Telemanns tuning system.156
Even Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, in his Beginning Music Theory (1757),
advocated for math exercises for musicians to calculate correct tuning ratios.157 Marpurg
shows the overtone series up to the 25th partial as an arithmetic progression on page 26 of
his treatise, and does not deny the 7th, 11th, 13th, 14th, or even the 17th partial tunings.158
Marpurg welcomes the microtonal pitches, and on page 33 of his manual, has a very clear
classification for all of them, including the syntonic comma, and the apotome, at 114
cents.159 Marpurg also advocated for klanggeschlecht, or pitch choice, for building
personal scales by employing the classical Greek arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic

154

Werckmeister, 1691.Musikalische Tempuratur,/Rasch, and Reinhard, p. 56. (also from same source).
Reinhard, 2009. p. 95.
156
Ibid., p. 99.
157
Marpurg, 1757. Beginning Music Theory. p.26.
158
Ibid.
159
Ibid., p. 33.
155

47
methods of means.160 Marpurgs teachings can easily fit into the wide expanse of
polymicrotonality.
Johann Gottfried Walther, more conservative than Marpurg, in his Precepts of
Musical Composition (1708), predecessor of Bach, stated: Schliesslich, dass ein Tonus
minor 8 commata bertieffe aber das 9te nicht erflleaber ein Tonus major halt 9
commata in sich und das 10th macht er auch nicht voll!(Lastly, that a minor tone
overtops 8 commas, but doesnt include the ninthbut in major tone has 9 commas in
itself and the tenth also does not make it complete.).161 So, even Walther saw the
malleability of pitch and intervallic variance that is a feature of polymicrotonality, in
1708. Walther also stated that one can easily hear the difference between a chromatic and
an enharmonic tone, at 22 cents.162
Kelletats Zur Musikalishe Temperatur inbesonders bei Bach, is a comprehensive
survey of Baroque tunings. The treatise begins from Zarlino, Schlick, and Salinas (not
mentioned in this paper), who were all responsible for the invention of several meantone
temperaments.163 Kelletat states that well tempered tuning was a German enterprise. Bach
grew up with meantone, but fully embraced the well tempered system, even though he
composed in several temperaments simultaneously (polymicrotonality).164 In fact, is it
possible, that Bach may have composed harmonically in meantone, and linearly in
Pythagorean, negotiating between the two by Werckmeisters III system?165 As a violinist
himself, Bach tuned his strings in Pythagorean tuning because that was the practice of the
160

Ibid., chapter IX, p. 51.


Walther, 1708. Precepts of Musical Composition, p. 88.
162
Ibid., p. 67.
163
Kelletat, 1960. Zur Musikalischen Temperatur insbesondere bei Johann Sebastian Bach. p. 21.
164
Ibid., p. 21-25.
165
It is my conjecture that Bach may have thought polytemperamentally, in both vertical and horizontal
directions.
161

48
day. As an organist and harpsichordist, Bach was accustomed to meantone and just
intonation. As a composer, Bach can not have been less affected by the sound and
function of these tunings in his ear. Pythagorean is best suited to lines, and not to vertical
structures because of the wide thirds, at 408 cents. But string players, even today, still
tend to play linearly in Pythagorean tuning, according to string players themselves. It is
not beyond the realm of possibility, therefore, that Bach thought linearly in Pythagorean,
and vertically in meantone, as well as well tempered tuning, which are all different
intervallic sizes.
Lastly, Kirnbergers Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, 1771, upon which Fux
based his Gradus Ad Parnassum, displayed the influence of Marpurg by the use of the
1/12 comma meantone system, which yielded him 194 pitches with multiple variations of
all 12 pitch classes.166
Simon Stevin and Huygens would seal the fate of polymicrotonality shut by their
joint contribution of logarithms and the twelfth root of 2 to produce the equally-tempered
scale that Western musicians have all come to know over the last two hundred years,
which has defined common practice tonality.
The reason the foregoing materials are so densely packed with tuning trivia is that
the nature of tuning and microtones, for various reasons, littered the Baroque musical
landscape. There was a heightened awareness of nuances of pitch never before imagined
in European history and it was the awareness that served as a prelude to the microtonal
explosion of the twentieth century, when composers again went into extensive detail
about the accuracy of pitch and the importance of microtones as both structural and
embellishing features.
166

Ibid., pp. 45-46.

49

2.3 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS

Perhaps the single most important work for twentieth century microtonality,
acting as a catalyst after a short period from a 2500 year history of quiescence in tuning
and microtones, is Hermann Von Helmholtzs Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als
physiologische Grundlage fr die Theorie der Musik (On the Sensations of Tone as a
Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music), translated into English by Alexander Ellis
in 1877.
Essentially a scientific inquiry into electro-magnetic theory and sound acoustics,
there is a profound wealth of tuning information and far-reaching ideas concerning
microtonality that moved many composers towards early microtonal experimentation in
the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. George Ives is one
example.
Helmholtz deals with just intonation, extended Pythagorean tuning, Bosanquets
Manual for 53/octave organs, specially tuned harmoniums in just intonation, tuning tables
comparing all known tunings to the cent (an invention of Ellis himself), and an invention
called the Harmonical, which is a specially tuned harmonium using the overtone series
up to the 13th partial.167 Additional personages from the age include Henry Ward Poole,
who invented an organ capable of both quartertones and eighthtones, as well as septimal
just ratios, including the septimal comma at the ratio of 64/63. The septimal comma at 27
cents is just slightly above the Pythagorean comma.168

167
168

Ellis/Helmholtz. 1877/1954. On the Sensations of Tone. p. 470.


Ibid, pp. 473-495.

50
The more notable composers affected by Helmholtz/Elliss work include Alois
Hba, Julian Carrillo, George Ives, Charles Ives, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, and Adriaan
Fokker. Alois Hba (1893-1973), shares the same birth year as Ivan Wyschnegradsky.
The Czech composer incorporated Slavic quartertone inflections into his works,
microtonality having come into Slavic music via Turkey into Bulgaria during the Middle
ages.

Hba tried to adapt quartertones into the Occidental heritage through the
prominent use of late Romantic chromaticism that began in the late Romantic period and
spilled over into the early twentieth century. In particular, Hba explored this synthesis
by way of his string quartets. Hba also made use of Forster pianos, specifically made for
the microtonal intervals of quarter and sixth tones.169
Julian Carrillo (1875-1965), from Mexico, created the Crusade for the 13th Sound,
a microtonal club, or incorporation, dedicated to the 13th overtone, or microtone. His
theoretical work El Infinite Musical used the square roots of the intervals most commonly
found in Bachs Preludes and Fugues, compressed into a range of half an octave, in
which the tritone is set to equal the octave.170
Carrillos Sistema General de Escritura Musical (1957) is an example of his
microtonal literature campaign, from his Mexico City office El Sonido 13.171 Carrillo is a
figure of incredible imagination who investigated history for alternative methods for
simplifying microtonal notation, since he was operating with 72 TET, and discovered
how unwieldy standard notation can be for advanced microtonal systems. Instead,
Carrillo sought to re-design the staff system using numbers, much similar to the way Jean
169

Starkhendon, 1962. XXth Century Experiments in Microtonalism. p. 2.


Ibid.
171
Carrillo, 1957. Sistema General de Escritura Musical. p. 12.
170

51
Jacques Rousseaus use of numbers, rather than pitch and staff placement, to indicate
pitch. Register would be taken care of by moveable clefs172 (see Example 2.3.1). Number
would therefore represent the precise division of the octave, while clef would indicate
what range, or register the pitch is located in. The staff becomes reduced to a single line.
Carrillo also transcribed popular classical pieces to his new system, showing that it could
work.173

172
173

Ibid, p. 12.
Ibid, p. 32-45.

52

Ex. 2.3.1. Carrillos numerical notation process at work.174

174

Carrillo, p. 31.

53
Was Carrillo an advocate of polymicrotonal composition? Actually, yes, he was.
In his Toccata for violin, cello, guitar, cornet, and harp, he mixes quartertones with
sixteenth tones; the cornet and harp are tuned to sixteenths and the rest of the choir is in
quartertones.175 One possibility of this system having never caught on with composers

Ex. 2.3.2. Carrillos numerical microtonal notational technique.176

175
176

Ibid, p. 49.
Ibid.

54
may be the lack of melodic contour, or the absence of the visual element, that inhibited
the ease of vertical expression. Tepepan, is a work that also mixed sixteenth tones with
quartertones.177
Carrillo worked with a master tuning grid of 96 pitches per octave, which can be
subdivided into smaller microtonal systems, much like Wyschnegradsky, who had
subsystems within his 72-tone grid. The question whether or not polymicrotonality in this
context is nullified, based on the idea of subsumption, cancels out when one considers
compositional intent, and deliberate use of microtonal materials designated by the
composer.
Horizontes, for harp and percussion, is mostly in third tones. Although there are
no semitones, other odd divisions from fifth tones to sixteenth tones are present.178

177
178

Ibid, p. 50.
Ibid, p. 54.

55

Ex. 2.3.3. Carrillos use of third tones up to 16th tones.179


In the example above, 2.3.3, Carrillo mixes tunings from a 96-tone master grid,
where all pitches are numbered accordingly. In the first system, the harp ascends and
179

Ibid. p. 51.

56
descends in eighth tones, followed by a 2/3 tone skip before a fermata. The harp then
descends in 16th tones, followed by skips of a 1/12th tone, followed by a fermata. Then
the second system features a harp descending in 1/16th tones, followed by skips of 24th
tones in the third system.
Adriaan Fokker (1887-1972), famous for his Euler-Fokker genera, the Fokker
Periodicity blocks, just intonation, 31-tone equal temperament, and his work as a
physicist, working among such luminaries as Max Planck and Albert Einstein, wrote two
major treatises in microtonal theory: Just Intontation (1949), and New Music with 31
Notes (1975).
Ex. 2.3.4. The Fokker Periodicity Block.180
Let an n-dimensional lattice (i.e. grid) embedded in n-space have a numerical value
assigned to each of its nodes. Let n be preferably equal either to 1, 2, or 3. In the twodimensional case, the lattice is a square lattice. In the 3-D case, the lattice is cubic.
Examples of such lattices are the following (x, y, z and w, are integers):

One-dimensional: 3-limit
A(0) = 1

Two-dimensional: 5-limit

Three-dimensional: 7-limit

181

180

Fokker, A. D., (n.d.), Unison Vectors and Periodicity Blocks in the Three-Dimensional (3-5-7-) Lattice
of Notes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_periodicity_blocks. Accessed 11/11/11

57
Fokker is known for rekindling the theories of Christiaan Huygens, whose tuning
of 31 notes to the octave with pure thirds, sevenths, and 5-cent flatted fifths are the same
as meantone tuning. Since 31 TET is circular182, it also contains both 12 TET and
meantone tunings.183
Fokker advocated the adoption of the pure seventh (968 cents) incorporated as
standard tuning, adopting Giuseppi Tartinis geometric angle symbol for a diesis flat
(resembling the number 7).184 This same symbol has been used by Ben Johnston, found in
the tuning legends of his scores.
Fokker termed his genera complete contracted chords in the form of (1, 3, 5)
whose guide tones were products of this formula, in this case: 15. Euler-Fokker genera
are essentially prime numbers 3, 5, and 7, or higher, where each number forms a
dimension in a multidimensional lattice, exploited to the fullest by microtonalist Erv
Wilson and also used by Ben Johnston for his 53 to the octave tuning. In short, the
Fokker genera are products of multi-sets of prime numbers above 2.
Huygenss tuning comes from extended Pythagorean tuning up to 31 tones, where
31 became the number where the spiraling fifths came close enough together to become a

181

Find n nodes on the lattice other than the origin such that their values are sufficiently close to either 1 or 2.Vectors from the origin
to each one of these special nodes are called unison vectors. A quantity n of unison vectors are enough to define an n-dimensional
tiling pattern. Let the n unison vectors define the sides of a tile. In 1-D, a tile is a line segment. In 2-D, a tile is a parallelogram. In 3-D,
a tile is a parallelepiped.
Each tile has an area given by the absolute value of the determinant of the matrix of unison vectors: i.e. in the 2-D case if the unison
vectors are u and v, such that

and

then the area of a 2-D tile is

Each tile is called a Fokker periodicity block. The area of each block is always a natural number equal to the number of nodes falling
within each block. Source: http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/fokkerpb.html. Accessed 4/2/12.
182

Cirularity is the condition that all keys are accessible within one gamut of pitches, e.g. meantone tuning,
if left at only 12 pitches is not circular since some keys will be grossly out of tune.
183
Fokker A. D. 1975. NewMusic With 31-Notes. p. 16.
184
Ibid, p. 19.

58
closed system, similar to Riccatis diagram of extended Pythagorean pitches.185 For
example, E## and Gbb would be separated by only 10 cents, which is the limit that both
Fokker and Huygens each considered enharmonic.186 Interestingly, Fokker subscribed to
subharmonics and undertones, perpetuating an acoustic myth that probably influenced
Partch, regarding undertones187. Fokkers theory was triadic and included the 7th,
previously considered too dissonant in Western tonality.
Calling polymicrotonality polytemper, Jean Etienne Marie (1917-1989) would
become Charles Ivess (to be discussed in Chapter 5) true successor in polymicrotonality,
following the lead made by Ivess Universe Symphony.
Marie was a student of Messiaen and was influenced by Messiaens polytonal and
polymodal approach to composition.188 Marie is also an exponent of French color,
carrying on the lineage from Debussy. Marie thought that the most exciting music
contained microintervals and the confrontation of different temperaments.189 He felt that
the world of polytonality had opened up the world to polymicrotonality.
Marie wrote Lhomme musical in 1976, in which he explicitly documents his
polymicrotonal system and gives a brief and particular survey of his predecessors: Hba,
Carrillo, and Wyschnegradsky. Oddly, he fails to mention Ives, except that it would be
Johnny Reinhards realization of the Universe Symphony, in 1996, that would bring
attention to its polymicrotonal characteristics, then unknown to Marie. Maries first work
in polymicrotonal systems was Concerto milieu divin (1969/1970) in third, quarter, fifth,

185

Ibid, p. 19-45.
Ibid.
187
Although undertones are theoretically possible, they are not actually possible, since they would fall
below the threshold of perception for the human apparatus.
188
Marie, 1976. Lhomme musical. p. 20.
189
Ibid., p. 89.
186

59
and sixth tones for orchestra. There is a recording of this piece under the direction of
Lukas Foss from 1970.
Le Tombeau de Carrillo (1966) is Maries crowning achievement, featuring two
live pianos in 12TET and 18TET (third tones), with tape of two pianos tuned to fifth and
sixth tones. The tape idea helped alleviate portability problems by simply recording the
fifth and sixth tone tuned pianos to tape, whereby only one piano, in third tones would
need retuning on location. Marie was practical. The work is the second deliberate
polymicrotonal piece in history.190

190

Marie, 1966. Le tombeau de Carrillo.

60

Ex. 2.3.5. Maries graphical display of the Aristoxenian principle of polymictotonal


systems and equal division of the whole tone as ever divisible.191

191

Marie, Lhomme musical. p. 90.

61
Le Tombeau is ternary: the A section uses live pianos in half and third tone
tuning, while the B section employs sound masses of the fifth and sixth tone tuned
pianos, performed in studio and stored on tape.192
In the previous example, 2.3.6, Marie demonstrates the multiple systems at work
in his Le Tombeau. All pianos, the strata break down thusly: the top system of 8 staves
are divided into 30 equal steps per octave; the middle system is 12TET; the second from
the bottom are divided into 18TET, and the last system is divided into 36 tones per
octave. Maries system is represented by a root 2 procedure, thus ensuring the equal
divisions within a 2:1 ratio, the octave.

192

Loc. cit.

62

Ex. 2.3.6. Maries Le Tombeau de Carrillo, 1966, showing the layers of different
microtonal systems by square root terminology.193
193

Ibid. p. 91.

63

Ex. 2.3.7. Polymicrotonal sets of tetrachords in Tombeau de Jean-Pierre Guezec, 1971194


In example 2.3.7, Marie demonstrates a tetrachord from his Tombeau de JeanPierre Guezec (1971). The initial motivic cell, A, G#, Bb, A, becomes transposed
through four other equal divisions: third, quarter, fifth, and seventh tones. Each line
194

Ibid., p. 92.

64
begins with a different rotation of the cell, so there are serial procedures involved in the
displacement of the polymicrotonal materials. Each transformation of the cell results in
an audible compression of the intervallic structure. The lines also transpose down by one
semitone, for each layer downward.
Like Ives, Marie was not a tuning purist; they both evinced a predilection for
equally divided whole tones, rather than basing their pitch structures solely on the
overtone series, or just intonation.195 Marie, like Bartk in his String Quartet No. 4, was
interested in the compression and expansion of equally-spaced intervallic structures,
which necessitates equal divisions, rather than unequal just tunings. Schoenberg is also
credited by Marie in framing 12TET in terms of standard tuning as a series of the twelfth
root of 2, an octave divided into 12 equal spaces.196 Much in the same way as creating
any division of the twelfth root of 2an objectification of our common materials seen
through new ways can be seen as a furtherance of Schoenbergs bequest. A drawback to
Maries system, however, lay in his dependence and reverence for the piano, as the
talisman of musical hegemony.
Marie notes that Hba began to create scales from his tunings, including selflimiting constructions as tetrachords, except over an octave, in third tones. Marie wanted
to avoid the possibility of sub-system subsumption (inadvertent inclusion of smaller
systems of intervals) as a potential threat to Hbas, Carrillos, and Wyschnegradskys
systems, by deliberately creating layers of separate tunings, revealing the intent of the
composer to structurally oppose different divisions of the octave as individual and viable
tunings. According to Marie, Carrillo, Hba, and Wyschnegradsky offered a general

195
196

Ibid. pp. 41-44.


Ibid. p. 26.

65
approach and exploration of microtonal scales and new harmonies possible with artificial
limits.197
It appears that Maries attitude towards microtonality and tuning had an impact on
Xenakis, who also was a student of Messiaen. Marie also acknowledges the influence
Aristoxenus had on Xenakis, with respect to the Genera of Greek tunings.198

197
198

Ibid., pp. 52-65.


Ibid.

66

Ex. 2.3.8. Maries table of equal divisions of the octave.199

199

Ibid. p. 41.

67

Ex. 2.3.9. Maries polymicrotonal table of strings for the possibility of manufacturing
microtonal pianos.200

200

Ibid. p. 31. (Planche 3)

68

Ex. 2.3.10. from Maries Concerto milieu divin, for orchestra, with polymicrotonal string
section.201
Examples 2.3.8 and 2.3.9 are charts of microtonal systems to the exact cent value,
for 2.3.8, and for 2.3.9, for the potential construction of pianos, from third tones all the
way to twelfth tones. Each microtonal system on the spreadsheet is divided into numbers
of keys, to contain the system, size of the piano strings, duration of the keyboard
hammering mechanism, and number of strings per pitch.
Example 2.3.10 reveals the polymicrotonal layout of the strings in Concerto
milieu divin. First violins are in sixth tones centered around D above high C. Second
violins are incorporating both third and fifth tones centered on A . Violas are fluctuating
from third to fifth tones centered on E#. The cellos are fluctuating from quartertones to
third tones on B, while the basses are vacillating from third to quartertones centered on
pitch D below bass clef. Although microtones are present in other instruments as well,
such as a quartertone in the soprano clarinet, the bulk of the polymicrotonal usage is
focused on the strings.

201

Marie, Planche 21.

69
Marie felt that one can transcend the Occident by pushing its limits. Maximum
and minimum resolution, also, plays a role in limiting the reality of polymicrotonality: in
order to play third tones through sixth and seventh tones, there needs to be a realizable
electronic device, such as an Ondioline, by George Jenny,202 for example, that has a
tuning resolution of at least a 4twentieth tone. Our ears, according to Helmholtz hit the
JND at around 10 cents. Within the context of polymicrotonality, Marie felt it was
important for identities to become lost, and then rediscovered within the context of a
piece of music.203
In polymicrotonality, there can be transpositions and modulations that would
result in compression and expansion of intervallic structures, all of which could be
managed by small intervallic cells, like tetrachords, but in much smaller spans than a
perfect fourth.204 Maries system of notation, like Wyschnegradskys, was fairly
unwieldy, leading one to wonder whether or not accidentals are the problem, or perhaps
the staff.
Example 2.3.11 reveals a process of polymicrotonal compression of intervallic
structures. By retaining the same intervallic number of steps between all the tunings, one
notices a very gradual compression of the size of intervallic distances, resulting in a
powerful and new sonority. Since there are no major, or minor triads with respect to the
classical 12TET number scheme, new methods of chordal change become necessary,
such as intervallic expansion and compression. Persichetti also speaks of these processes

202

The Ondioline, from 1941, was an electronic synthesizer that could divide the octave by equal parts.
Also, Marie felt that by annexing additional keyboards and strings to a standard piano, one could also
achieve similar results in creating microtonal keyboards.
203
Ibid., p. 94.
204
Ibid.

70
in his discussions of twentieth century harmonic techniques, but this applies just as well
to microtonal systems.

Ex. 2.3.11. Maries theory and examples of proportional intervallic transposition via
microtonal steps from half tones through seventh tones. 205

205

Ibid. p. 88.

71
Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) was polymicrotonal by way of the Greek genera of
Aristoxenus, and the Byzantine Church. Aristoxenus, as mentioned earlier, had
generalized a system from the Enharmonic, through the Diatonic by degree of size of the
Pyknon in the tetrachords: the Enharmonic, the smallest, were quartertone, at 50 cents;
the Chromatic, the middle sized, were third tones, at 66 cents; the Diatonic, the largest,
was the Pythagorean limma at 90 cents.206
Xenakis used tetrachords and materials from Greek music by going back in
history to his own genetic roots. Genera mixing and modulation did occur in Greece,
depending on the instrumentation involved and the performers erudition. Xenakis also
contended that Byzantine culture mixed the Pythagorean and Aristoxenian philosophies
of tuning. It therefore gave precedence to allow Xenakis to mix quartertones and third
tones in his sieves, while designing his outside-time scalar structures for some of his
works in the late sixties and early seventies.207
Xenakis used opposing tunings for the distinction between vertical and horizontal
effects, a type of counterpoint between quartertones and third tones, with no leaping in
the voices.208 Xenakiss use of microtones, via sieves, or permutations, were unmasked
with respect to the differences of tuning and were intended to be obvious between the
third and quarter tones. The following table shows Aristoxenuss genera, in terms of 30
divisions to the tetrachord of the perfect fourth, as used in ancient Greece.209 In addition
to thirdtones and quartertones, Xenakis also employed eighth tones, the comma.
Enharmonic

206

3-quartertone
50 cents

3-quartertone

24-large third

Xenakis had generalized these divisions as induced by his understanding of how the Byzantine culture
came into possession of the Greek genera as third tones, via Aristoxenian philosophy of non-measurement
207
Xenakis, Formalized Music, 1971.
208
Marie, Lhomme musical, 1976, p. 65-71.
209
Ibid. p. 65.

72
Chromatic
Hemiolic Chromatic
Diatonic

4-third tone
66 cents
4.5- 75 cents

4-third tone

22-small major third

4.5

21-minor third

6-semi tone
90cents

12-whole tone

12-whole tone

Table 2.3.12. Xenakiss microtonal pitch derivations via Aristoxenus.

Pythagoras

1/1

9/8

5/4

4/3

3/2

27/16

15/8

2/1

Cleonides

12

22

30

42

54

64

72

Table 2.3.13. Cleonides, a student of Aristoxenus is credited with the tetrachordal


division into 72 parts; here there is a one to one correspondence between Pythagorean
ratios and Aristoxenian approximations.

Here is Xenakis in a nutshell: SILENCE IS BANAL.210 A reason why


Aristoxenus appealed to Xenakis was due to the equal divisions of his tetrachords. In
creating a sieve, the resolution of the tuning can be infinitely small; however it will be
uniform and equal. Therefore, in Xenakiss system where 1 equals the semitone, will
be equivalent to the quartertone, and 2/3 will be equivalent to the third tone. The
quartertone will then be called k24 (since that is what Xenakis called them), or modulo
24 and modulo 18 for third tones.211
This paper will not discuss the particulars of Xenakiss sieve theory and Boolean
logic, since they can be referred to in his book Formalized Music, of 1971. Nevertheless,
according to Xenakiss ideas on sieve theory, a scale or tuning is an outside time structure
because it cannot be altered by vertical or horizontal implications.212 Xenakis also denied
octave scales in favor of the tetrachordal system, in particular the Immutable Perfect

210

Xenakis, 1985. Arts/Sciences Alloys: the thesis defense of Xenakis. p. 95.


Ibid, p. 107.
212
Xenakis, 1971.Formalized Music. p. 183.
211

73
System, as discussed earlier, because he favored the nesting of the pyknon within the
tetrachords. Aristoxenus took the tone and subdivided it into melik, or singable, divisions,
where the quartertone and third tone is considered performable. In fact, Xenakiss entire
pitch theory revolves around the Enharmonic and Chromatic genera of Greek musical
theory. Xenakis accepted the perfect fourth diatesseron as a functional unit and the
mutable inner parts, the lichanos and parhypate, as the metabolae, or catalysts of
modulation and change.213 The outer hypate and mese remain fixed while the inner
pitches create the species differences. In Xenakiss mind, the Byzantine style
amalgamated the two philosophical and mathematical differences between Greece and
Byzantium, the rational Pythagorean method, versus the intuitively approximated
Aristoxenian method. Another way of stating this relationship is the arithmetic versus the
geometric methodology of octave division, as canonized by Ptolemy in the first century
AD.214
According to Xenakis, Byzantine music focused more on scales and the octachord
and pentachord, rather than the diatesseron (containing the perfect fourth). One may even
mix the genera of tetrachords in the Byzantine style, as in the Selidia, a compendium of
mixed genera scales, of Ptolemy.215 The notion of montage comes to mind, or perhaps
even polymicrotonality, since Xenakis does, in fact, extrapolate the pyknon from each of
the enharmonic and chromatic genera for his own personal use. Was Xenakis looking for
a loosening of practice for his own vision, or seeking permission for his own use?
Ultimately, Xenakis saw tropes, the quasi improvised lines of solo singers in the
medieval motets, as a corollary to his own sieve formulation, with mixed genera and
213

Ibid., p. 184.
Ibid., p. 184-189.
215
Ibid., p.189.
214

74
juxtapositions of tetrachords within his metabolae, the ancient Greek method of
changing, or modulating, which he thought of as opening the compartmentalized
hierarchy. Metabolae is the underpinning to Xenakiss philosophy as there is a free
circulation between the genera and their notes and subdivisions thusly leading to his own
brand of polymicrotonal usage.
Xenakis felt that Occidental music, or polyphony, had led to the reduction of the
outside time structures to the microtonal pitch palette. This reduced pitch selection, for
the sake of consonance in polyphony; negated microtones; and encouraged the
calcification of Western music that Xenakis called the degradation of outside time
structures,216 which many twentieth century composers have been desperately trying to
revive. The maqam of the Middle Eastern Arabic peoples has maintained its vitality due
to the monophonic nature of Arabic music. This concept was not lost on Harry Partch,
who also subscribed to the idea of monody, except for one thing: Partch said that
microtonal vertical structures are ugly(A Genesis of a Music)? I, for one, do not. Instead,
I believe that not only can single-system microtonality sound beautiful in its verticality,
but that mixed temperaments and tunings also sound beautiful in their verticality.
Xenakis also warned of suffocation underneath technology; in response I propose that
polymicrotonality remain an acoustic enterprise.
Xenakis felt that the beginning of the breakdown of this calcified Western system
was led by Debussy.217 I would suggest Charles Ives in addition to Debussy. The French
symmetrical pitch structures-- whole tone, octatonic, and modes of limited transposition-were employed by composers, such as Messiaen, Debussy, and even Stravinsky, and

216
217

Ibid. p. 193.
Ibid. p. 208.

75
were all non-tonal materials.218 Conversely, there are theorists and composers, such as
Dmitri Tymoczko, and Stephen Taylor, who contend that they extend tonality. An
additional aspect to this predicament is the notion of compositional choice, where choice
in outside time structures is disregarded by composers beginning with serialism. One
must go beyond them with respect to the current state of Western pitch materials, and
the maximum impact that can be done is the area of polymicrotonality.
Anaktoria (1969) incorporates three systems: 12TET, 18TET, and 24TET. It is an eightpart mixed octet with standard micro-intervallic voice leading, as Xenakis did not use
leaps or jumps in his microtonal intervals. Example 2.3.15 shows the polymicrotonal
chords, in particular at measure 39, where there are both third tones and quartertones
together in a cluster, as a counterpoint of sound masses as well as a counterpoint of
simultaneously competing microtonal pitch materials.219 Between measures 59 and 60
there is a sudden shift from third tones into quartertones, showing an instance of
metabolae (Ex. 2.3.16).

218
219

Ibid., p. 208.
Xenakis, 1971. Anaktoria.

76

(Ex. 2.3.14, cited below)

77

(Ex. 2.3.15, cited below)

78

Ex. 2.3.14-16. Anaktoria, Xenakiss polymicrotonal piece in third and quartertones.220

Three more Xenakis works fall into the realm of polymicrotonality: Aurora,
(1971), Eridanos, (1972), and Akanthos, (1977). Again, all three works feature the
combination of Byzantine third tones and quartertones. Auroroa is linear in construction,
with different assignments for tuning: first violin is in third tones, second violin is in
quartertones, viola uses both, cello is in third tones, and bass uses both.221 Xenakis uses
polymictotonal detuning at m. 60, where a cluster centered on C is altered to C-1/4 sharp,
C-third sharp, and C#.
Eridanos was composed for orchestra and the work is more modulatory, or
metabolic, in conception; third tones appear from mm. 217 to 222, as a quasi cadential
220
221

From Anaktoria, Xenakis, 1971.


Xenakis, 1971. Aurora.

79
device as quartertones return just before the ending. The rest of the piece is tuned to
quartertones.222
Akanthos, also for quartertones and eighth tones, features a metabolae from
quartertones to eighth tones in the soprano voice at measure 86, where changes begin to
show from voice to voice linearly.223
In addition to the previous polymictotonal pioneers, there are others who also
made some significant contributions. Even though they made one or two pieces in this
style, they are worth noting.
Gyrgy Ligetis Hamburg Concerto (1998-2002) for solo horn, naturally-tuned
horn choir and orchestra is a polymicrotonal piece mixing both overtone series tuning and
quartertones, alongside standard 12TET. The work exploits the natural overtones of the
horn, up to the 15th partial, without tempering.224

222

Xenakis, 1985. Eridanos, pp 19-20.


Xenakis, 1977. Akanthos.
224
Ligeti, 2002. Hamburg Concerto.
223

80

Ex. 2.3.17. Ligetis legend for the Hamburg Concerto showing the exact tuning for
horn.225

225

Ligeti, 2002. Hamburg Concerto, Instruments page.

81

Ex. 2.3.18. Hamburg Concerto; quartertone and overtone chord.

82

Ex. 2.3.19. Ligeti uses many valve positions for a full range of natural tunings.

Not only is the lead horn in natural overtone tuning, but the entire horn choir is as
well, forming a block of overtone/just tuned intervals in direct opposition to quartertones,

83
as in Ex. 2.3.17. The harmony at this point, m. 11, is B,D1/4#, F1/4#, A, C1/4#, E in the
strings, and a standard tuned A with an 18 cent flat A, and a 35 cent flat B in the horns.226
Gardner Reads 20th Century Microtonal Notation is, so far as this author knows,
the first book to employ the word polymicrotonalism.227 The word was used in
reference to Jon Catler and Johnny Reinhards microtonal group where the two virtuosos
played in quartertones descending and 31TET ascending, in scalar fashion.228 Similarly,
Reinhards essay, Composing Polymicrotonally (1996), is in league with Jean Etienne
Maries polytemper. For Johnny Reinhard, 1996 is also the same year that he realized
Ivess Universe Symphony, featuring up to four competing microtonal tunings, in
contradistinction form Larry Austins which avoided polymicrotonality.
Reinhard states that he is not attracted to any singular tuning and that musical
communication improves by using unlimited set of meaningful intervals, harkening back
to Ives.229 Reinhard feels that since most microtonal music uses one tuning, such as
19TET, quartertones, or just, that the next step is polymicrotonality, looking back to
polytonality and polymodality of the early twentieth century composers Bartk and
Stravinsky. Polymicrotonality is a personal artistic choice. Like Xenakis, Reinhard
addresses a taboo twentieth century concept: composers druthers, which is the desire to
simply compose music without any particular system-- the ultimate faux pas.
Like Ives, Reinhard believes that the human ears acuity is capable of much more
than the mild prejudice of 12 equidistant intervals. Alexander Elliss conception and

226

Ibid.
Read.1978. 20th Century Microtonal Notation, p. 120.
228
Ibid., p. 120.
229
http://stereosociety.com/jrpolymi.shtml , 11/11/2011.
227

84
division of 1200 cents to the octave has given us 98 new intervals between the pianos
keys.230
Johnny Reinhard (born 1956), the director and founder of the American Festival
of Microtonal Music in New York, has led numerous microtonal festivals since the
1980s. He is a devout microtonalist and a proponent of polymicrotonalism, who has
known personally Jean Etienne Marie, and who has reams of scores from Julian Carrillo.
As a polymicrotonalist, Reinhard is convinced that the pitch continuum, as a tabula rasa,
can be incorporated into the full pitch continuum, revealing many more essential
intervallic relationships. As a composer and performer of polymicrotonality, Reinhard
states: When a composer internalizes a relationship between point of pitch and uses it
compositionally, its affective logic transfers to the audience. Moving through different
tunings is exciting to listeners because audiences feel the intent and conviction of the new
material.231
Reinhard got turned on to polymicrotonality while playing in Jon Catlers
microtonal group Cowpeople, where both Reinhard and Catler performed quartertone and
31TET together. Jon Catler also composed for 19TET and 31TET, performing on electric
guitars while Reinhard played an electric bassoon. Form takes on new meanings in polyorganicism as fresh forms spring from imagination providing an ideal gestalt for
presenting new semantics of poly.232 Gestalt, in this sense, means essence, or its
complete undivided form, as conceived by the mind.

230

Ibid.
Ibid.
232
Ibid.
231

85

Ex. 2.3.20 Johnny Reinhards Dune, from 1990, for solo bassoon.

86

Ex. 2.3.21 Second page of Dune, by Reinhard, 1990.


Reinhard uses multiphonics and swirls the bassoon in a clockwise motion, as
though stirring up the air and speeding up. The piece is dedicated to Herbert Spencers

87
science fiction Dune, and is programmatic. Reinhard uses various divisions of the octave
in a quasi-improvisational way, while employing multiphonics for texture. The system
from example 2.3.21 appears to be in overtone tuning. The section dedicated to the
Fremen is when the additional polymicrotonal exploration begins.

2.4 Other Twentieth Century Microtonalists


David Dotys Just Intonation Primer, although not in the direction of
polymicrotonality, is an excellent source for the nature of one of the more beguiling
tuning systems since ratios became the de facto standard for pinning down specific
pitches and intervals. Since polymicrotonality includes just intonation, Dotys work
becomes relevant.
Doty explores the nature of limits, lattices and ladders, and other tricky subject
matters in a terse, to the point manual.233 For example, all of Western history, and some
of the Middle East, can be represented by tolerable limits in just intonation: Pythagoras
and 3-limit; Western tonality and 5-limit; the Middle Eastern maqam and 7-limit; Ptolemy
and 11-limit; Vicentino and 13-limit; Partch and 11-limit, and Ben Johnston has gone as
high as 13-limit justly intoned tunings.234
Limits in just intonation are the end points at which a new prime number, which
unlock new microtonal sonorities as divisors, stop. Each successive prime number added
to the limit includes all those before it. All other numbers, odd and even, are simply
multiples of overtones that are already represented in the tuning. Western tuning stops at
5-limit just intonation, since the ratio of 5 to 4, when logarithmically calculated into
233
234

Doty, 1993. A Just Intonation Primer. p.1.


Ibid, p.76.

88
cents, yields the just Major third, at 386 cents. Pythagorean tuning is set at 3-limit, since
the third overtone is the perfect fifth, at 702 cents. Primes are then paired with their
register: for example, the series 2/1, 3/2, 5/4, 7/4, 11/8, 13/8, 17/16, 19/16 contains all
successive primes positioned over the first, second, third, and fourth octaves, represented
as multiples of 2. Identities are therefore odd numbered and prime, which means they will
have a new microtonal meaning and position.
Among Dotys subjects, the tetrachords of ancient Greece are mentioned as a
microtonal organizing principle.235 The Greek Genera can serve as a brilliant method for
creating smaller cells of manageable materials, much like the way they did in ancient
Greece. Tetrachords, also, do not have to conform to the span of a perfect fourth, either,
but can be whatever fits the needs of the composer.
Pythagorean tuning can be looked at as a flavor of just intonation. Pythagorean
tuning, again from the Greek viewpoint, works well for linear functions and melody, as
discovered by the Ars Antiqua for parallel fifths, fourths, and octaves of discant and
organum. Pythagorean tuning, due to its 408-cent wide major third, was and still is
considered too dissonant for harmony; so the introduction by Zarlino, of the just third
from the fifth overtone made its entrance into European polyphony, making 5-limit just
intonation, like Ptolemys Syntonon Diatonic genus.236
At the time Doty wrote this work in 1993, the 11 and 13-limit just intoned sound
was still considered beyond Western comfort. 11-limit is quartertone sounding, while 13limit is sixthtone sounding. Partch and La Monte Young both believed that we are still
climbing up the overtone series, to which I agree wholeheartedly. Young and microtonal

235
236

Ibid, p. 30.
Ibid, p. 35.

89
composer Glenn Branca have both traveled as high as the 128th harmonic, employing all
the available primes therein, while Johnny Reinhard has recently written a soon to be
released article on his 8th Octave Overtone Series Tuning, ascending to the 256th
harmonic, no less.237 One of the complaints against microtonal tunings of this
magnitude lie in root movement progressions, versus the static nature of such vast
harmonic possibilities.238 Doty suggests building ones own arsenal of acoustic
instruments, but since we have seen the limitations of this approach through Partch, I am
not so sure this is a good idea. I think it is better to help our existing instruments find
their own ways of producing these tones, which are not beyond the realm of possibility.
Enrique Morenos thesis Expanded Tunings in Contemporary Music (1992) cites
Easley Blackwood, Joel Mandelbaum, and Joseph Yasser as exemplary microtonalists
with their own systems of tuning: Mandelbaum and Yasser with 19TET; and
Blackwoods etudes on tunings in a numerical order, like the 24 keys of Bachs Well
Tempered Klavier.239
Moreno argues for non-octave tunings in his treatise and classifies tunings into
two major areas: octave versus non-octave. The purpose was to redefine the octave
function as a marker organizing principle. The treatise is essentially a compendium of
octave and non-octave scales and systems of equal tunings. One of the drawbacks to this
system is that octave tunings will overpower, or psychologically induce false octaves in
non-octave tunings, if combined.240

237

Reinhard, personal communication.


Doty, p. 58.
239
Moreno. 1992. Expanded Tunings in Contemporary Music. p. 16.
240
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
238

90
Easley Blackwood (born 1933) composed an electronic set of 12 microtonal
etudes, Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media (1980), which were
seminal in conception as a tool for comparative analysis between the tunings 13 through
24. Blackwoods treatise, The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings, 1985, focused
on extended Pythagorean, just, meantone, and equal temperaments and tunings, which
was a rather math-intensive survey of the tunings in European history. For example,
Blackwood states that just intonation is simply a matter of tempered Pythagorean tuning,
by lowering the major third from 408 cents to 386, and that the ratio 4:5:6 is a pure
tuning.
Blackwood invented his subscript system, which entails the following: 0 =
same tunings; 1 = difference of a comma; 2 = difference of a small diesis, where 0 is
essentially Pythagorean tuning, seen as pure tuning by Blackwood.241 There are only two
pure tunings: Pythagorean, and the overtone series because neither tunings have tempered
fifths. Both follow mathematical series, but Pythagorean was created by man, and
overtone tuning follows natures infinitely mathematical arithmetic tuning, as an infinite
series. Blackwood raised the question, again, about the purity of the historical
methodology, except that even with his own treatise, there is always subjective
speculation. Music is both a science and an art: there are no steadfast rules for the
validity of tuning, unless one adopts natures model, the overtone series, which may as
well be the rudder for all arguments of purity.
Joel Mandelbaums 19TET, his dissertation of 1961, settled on this tuning, since
it represents meantone tuning and the inclusion of enharmonic subtleties.242 Mandelbaum

241
242

Tuning vs. temperament, what is the difference? Please see chapter 1.3.6.
Mendelbaum, 1961, p. xiii.

91
maintained that consonance was simply the conditioning of the ear, which I absolutely
agree with.243 He also noted that Aristoxenus and Partch, as well as Xenakis, claimed the
ear over number, reinstating the human being as the arbiter for intervallic meaning, rather
than pure number ratios.
The backbone to meantone tuning is Pythagorean tuning, and the best way to
represent meantone tuning in all its variance is through both 19 and 31TET, where all the
nuances of Pythagorean tuning are present. A good portion of Mandelbaums treatise is
on examples of Pythagorean tuning and its import. A key argument Mandelbaum makes
is that Pythagorean tuning cannot account for the thirdtones and quartertones in the
pyknon of certain genera.244 Therefore, other criteria were used in the divisions of these
pyknon, katapyknosis, probably, or the use of just ratio techniques.
Mandelbaums treatise on microtonality, even though it is specific and not
particularly related to polymicrotonality, nevertheless is an important agent in the
twentieth century microtonal experience, and it asks very good questions regarding the
nature of microtonality. Yasser, apparently, used polytonality as a phenomenon
anticipating a new system, except that there is no such thing as polytonality if the
enterprise is based on one tuning system: 12TET.245 In the end, Mandelbaum states that
there are only two intervals, period: consonant and dissonant, where dissonant intervals
are the smaller intervals.

This author recommends that the reader investigate Mikrotne, 1985-1991, a


symposium and journal of the microtonal happenings in Europe, led by Franz Richter
243

Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid., p. 83.
245
Ibid., p. 130.
244

92
Herf, who has established Ekmelic Music, after the Greek term for microtones of an order
thought unsingable. The journals have covered Wyschnegradsky, Ezra Sims, Hesses
Grundlagedn der Harmonielehre des Mikrotonaler Musik, and all sorts of tuning schemes
and compositional ideas. The festival has been held at Salzburg, Austria.246

2.5 China and Tuning

In China, there is the history of the L, which has been described as a very small
division of pitch.247 In Heaven and Earth, there is no boundary seems to vindicate the
ideas of Aristoxenus, even in the far reaches of China, in 218 A.D.248 The Chinese,
independently of the Babylonians or the Greeks, had also come to the realization of
tuning by the perfect fifth, by the ratio 3:2. The Chinese concept of tone generation is
cyclic, spiraling fifths, and never ending, as opposed to the European concept of simple
divisions by 2.249
There are a number of pitch series in Chinese history, starting with the 60 L of
Jing Fang, 33-73 A.D., who used the gradations of pitch in relation to the horoscope of 5
sets of 12, totaling 60 character pitches, with no octave equivalents, at 1203 cents to an
octave.250 There is also the 360 L of Qian Lezhi, 581 A.D., a pitch for each day of the
year, with an octave at 1201 cents. All of these were figured by Pythagorean
multiplication. There was also the 144 L of Wan Baochang, who chose 12 pitches from

246

Herf, 1985-1991. Mikrotne I-IV, 1985-1991.


Cho, 2003. The Discovery of Musical Equal Temperament in China and Europe in the sixteenth
Century. p. 100.
248
Ibid., p. 150.
249
Ibid., p. 152.
250
Ibid., p. 159.
247

93
Lezhis 360, and then proceeded to divide the semitones, limmas at 90 cents, into 12 parts
of their own.
In just intonation, Wang Po created the pentatonic 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 3/2, 5/3, 2/1, at 5limit, in 959 A.D., circa 500 years before Zarlino had introduced the just third into
Europes Pythagorean tunings.251
The shubas and tarkibs in Arabic modal music all require modulation from
maqam to maqam with fluency, where many modulations are changes of genera, as well
as mode.252 In fact, the word shuba means branch of a tree that metaphorically shoots
off in a new, but related, direction, the way music does when it modulates.
Kevin Jones, in his paper about Xenakis and Ancient L of China, also mentioned
that multiple temperaments were common in Chinese music and that it was characteristic
of ancient Chinese music and contemporary Chinese folk ensembles to use simultaneous
tunings derived from open cycles of fifths, just ratios, equal temperament, and the higher
overtone series tuning.253 To a Western listener, this sweet and sour combination is
bewildering and distressing, but is consistent with the broader axioms of Chinese
thought.254 Polytemperament (polytuning) is an important trait in Chinese music,
providing an out-of-tune flavor and is essential to Chinese music.255
So, are polymicrotonal pitches perceptible to the ear? Yes, and by framing
polymicrotonal structures in relief by putting them in differing tempos, the independence
required in order to hear is met with more drama, and efficiency, by deliberately

251

Ibid., p. 169.
Wright, 1978, pp. 194-216.
253
Kevin Jones/Kathleen Wong, The Architecture of Scales and the Notion of L, from the International
Symposium Iannis Xenakis, Athens, May 2006, p. 8.
254
Ibid.
255
Ibid.
252

94
misaligning the vertical structures in such a way that individual pitches can be discerned
within the context of seemingly dense textural implications.

2.6 Chapter Summary

This chapter is lengthy because it is the workhorse of this essay setting a solid
foundation for what follows. In other words, it lays down the foundation of all that
follows. The Greek genera were methods of tuning derived from stringed instruments,
such as the Kithera, which found their way and influenced Greek music, ethos, and
philosophy through hundreds of years. The modes that were built from these tetrachords
then made their way into Europe influencing most of European music, from Gregorian
chant, to modern string tuning. Since the Greek tetrachords were all tuned differently
within the space of a perfect fourth, modulation was possible. This modulation essentially
was a modulation of tuning, since the three genera were three different classes of tuning.
Modulating tuning within a work is the definition of polymicrotonality. One tuning with a
set of microtonal pitches modulating, metabolae, to another is polymicrotonal in scope.
The tuning conflicts that emerged during the early Renaissance are important
historically because of the juxtaposition of several tuning systems having been
unwittingly, albeit, in just and Pythagorean tuning. Later, the discovery of the overtone
series led to overtone tuning, and began to manifest into the European consciousness and
its music. From that point on, music theory as we know it emerged from the works of
Zarlino and Descartes, to Rameau, who matched pitch, the perfect fifth, with rhythmic
necessity: the cadence to the octave. All the while, a standard tuning system was
broached by many composers and theorists all over Europe, who were looking for a

95
panacea for a singular tuning, which frankly, has never been found. At the peak of the
Baroque, there were approximately 150 different mean tone temperaments. What does
this tell us? First, it tells us that no one tuning system satisfied everyone; that people
could all hear more than one way to tune, allowing for even the tiniest shades of
microtonal pitches to make the difference between similar tunings. If they were all
capable of being substituted for one another, then why were there so many variants? The
answer is that human ears can tell the difference. The human ear has the capacity to hear
microtonal shades that lay beyond systems of notation. Europe was inadvertently
polymicrotonal without being fully conscious of it. For example, lute players played
historically in just intonation. String players tuned to Pythagorean. Singers sang in just
and Pythagorean tuning, and keyboards were in meantone. They all performed together.
They therefore played in several tunings simultaneously, and they probably knew it and
accepted it as standard performance practice.
The twentieth century served as the playground for microtonality in a more
conscious way. The acoustician Helmholtz paved the way for a new exploration of
microtonality with his book, On the Sensations of Tone. This book provoked the Ives
family, Carrillo, Wyschnegradsky, and many others to explore alternate tunings to further
the pitch palette which had become stale by 1945. Charles Ives was the first composer in
history to deliberately make music in two or more tunings, let alone four. The composers
and theorists mentioned in chapter two all have contributed to an atmosphere of a
possible viability of polymicrotonality: something considered absurd by many, but which
is actually a logical extension of the Western pitch palette. American composers have, so
far, led the way.

96
The section on the Chinese is essential, due to its relative and cultural objectivity,
while still attending to the same ideas about tuning as the West. This section provides
proof that this phenomena is not just a by-product of Western thinking, but is a universal
musical concern that has manifested throughout the history of humanity.

97
CHAPTER 3:
RHYTHM:
REPRESENTATIVE TWENTIETH CENTURY POLYTEMPIC WORKS

Although this paper adopts an essentially theoretical approach to


polymicrotonality, the topic of polytempo will be dealt with by score examples and
representation in a less intensive manner due to the burgeoning popularity of the topic
and papers concerning it. Jake Rundall has recently written a paper on polymeter, which
touches on the subject of polytempo, but in a purely analytic fashion: POLYMETER:
disambiguation, classification, and analytical techniques (2011).256 Although Rundall
makes a case for polymeter, and not polytempo, the two are, nonetheless, sufficiently
interconnected that much of what he describes can be inferred here. Rundalls conclusion,
however, is that a clear and complete framework has yet to be developed, with respect to
a complete polyrhythmic theory.257
One of Rundalls points of contention in the area of polymeter and polytempo is
the differentiation between rhythm as being either polytactic or polytempic. Polytactus
rhythms occur when independent pulse tempos exist in non-fully coincident meters. In
other words, neither the meter nor the pulse link up. Polytempo involves the simultaneous
use of different tempi independently assigned to different parts.258 To the listener, what
would be the difference? To the author, the answer lies in the intent of the composer.

256

Rundall, J. (2011). Polymeter: disambiguation, classification, and analytical techniques. University of


Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

257

Ibid. p. 1.
Ibid., p. 59.

258

98
The reason there is so much ambiguity concerning polyrhythm, polymeter, and
polytempo, is that they all involve the same phenomenon, but in varying durations of
time. A protracted use of polyrhythm can be measured in metric terms, as for example, a
seven-beat figure occurring in 4/4 meter could simply be written out as 7/4; this would,
however, require an adjusted tempo increase, since the seven beats within four beats
would necessitate a faster surface speed. A protracted use of a polyrhythm that becomes
a new meter, with a new tempo, if it is of sufficient duration, then can be assigned its own
tempo. This situation is analogous to psychology, in which a sensation becomes a feeling,
which then becomes an emotion, whereupon all extend through longer increments of
time. Therefore, a polyrhythmic motive (local) can grow to become a larger metrically
(regional) structured part of a composition, to its own tempo (global). Once a separate
tempo has been established, either implicitly written, or explicitly indicated by a tempo
marking, the part develops its own life, like a character in a novel, and has its own
trajectory and identity, while maintaining some relationship to the entire composition in
which it is contained. This happens to be the concept behind polytempic musicgiving
life to more independent parts beyond standard polyphony and its concomitant
homogenous rhythms, and even tunings.
Charles Ives is probably the original polytempo master of all time, employing
polytempo in works such as Central Park in the Dark, Unanswered Question, In Re Con
Moto, et al, Fourth Symphony, Theater Set, Putnams Camp, and Universe Symphony.
However, to save space, I will focus more on Ives and Polytempo in chapter 5, rather
than give thorough explanations here, even if I do write briefly about some of these
pieces.

99
According to Jonathan Kramer in his book The Time of Music, temporal
multiplicity was a symptom of the movement of early twentieth century music, due to
culture and the current developments in technology.259 This is apropos for today, in what
is now the early twenty-first century, with our current computer-nano-technological
revolution. Kramers assertion, with respect to Ives, appears to be the case.
Ives, in his 2nd Orchestral Set, has instrumental polyrhythmic divisions: trumpets
in triplets; flutes in four groupings; zither and viola in 11-note groupings; harp and bass
in half notes; and cellos in sextuplets. There are also antiphonal devices involving an offstage choir while first violins play in quintuplets in a 16th-note grid, an ostinato, while
second violins play in four note groupings. Chimes play in half notes and basses play in
groups of fives. All of this is set against the main orchestra, where the clarinets play in
seven note groupings, while trumpets play in 5, solo piano in 3, 4 and 7 simultaneous
groupings, cellos in 3, and violas play in sextuplets. Although these are surface rhythms,
they do carve different surface speeds out of a block of a sound mass that is still
temporally divided by the off-stage choir traveling at their own speed.260 All of these
techniques come to fruition in Ivess Universe Symphony, but before 1915, he was
already thinking polytemporally about rhythm in his music. Putnams Camp, from Three
Places in New England, is famous for its polymetric/polytempic section, at mm. 74-82,261
where there is a 4:3 ratio, but again, at what point does the polymeter disambiguate from
the polytempo? Since the main orchestra is indicated at 100 beats per minute, and the
brass band is at 133 beats per minute, we can see that this is a short snippet of an example

259

Kramer, 1988. p. 166.


Ives, 1957, 2nd Orchestral Set.
261
Ives, 1935, Three Places in New England.
260

100
of polytempo. These earlier compositions of Ivess, nevertheless, all lead to the Universe
Symphony, where true polytempo, implicit and explicit, reigns supreme.
Henry Cowell based a substantial amount of his theory of rhythm on the works of
Ives and he discussed it in his book New Musical Resources, which will be addressed in
chapter four. However, Cowell, via Ives, had influenced the polyrhythmic/metric/tempic
Conlon Nancarrow to such an extreme that Nancarrow literally took Cowells suggestion
to write for player piano, in Mexico.262
For Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997), the correspondence of pitch interval to cross
rhythm was literally composed out in the piano rolls, where 3:2, a perfect fifth, became
three against two in rhythm.263 Ironically, even though Cowell had abandoned his
rhythmic ideas early on, his Quartet Romantic wound up being performed for the first
time in 1978 by use of head phones and individual click tracks,264 which shows that not
all ideas need be discarded: some are ahead of their time. In terms of lineage, it is clear
that there is a contiguous descent from Ives, to Cowell, to Nancarrow.
Nancarrow, like Cowell, took the hypothetical fundamental C tempo from
which to begin manipulations. If tempo 1 is at 120 BPM, and there is a 4:7 ratio, then the
other remaining tempo will be 210 BPM. Nancarrow began at the beginning of the
overtone series and worked his way up, from simple ratios to 12:15:20, a minor triad, for
example, G-B-E, in first inversion, just as Cowell had prescribed in his New Musical
Resources. Study No.s 32 and 36 are in the ratios 5:6:7:8, and 17:18:19:20, respectively,
spelling out E-G-Bb-C, (if C = fundamental) and Db-D-D#-E. Study No. 33 is about the
tritone, at 2 root 2, or 600 cents, in 12TET. The nearest simple ratio would be 7:5,
262

Gann, 1995. p. 1.
Ibid., p. 5.
264
Ibid.
263

101
yielding 582 cents.265 Nancarrow ultimately raised the bar to include irrational numbers
as ratios, expressed as tempo relationships, as measured out meticulously over a long
piano rolla physical manifestation or representation of time itself. Nancarrows
irrational transcendental numbers recall Ives in a way, due to Ivess interest in the
Transcendental New England writers who were also concerned with boundlessness.266
Study No. 1 begins on a common downbeat, with just two tempi: 120 and 210, in
a 4:7 relationship. There are both polymeter, different simultaneous use of time
signatures, and polytempo, two different simultaneous tempos, present, but rhythmic
groupings within the meters are additive. Nancarrow is both additive and divisive,267
rather than choosing just one approach. It is as though we merged Messiaen with
Schoenberg, since the former was purely additive, while the latter was purely divisive in
his rhythmic structures. In a formula, one could say thusly: additive rhythms are n+1,
n+2, n+3, etc., while divisive rhythms are Whole-Note/n+x.268
Study No. 5, for example, intersects both as 35 integrates both meters of 5/16 and
7/16, and isorhythmic patterns 14, 7, 14, 21, 7, 14 mapped to 15, 5, 10, 5, 10, 20, where
the 16th note grid acts as a unifier. Nancarrow curbed Cowells weakness of periodicity
by inventing a-periodic rhythms via additive processes. Nancarrow ultimately eliminated
the barline and used pure tempo markings, allowing each part of the composition to
come alive and become purely polytempic. Study No. 24 reveals hypermeasures of
great extended lengths, also indicating tempo as a primary structure of organization.

265

Ibid., p.7.
Loc. Cit.
267
By divisive, this author contends that the whole note is divided into smaller equal segments, in
contradistinction to the additive rhythmic process, where rhythms are added, resulting in asymmetrical
structures.
268
Ibid.
266

102
Nancarrows open-mindedness allowed him to procure from other seminal influences in
order to achieve these polytempic features of his music. Study No. 24 also uses a tempo
system related to the harmonic series, of the type that Johnston used.269
Kyle Gann asks whether or not Nancarrow solved the Messiaen/Schoenberg
dilemma between additive and divided rhythms. The answeryesis plagued by
problems concerning human performability, to which Nancarrow seemed impervious,
and left alone for the player piano. Todays version of the player piano is the computer
sequencer, except that there exists no lengthy piano roll on which to draw enormous
physical tempo relationshipsrelationships that in Nancarrows language eventually
involved transcendental numbers, which are completely counter intuitive. Also, as human
performance involves many idiosyncrasies that a mechanical object cannot duplicate,
Nancarrow circumvented this problem by introducing jazz feel and broken triplets into
his piano rolls.270 Nancarrow never intended for humans to play his music. The
acceleration studies, in which each voice changes tempo independently, are proof of that.

269
270

Ibid., p. 8.
Ibid., p. 9.

103

Ex 3.1 Study No. 9, Nancarrows first true polytempic work with explicit tempo
indications.271

271

Nancarrow, 1985. Studies No. 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, and 18 for Player Piano, Vol. 6.

104

Ex. 3.2 Page 2 of Study No. 11, Isorhythmic canon with 8 repetitions of a 15-note
ostinato.

105

Ex. 3.3 Page 11 of Study No. 11, Isorhythmic canon on a 120 note melody showing
clearly the different qualities of differently moving tempos and polymeter.

106

Ex. 3.4 Study No. 17, for player piano, Canon 12:15:20.

107

Ex. 3.5 Study No. 16, canon in 4, 5, 6, and 7 additive rhythms.

Examples 3.1 through 3.5 show Studies 9, 11, 16, and 17. Study No. 9, an ostinato
canon, can be considered Nancarrows first true polytempic work with rhythmic ratios of

108
5:4:3 in an eighth note setting.272 Study 9 is a clash of 3 ostinati, one per ratio part. Study
No. 11 is composed of a 120-note long melody which is isomorphic, beginning in C and
becoming more atonal. The 120 notes comprise eight repetitions of a fifteen-note
isorhythm which itself is divided into three segments of twenty 8th notes each: 5 5 6 4 5 5
3 4 3 5 4 3 3 3 2.273 Study No. 16, another isorhythmic canon, is based on four sets of
four-note rhythmic schemes: 3+4+5+4, 4+5+6+5, 5+6+7+6, and 6+7+8+7. Nancarrow
uses these rhythms in 2 cyclic blocks with a tempo modulation from 84 BPM to 140
BPM, ending in both played simultaneously.274 Study No. 17 is a canon in three tempi
with three different canonic subjects in a ratio of 12:15:20, where each subject is a 336
beat total of the same isorhythmic patterns of the type seen in Study 16.
In general, the isorhythmic and ostinato studies feature polytempo implicitly,
while the isorhythmic studies also have a great deal of polymeter. Nancarrow made
tempo thematic, rather than his pitch materials, of which Boulez had complained due to
their banal Blues and Boogie-Woogie American cultural associations.275
History also provides examples of this area of rhythm in the mensuration canons
of Josquin de Pres, at ratios of 2:1, during the Ars Nova and Renaissance. Mensuration
canons also had prolations of different lengths and proportions as well, such as the 3:2
hemiola in the Agnus Dei canon in Missa Lhomme arme.276 Ockeghems Missa
prolationum employed all four of Philippe de Vitrys prolations simultaneously, allowing
for four different tempos of each rhythmic structure in canon, and covering progressively

272

Nancarrow, Studies No. 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, and 18 for Player Piano, Vol. 6, 1985.
Gann, p. 98.
274
Ibid., p.117.
275
Ibid. p. 10.
276
Ibid., pp. 111-114.
273

109
the unison to the octave in imitation.277 In fact, multiple time signatures had occurred as
early as the eighteenth century. Fuxs Concentus musico-insturmentalis has a movement
with a simultaneous Italian Air in 6/8 and a French Air in stile antico, in cut time. Also,
Monteverdi madrigals had some conflicting time signatures as well, in an edition by
Leichtentritt.278
Nancarrow, in determining length, used the Lowest Common Multiple principle,
where for example, a canon in the ratios 16:20:24:28 = 1680, as in the number of eighth
notes.279 For Nancarrow, the logic of his music centers around the theory of convergence
points, where a major chord is used in a quasi cadential fashion for relief from the
polytempic dissonance. The whole point concerning Nancarrows irrational
transcendental numbers such as pi and e in his tempo relationships was to allow nonconvergence, where two or more points of tempo never meet for a resolution. Gann
believes that Nancarrows transcendental pieces are more conceptual, rather than literal,
since only approximations can suffice for pi, or e. For instance, if e/pi is meted out into
real numbers, we get 2.717: 3.141, as a crude approximation. As the resultant is equal to
.865, we could also take a fraction at 13/15, which is equal to .866.280
Finally, Nancarrows Study No. 37, a chromatic scale of tempos, concerns a 12
voice chromatic canon of 12 contiguous pitches,281 straight from the ideas of Cowell, and
serving as an example for Ben Johnston. This work also has no convergence points; if
one were to graph the tempos one would see a curve, in an arithmetic series, of each of
the entrance points of each voice in seconds: 10, 9, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3+33/56, 2 + 33/56, 2 +
277

New Grove, Vol. 18, p. 318.


New Grove, Vol. 18. p. 153.
279
Ibid., p.114.
280
Ibid.
281
Nancarrow, 1982. Study No. 37 for Player Piano.
278

110
4/7, and 3 + 1/21 seconds apart. The tempi are as follows in BPM: 150, 160 5/4, 168 ,
180, 167 , 200, 210, 225, 240, 250, 262 , and 281 .282
The antiphonal composer Henry Brant (1913-2008) composed Verticals
Ascending (1967),283 in which there are two fundamental tempos for two groups of
musicians. Group I is in 4/4 time at 94-100 BPM, while Group II is in time at 72-80
BPM. According to Brant, antiphony was a solution to polytempo by dispersing
musicians around a hall, a technique Xenakis borrowed, where space is an essential
aspect of music composition.284 Additionally, Brant noted that any difficulty in
combining contrasting textures in music can be aided by the use of antiphony. The
deterioration of rhythmic coordination, as separation, would ultimately enhance both
polyphony and contrapuntal clarity. Antiphonal techniques also permit the simultaneity
of contrasting meters and tempos while being easily controlled by assistant conductors.285
Brant has stated that the spatial-contrapuntal-polytemporal principles so brilliantly
exemplified in Ivess Unanswered Question are the basis for the more complicated
spatial superimpositions present in all my own recent large scale works.286
Karlheinz Stockhausen, (1928-2007), composed Gruppen in 1958 for three
orchestras with three conductors, similar to his Carr, for four antiphonal orchestras.
Gruppen begins uniformly in 6/4 at 120 BPM, but at p. 7, there is a tempo indication of
113.5, which is an indicator concerning rational tempo constructions based on the
overtone series, as in Cowells New Musical Resources. Thorough examination of the
tempi indicates that there is a possibility of this technique, even though there are more
282

Ibid., p. 103-108.
Brant, 1969.
284
Schwartz, 1998, p. 221-242.
285
Ibid., p. 234.
286
Ibid., p. 236.
283

111
than 12 tempi written in the score. Stockhausen was aware of the overtone series with
respect to his other works, for example Stimmung, which is based entirely on overtone
principles.
The first large scale tempo breakdown occurs at score number 28, where there is
also a metrical split, into 5/4 and 2/4 at tempos 113.5 against 90.287 The texture is
polyphonic and multi-stratified as three orchestras are now involved with the polytempo
structure, pitting the third orchestra at 90 BPM against the first two, at 113.5 BPM.
Although the tempos are serialized, there is a possibility they are related to overtone
series procedures, since a fractional tempo indicates the product of two multiplied
numbers.
Example numbers 3.7-3.9 show rehearsal numbers 12, 36, and 51, where different
configurations of tempos are grouped together between the three orchestras, where no
singular orchestra dominates, but all compete for the listeners attention by their tempo
fluctuations. Stockhausen is very conscious with respect to texture not to overload the
listener with too much information. There are many cases where only one orchestra plays
at a time vis--vis polytempic changes.

287

Stockhausen, 1958. Gruppen.

112

Ex. 3.7 Stockhausen--Gruppen, at score marking 12, where the tempo splits into 90 and
67 BPM.

113

Ex. 3.8 Stockhausen--Gruppen, at marking 36, showing three tempi for each of the three
orchestras.

114

Ex. 3.9 Stockhausen--Gruppen, marking 51, showing continued polytempo, as


structurally significant.

115

Luciano Berios Tempi Concertati, (1962), is also antiphonal, and in score pages
47-54 there is an ametrical section in open form, where all individual instruments have
notated and visual starting and stopping points.288 This piece, however, is conductorless,
and is comprised of 4 groups, plus solo flute, where the groups are mixed ensembles. The
polytempo is more or less asynchronous as all performers enter an individual tempo
space, without indications or markings.289 Does this mean the work is not polytempo?
No, because in this case the listener qualifies the textural disparity by noticing the lack of
uniform forward motion. Whether or not the tempos are different by way of accident or
design is irrelevant.
Girolamo Arrigos Fluxus (1961) is explicitly polytempic with eighth-note based
meters of 5/8, 3/8, and 2/4 (4/8), with the following tempi: 190, 152, and 114. Group one
consists of flute, trumpet, and harp; group two has 2 clarinets and a bassoon, and group
three consists of viola, cello and bass. The section is short and is only found at the
beginning and the ending of the work.290
Brian Ferneyhoughs Agnus Dei (1969) splits the chorus into three divisions
where each division has its own tempo: tempo I is at 56 BPM, tempo II, at 60, and tempo
III, at 50 BPM. The formal scheme is open form where the divisions are notated in boxes,
from which the vocalists refer for performance. The tempi converge at score mark 10, at
60 BPM.291

288

Berio, 1962, Tempi Concertati. pp. 47-54.


Ibid.
290
Arrigo, 1961. Fluxus.
291
Ferneyhough, 1969. Agnes Dei.
289

116
Magnus Lindbergs Action-Situation-Signification (1982), for mixed quartet,
features polytempo during the section called the Sea, where at the beginning of the
section, the piano is in 6/4 meter, at 59 BPM, the bass clarinet is in 5/8, at 56.2 BPM, and
the cello is in 6/8, at 52.8 BPM. All four instruments are in four different tempi and
meter, by the 6 minute mark: piano at 89.9, bass clarinet at 71.5, cello at 88.3, and
percussion at 60.4 BPM.292 Each part of the quartet seems to swell and surge, just like a
body of water, showing Lindbergs talent for auditory metaphors. The meter changes
within the individual parts reveal that each instruments tempo and life is fully
independent, yet connected.

292

Lindberg, 1982. Action-Situation-Signification.

117

Ex. 3.10 Lindbergs polytempic section, the Sea, in Action-Situation-Signification.

118

Ex. 3.11 Polytempo in Lindbergs music.

119

Elliott Carter (born 1908) is more known for metric modulation than for
polytempo. Eve Poudrier, however, has shown that Carter uses simultaneous pulse stream
speeds, if not tempos, subdivided from a tempo grid, in two or more parts, in much of his
music.293 Carter calls these different strata character patterns, where metronomic
speeds, rhythmic groupings, and tuplets are used to dramatize the musical personalities of
instruments and instrumental groups.294
Poudrier discovered tempo ratios of 23:21:18 in Carters piece 90+, at deeper
structural levels. If the sixteenth note is taken as a grid, there are three types of rhythmic
patterns that form a chord pulse, the 90+ pulse, and the rogue pulse, that when all put
together create polytempo, where the explicit tempo of the 90+ pulse is staccato and
stands out.295 In short, there are three groupings of rhythms: 16 eighth note triplets, chord
pulses at 17 sixteenth note intervals, and staccato quintuplets at 23 sixteenth note
intervals. When all of these are factored into 96 BPM X 60 minutes and divided by these
quotients, 18, 23, and 21 BPM, respectively, result.296
Carter makes each character perceptible to the ear by way of his personal
vocabulary of intervals and tonal materials, such as the all-interval sets, (0137) and
(0146). Underlying logic and continuity leads Carter to make deep structural and global
polyrhythms that can extend up to ratios such as 75:56, for solo guitar in Changes,
(1983)297 Carters compositional method is to use graph paper to construct the
polyrhythm (like Nancarrow and his piano rolls) before composition. The constructed
293

Poudrier, 2009, p. 205.


Ibid.
295
Ibid., 206.
296
Ibid.
297
Ibid., p. 207.
294

120
time line engenders organicism, with its own inherent patterns of tension and release and
reduced textures, the clarity of which reveals Carters neo-classical ideals. Carter
maintains that the overlap and interchange versus divergence is the dialectic of materials
that create organicism in music. The interaction between foreground polyrhythms and
pulse streams, hidden structurally, create tension for the listener, who wants something to
grasp in order to hear it unfold.298 Polymeter and polytempo are most noticeable when
other musical elements, such as register, articulations, dynamics, intervals, and tunings
are used to reinforce the independence of layers of rhythmic strata. Due to this textural
complexity, it could be highly beneficial to use different tunings and micro-intervallic
systems to help create distinct identities between different polytempic parts, all
competing for the listeners attention.
In Carters other works, such as String Quartet No. 2 (1959), metric modulation
appears while the first violin plays quintuplets against the second violins triplets over the
general pulse of eighth note values. There is a compound ratio of 5:3/2, over held tones at
variable durations.299 String Quartet No. 3 (1971) features a split quartet into two meters
with two tempos: 6/4 at 105 BPM, and 12/8 at 70 BPM, essentially a hemiolic 3:2, and a
favorite ratio of Ives. Since the quartet is split into two duossecond violin and viola
versus first violin and cellorhythmic tension is created within each duet, where the first
punctuates at 16th note rhythms against the second duets 5:6 ratio. The structural levels
of rhythmic complexity are layered, as the stratification articulates subdivisions of
rhythms within the competing tempi of 105 BPM and 70 BPM. The surface polyrhythms

298
299

Ibid., p. 209.
Carter, 1961. String Quartet No. 2.

121
invert, like rhythmic counterpoint, as meters change via metric modulation.300 (Please see
below for Ex. 3.12 and 3.13)

300

Carter, 1971.String Quartet No. 3.

122

Ex. 3.12 Carters polyrhythmic articulated surface in two tempos.

123

Ex. 3.13 Polytempo, metric modulation, and polyrhythm, multilayered rhythmic strata.

124
Carters String Quartet No. 5 (1993) is in the ratio 10:7:8:9, with 12 movements
and 5 interludes; however, the surface rhythms vary so much that there is no detectable
underlying pattern. 327 measures in length, the piece has considerable metric
modulations; the thickest part of the work where the textural density is at its
polyrhythmic maximum occurs between mm. 149 and 160. Carters work with regard to
his character continuities in their individual rates of speed, whether considered
polytactus, or not, still fit under the auspices of polytempo.
Lejaren Hillers String Quartet No. 5 (1962) displays polytempo in its variation 12,
where the first violin, in 4/4 time, is played at 120 BPM, second violin, in 11/8 meter at
110 BPM, viola, in 5/8 meter at 50 BPM, and cello in meter at 90 BPM.301 The
movement is nonisochronous and has no convergence points. In addition to its polytempo
section, variation 12 is also in quartertones, making it a sleeper in the polytempic
microtonality category. In addition to Ben Johnston, the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign has produced some adventurous composers with respect to this inquiry.

301

Hiller, 1968. String Quartet No. 5.

125

3.1 Chapter Summary

This chapter intended to focus on twentieth century works, but the Renaissance
crept in anyway through the mentioning of Josquin and Ockeghem. Ockeghem framed
the canons of his Missa Prolationum in four different mensural signatures to create as
much attention to his voices as possible, and for the art of rhythmic differentiation by
organizing canonic pairs that included renderings of the same melody in both duple and
triple meter simultaneously. In some respects the composers of the late Middle ages and
early Renaissance were more adventurous than todays composers. It was a period of
experimentation before any rigorous standard for meter had been set by a common
practice. This author feels that the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
demonstrates the same predicament, except for existing on the other side of the common
practice period. Periods like this that are open are very similar to the Middle ages and
early Renaissance. New perspectives in art arose, as in the 4-dimensional art of the
Cubists. Todays computer art programs allow for myriad manipulations that go beyond
the Cubists, into an other-dimensional territory. These developments have also affected
music.
Music tempos began to split apart and run in concurrent streams in the early
twentieth century. The resurgence of early music practices, such as isorhythms, and
antiphony, allowed composers to experiment with musical time. The classical period and
its static rhythms from the eighteenth century proved too constricting.
Polytempic music had surfaced in the early part of the century, but went
underground and did not resurface again until Carter, Nancarrow and Stockhausen had

126
brought it into their music. The polytempo segments of composers like Lindberg, and
Ferneyhough tell us that this aspect of musical rhythm is still in its infancy, and needs to
be explored further.

127

CHAPTER 4:
PITCH + RHYTHM:
LITERATURE AND COMPOSITIONS SUGGESTING RELATIONSHIPS
BETWEEN MICROTONAL PITCH AND RHYTHM, IN TERMS OF TEMPO,
LEADING TO THE UNION OF POLYMICROTONALITY AND POLYTEMPO;
Henry Cowell, Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Ben Johnston

4.1 Historical Methods and Thought Concerning Connections of Pitch and Rhythm by the
Overtone Series

Moritz Hauptmann, 1792-1868, in his Die Natur der Harmonik und Metrik, is the
only music theorist prior to the twentieth century who tried to explain all harmonic and
metric phenomena on the basis of a sole universal principle, called One Law.302 Based
on Hegelian dialectics, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, Hauptmann saw this as the
generator of all music.
Hauptmann was the first theorist to raise the level of rhythmic theory to the same
level as harmony. Hauptmann proclaimed that temporal and tonal phenomena came to be
by the same dialectical laws. Since harmony involved chords and tones of resolution, two
classifications emerged: those in determinate locations, such as dominant chords,
leading tones, and suspensions, and those in indeterminate locations, such as resolved
triads.303
Hauptmann established the concept of Unity, as expressed in the octave and 2/4
meter, where a fifth and triple meter represent Opposition; his ideas seem to come from

302
303

Caplin, 1981, Theories of Harmonic-Metric Relationships from Rameau to Riemann.p. 235


Ibid, p. 238.

128
the discovery of the overtone series, occuring between the time of Descartes and Rameau,
in terms of its application to musical theory.304
The Unity, a 2/4 meter, is equated with the octave, and the meter is equated
with the perfect fifth, thus revealing the direct influence of the overtone series.305 The
major third, however, is not included Hauptmanns Hegelian dialectic since a 5/4 meter
was too abstruse for the time, even though they did know about the fifth overtone and its
relationship as the Just major third. Hauptmanns system of positive and negative meters
based on harmonic logic is a prescient and early indicator for the future of music theory.
Riemann had initially carried on Hauptmanns work equating rhythm to pitch, but
Riemann abandoned the primacy of rhythm and relegated it to an inferior and dependent
status, even though he had established even further the Dialectical process of moving
away from tonic as antithesis, and moving toward tonic, as thesis. 306
Meter, rhythm, and tempo were second class as a permanent basis until Leonard
Meyer broached the matter by way of prosody, the study of meter in poetry.307
Further methodologies in the inclusion and connection of rhythm and tempo into
microtonal works rest on Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Ben Johnston, and Iannis Xenakis,
whom will follow.

304

Farrar, 1956. The harmonic series, where the first 5 overtones are considered the foundation of
Occidental Harmony: the fundamental, the fifth, the fourth, and the third.
305
Caplin, p. 239.
306
Ibid, p. 289
307
Meyer, G. C. (1960). The Rhythmic Structure of Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

129
4.2 MODERN THOUGHTS CONNECTING PITCH AND RHYTHM

Jeff Pressing has formulated a theory of pitch and rhythm that bind together by
isomorphic structures. If the number 2 equals a whole tone and 1 equals a semitone, this
pattern then is equivalent to our major scale. If the number 2 is set to a quarter note and
the number 1 is set to an eighth note, then this structure forms the bell pattern of Ewe
drumming music of Ghana, in west Africa.308
Although Pressings inquiry concerns the cognitive phenomenon regarding the
simultaneity of this mathematical structure in two different cultures, there is a method for
combining pitch and rhythm within isomorphic techniques. Gestalt psychology,
according to K. Koffkas Principles of Gestalt Psychology, indicates that people tend to
see both a figure and its complement, such as in visual ink blot Rohrschach tests,
suggesting that perhaps the same condition applies to sound and rhythmic patterns.309 The
issue is about negative space and its presence in human perception. Pressing also points
out that Schoenberg used the idea of complementation in his ideas of his 12-tone music
and combinatoriality. Similarly, this author argues for the possibility of negative space
inherent between the semitones at 100 cents, such that at least 100 further divisions are
possible in that negative space.
Regarding Pressings inquiry, this author would like to propose an answer
regarding the nature of the mathematical structures inherent in world musics. The reason
for this paradigm behind both the African and European mathematical structures of pitch
and rhythm is, perhaps, the Fibonacci series. There is a 2-group separated from a 3-group.
In other words, there is this mathematical grouping: 22 1 222 1. Each group is a
308
309

Pressing, 1983. pp. 38-39.


Ibid., p. 42.

130
Fibonacci number. If the series were to continue, it would possibly be 5, then 8, and then
13. This series seems to be embedded in human consciousness and surfaces around the
world in various musical structures, regardless of space and time.
Therefore, between the senarius, or even the septenarius, or the first six or seven
overtones for pitch, and the lower level Fibonacci series numbers 2 and 3, all human
music might be contained, structured and repeated, from culture to culture. This therefore
can work as a singular method for combining pitch and rhythm: mathematical
isomorphism.
Henry Cowell (1897-1965) is among the few who have had rhythmic insight into
the harmonic series allowing him to logically extract pure rhythmic structures from the
overtone ratios themselves. In doing this, the arithmetic nature of the overtone series
becomes a model of subdividing the whole note into equal durations, just as the
fundamental is multiplied by each succeeding partial. This is an inverse relationship: as
pitch is multiplied, rhythm divides the whole note. Cowell, not a microtonalist, did not
see the far-reaching effects of his work with respect to polymicrotonality, although he did
see the connections with standard tuning by 12TET. Ex. 4.1 shows Cowells thought
behind matching pitch to rhythm: if C is the fundamental, then each

131
Ex. 4.1 From Henry Cowells New Musical Resources.310

succeeding overtone will have a concomitant rhythmic value: the octave at 2:1 will be a
C higher, and 2 beats in rhythmic value; a perfect fifth, at 3:2, will have three beats and
its pitch will equal G, and so on, theoretically into infinity.311
The problem with this system is that it begins to automatically write itself
algorithmically. This is more or less the same problem the integral serialists faced with
respect to systematizing all parameters of music: akin to connecting the dots, the system
becomes self-generative. Since all notes are determined by their overtone series position
and number, all rhythms become pre-assigned, and the issue of choice becomes obsolete,
as it did with the serialists, since all compositional parameters are predetermined, like
Calvinism.312
Facing this problem, Cowell cheated his own system by not finishing the
algorithmically assigned length of each of the series positions durations. Cowell, also,
used free will and choice in determining pitch positions for a grouping of quintuplets,
which would correspond to the fifth overtone, (or the Major third, E above C), for
example, where five Es would have to be grouped in accordance with this system. One
could say that Cowell compromised, but the composer would say happily that choice
saved the day.313 For further clarification, please see example 4.3.
In an alternative attempt, Cowells assignment of overtone position to meter also
produced failed results, since his methods of fractional meters resulting from his peculiar

310

Cowell, 1969, New Musical Resources, p. 47.


Ibid.
312
Nicholls, 1990, p. 148.
313
Ibid, p. 149.
311

132
understanding of the overtone ratios led to incomprehensible metric problems, such as a
meter of 5 and , or 3 and 3/8 beats in length. Again, I stress, for his day, and this was
1920, Cowell did not have the resources of musicians to overcome these metrical
problems, that would eventually become playable later in the century. Cowell, however,
did succeed in his ideas for tempo, where tempi based on overtone series positions do
make a good deal of sense. Ben Johnston, a student of Harry Partch, who in turn was a
student of Henry Cowell, made use of fractional tempi based solely on the overtone
series, or Just ratio numbers. Nevertheless, after the Rhythm Harmony Quartets, Fabric,
and Rhythmicana, Cowell abandoned this system completely and eschewed any further
rhythmic complexity.314

314

Ibid, p. 150.

133
Ex. 4.2 Cowells ratio to tempo based on the 12 chromatic pitches.315
In example 4.2, if we set C to 60 beats per minute, and use it as the foundation for
the tempo structure, we can derive the series indicated above. (For example, the semitone at 15/14 X 60 = 64 2/7, etc.)

315

Ibid. p. 107.

134
316

Ex. 4.3 Beginning example of rhythmic disposition of overtones, Quartet Romantic.


316

Cowell, 1964, Quartet Romantic, and Quartet Euphometric.

135

Ex. 4.4 Cowells Quartet Euphometric.

136
Cowells Quartet Romantic for string quartet, and Quartet Euphometric, for
mixed quartet are both pure examples of Cowells rhythmic overtone positioning system.
From examples 4.3 and 4.4, it is easy to see that Cowells ideas, though revolutionary for
his time, were also unperformable due to the awkwardness of his system. Quartet
Romantic, by rhythmical duration, and Euphometric, by metrical process, were also
powerfully influential. Both these quartets influenced most of Conlon Nancarrows works
for player piano. Ironically, it is the awkward (considered awkward by musicians in
Cowells day, who were unwilling to play these rhythms) mixed fractions of Cowell that
piqued Nancarrows curiosity. In addition to influencing Nancarrow, Cowells unique
rhythmic geometric noteheads and non-tuplet third, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes
(divisions of the whole note) also apply to time signatures where a measure in 4/6
appears in Quartet Euphometric, influencing directly Brian Ferneyhoughs use of nonstandard time signatures.317
Instead of ratios, Cowell preferred vibration cycles, which are multiplicands of
a simple low frequency pitch, such as 16 cps, Cowells foundational vibration of choice.
Cowell uses these multiplied values rather than explicit ratios from the overtone series.318
Another popular idea Cowell helped propogate was the notion of undertones, which have
since turned out to be am acoustical falsehood, even if they are mathematically and
theoretically valid. Unfortunately Harry Partch had adopted this idea as the basis of his
unique brand of tonality, called U-tonality, for undertones, an erroneously perpetuated
physcial phenomena that accompanies the overtone series, but human hearing cannot
detect them. Undertones, therefore, can only work in relation to overtones in a

317
318

Personal Correspondence with Brian Ferneyhough, 2002.


Cowell, New Musical Resources, 1969, pp.3-9.

137
mathematically practical way, as a rational reciprocal, or numerical inversion. But
Cowells largest misconception is his notion of secondary overtones, akin to secondary
dominants, where, for example, the third partial, or the perfect fifth, has overtones of its
own. This is also false, but has been a boon in the mixed fractional reductions of
Cowells rhythms from the overtone series.319
Aside from these errors, one cannot discount the importance and revolutionary
ideas that Henry Cowell, extending those of Charles Ives, helped elucidate. Time as
duration, and tempo as a rate of speed, and their relationships to the overtone series
cannot be underestimated. Tempo canons based on Cowells ideas are now in use, due to
the innovations of Nancarrow and Johnston, who both directly linked their tempo
structures to the overtone series and Just intonation.
Cowell also suggested rejecting the simpler ratios of the overtone series in favor
of those larger, higher in the series, that produce microtones, as in the classic quartertone,
at 33/32, or the eighth tone, at 68/67. Keep in mind that although Cowell was not a
microtonalist, he did advocate their use, even if he himself did not use them. In fact,
Cowell thought the next step up the series after Schoenbergs chromaticism would
involve quartertone harmony, as acceptable to the human ear.320 Ultimately, Cowells
tight grip on his ideas produced a symbolic notion of division, in dividing the octave, and
in dividing the whole note, an approach that characterized the Second Viennese school,
as opposed to the additive approach of Messiaen and Bartk. Bartok is also known for
Undertones, or Riemanns Dualism, was an accepted premise well into the twentieth century in German
music theory, as well as the rest of the continent. (Rehding, p. 17) The tones one hears are in actuality, sum
and difference tones which can be detected one octave below the sounding pitch, but these are not
undertones, since undertones are an acoustic impossibility. Karl von Schafthutl, in Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung, 1878, declared that the laws of mechanics preclude the possibility of undertones,
thus disproving Riemann, and for that matter, Aristotle, who was the progenitor of the undertone/overtone
dualistic conept.
320
Cowell, 1969. New Musical Resources. p. 17.
319

138
equal divisions of the octave within the 12TET medium. Example 5.9 shows Cowells
Fabric for piano, from 1922, and demonstrates the use of his overtone series derived
rhythms and pitch materials. But the static nature of pitch repetition, if his system is
perfectly adhered to, is missing, in favor of his musical ear. In Fabric, Cowell is arguing
for equal and odd divisions of the whole note, much like modern day microtonalists argue
for equal and odd divisions of the octave. In Fabric, Cowell also explores his rhythmic
ratio theory with his amended noteheads, and he also makes the connection between
overtone ratios and tempo relationships, a model both Johnston and Nancarrow carried
out in their works. Cowells system was extensive and included whole note divisions up
to 15th notes.

139

Ex. 4.5 Cowells Fabric, with geometric noteheads and their rhythmic meanings.321

321

Cowell, 1922. Fabric for Piano.

140
Cowell abandoned this system due to the difficulty in carrying out cross rhythms
and accounting for subdivisions of odd groupings, which would result in fractional
rhythms, an issue that todays computer music composers can cope with easily. Cowell
wrote: these rhythms could be cut on a piano roll for player pianos, to which
Nancarrow agreed.322
In addition to new meters, such as 2/3, or 3/5, based on third notes and fifth notes,
Cowell began the notion of Tempo Scales. Metric harmonies, and metric ratios, all
based on the quarter note, led Cowell to the formulation of a correspondence between
pitch and rhythm.323 Meter and Time combinations, otherwise known as polytempo,
could be achieved by the reconciliation of accents and meter of different values.
Tempo itself, an exact rate of speed relative to one minute as in BPM, can
therefore coexist just as chords, or pitches coexist, as tempo relationships. Cowell,
therefore invented the tempo scale by systematizing the relationships in terms of ratios

324

Ex. 4.6 Cowells metrical duration scales.


322

Cowell, 1960, p. 65.


Ibid. p. 67-70.
324
Ibid, p. 105.
323

141

from the overtone series. Large scale rhythmic structures, such as tempo, therefore work
congenially with this system, as evinced by Johnston in his string quartets.
In Ex. 4.6, Cowell is using the chromatic scale to adjust measure lengths. If C is
set to one measure of 2/4, then all the ratios represented by the chromatic interval become
a multiplier for the multiplicand 2/4 single measure. Also, the multiplier will be reflected
as the time signature as well.
As an aside, Lucytune.com is an example of a current website that also
exemplifies the relationship between tempo and pitch, even using extended Pythagorean
tuning to 21 places, like Ives used in his Universe Symphony.325
Ivan Wyschnegradsky, born in 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russia, a lawyer,
composer, and polymicrotonal pioneer, was similarly influenced by American composers,
such as Henry Cowell,326 as well as Messiaen. In one word, Ultrachromaticism,
Wyschnegradskys music also found its way into tying together a microtonal system with
a logical extension into rhythm, still under the influence of Henry Cowell and Ives. 327
In Europe, Schoenbergs liberation of twelve tones put the issue of tonality
back into the hands of tuning and temperament as the logical extension to what Wagner,
Strauss, and Lizst had started in the area of total chromaticism.328 In other words,
Schoenbergs liberation of the twelve tones can be seen as the re-clothing of the common
practice tuning as the first legitimate 12 equally divided octave, from the perspective of a

325

326

Lucy, C. E. (2001). Lucy Tuning. Retrieved 2011, from Lucytune.com:


http://www.lucytune.com/midi_and_keyboard/tempo.html.

Barthelmes, 1995, p. 49.


Barthelmes, 1995. p. 105-06.
328
Ibid, p. 34.
327

142
microtonal framework. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century, pansonority and
metaphysics and their representation in sound found its legitimacy in not only
Wyschnegradsky, but Ives, Cowell, and others.
Regarding Ivan Wyschnegradskys contributions, both of which were in
polymicrotonality and rhythmic structures, I will divide his work into pitch in this
section, and rhythm on page 144.
Wyschnegradskys ultrachromatic system was essentially about 72-tone equal
temperament, divided into subcategories: third tones, quartertones, sixth tones, and eighth
tones, from a broad spectrum template of twelfth tones. Some may argue that the 72TET
palette subsumes the smaller contingents, and therefore denies the polymicrotonal intent.
This author disagrees with this stance for the following. Since quartertones, used in the
Arabic maqam and in Greek genera, constitute their own identity as a microtonal system,
I argue in favor of the viability of 24TET still remaining intact as a distinct and
identifiable system even with respect to a larger system behind it. Just as Reinhard
identifies both quartertones and eighth tones in Ivess Universe Symphony, without
recourse to critics scolding him for the possible subsumption of quartertones by eighth
tones, then I have at least one ally in this regard. In any case two systems, 12TET and
24TET, are not mutually interchangeable. Yes, one can find the 12TET within the 24TET
system, but the converse is impossible. If a piece is written in both 12TET, obeying the
laws of the common practice, and quartertones, perhaps adding inflections and extensions
to the common practice chords and voice leading, then the compositional intent includes
both temperaments into one system. But if the quartertones, 24TET, are composed in a
different manner in contradistinction to the common practice behavior, then the tunings

143
seem to occupy two different sound fields simultaneously. This case can be argued with
respect to polytonality, as well, with the exception that as the temperament remains the
same, the intent is different and the outcome sounds differently. Additionally,
quartertones do not sound the same as eighth tones, which do not sound like twelfth
tones. If the composer chooses to exclude pitches that overlap, then the integrity of each
system remains. If one takes the alphabet and writes in Latin and in English, we still have
two different languages. How does subsumption, then, make any difference? This author
believes it is the intent of the composer.
Chant douloureux et etude, Op. 6 (1918) is Wyschnegradskys first
polymicrotonal work in five microtonal tunings: third tones, quartertones, sixth tones, and
eighth tones, plus a piano in standard 12tet. The other tunings were also performed by
piano, manufactured by August Forster pianos, in the Czech Republic.329
Wyschnegradsky had synesthesia, like Skryabyn, and felt a great comeraderie
with him as a fellow Russian.330 In addition to the metaphysics of the early twentieth
century, theosophy was also en vogue and much of Wyschnegradskys ideas were in
league with that school of thought, especially with regard to his color theory as related to
pitch, again, also in step with Skryabyn. Wyschnegradsky also made use of Cowells
cluster technique (from Ives), establishing the link between himself and Cowell.
Wyschnegradsky knew about Cowells book. In terms of systems, Wyschnegradsky was
adept at isolating microtonal systems one at a time, either using quartertones or third
tones, for example.331

329

Ibid, p. 35.
Ibid, p. 211.
331
Ibid, p. 37.
330

144
The philosophy of the system Wyschnegradsky used entailed terms like volume,
for microtonal density, and type, for the size of the microtonal step, with respect to his
polymicrotonal hierarchy, to which he would use color theory to mix pitches: das
Volumen und die Dichte einer Klangaggregationen.332 Dichte, or type, would involve
twelfth tones, sixth tones, or quartertones. The pansonority wheel (shown in Ex. 4.7)
depicts his 505 gamut intervals, stretching over 7 octaves in a resolution of twelfth tones.

332

Ibid, p. 38-39.

145

Ex. 4.7 Wyschnegradskys pansonoric wheel.333


333

Ibid. p. 500.

146

Ex. 4.8 Wyschnegradskys color assignments to pitch materials.334

334

Ibid. p. 501.

147

Ex. 4.9 Maries example of Wyschnegradskys microtonal accidentals.335


Ex. 4.8 and 4.9 shows the multitudes of microtonal symbols capable of cluttering
up a musical line. This is one reason for this authors fattened staves (Section 5.3) as a
solution to monstrosities like the 1/12th tone microtonal symbol. Marie notes that

335

Marie, 1976. Lhomme musical, p. 49.

148
Wyschnegradsky also had plans to color code sets, or chords, audio-visually, by
inventions such as the crescent, for broad ultrachromatic clusters.

Ex. 4.10 Arc en ciel, Op. 37, polymicrotonal piano piece for 6 pianos, where clusters of
microchromatic chords engage in a process of cellular contraction and expansion.

149
Arc en ciel (Ex. 4.10), Wyschnegradskys polymicrotonal masterpiece, features 6
pianos tuned in twelfth tones, all utilizing a subgrouping, or Dichte, of the gamut.
Colored notation visually tells the performers what happens within the work: red for half
tones, orange for twelfth tones, yellow for sixth tones, green for quartertones, and blue
for third tones.336 As far as I know I have not been able to locate a recording for this
piece. The Zykeln, or cirlces, are analogous to the circular 12-tone system. In addition to
the above, Wyschnegradskys Klangmillieus are 5 and 7 equal divisions of octaves,
similar to pelog and slendro Gamelan pitches. He also built scales based on 2/3 tones, 66
cents, in modes of limited transpositiona reciprocity existed between Messiaen and
Wyschnegradsky.337 Also, there was a quartertone harmony manual, written as a
continuation of chromatic harmony, for which he is most known, rather than the
polymicrotonal works he actually produced. Nevertheless, even Marie has noted the
influence of the overtone series in the ideas of Wyschnegradsky, as upper partials were
rounded off to the nearest quarter, sixth, and twelfth tones. For Wyschnegradsky,
ultrachromaticism was based on acoustics and resonance.338 Marie notes that there was an
epic battle between just acoustic resonance, and intuitive ultrachromaticism, where
octave equivalence is important, but ultimately disposable.339
Ivan Wyschnegradsky is not only useful to this inquiry due to pitch alone; he also
worked on rhythmic ideas. There is his notion of a time continuum, wherein
Wyschnegradsky ties in rhythm to his ultrachromatic theory based on ideas of the
overtone positions, just like Cowell. One must induce this as Cowells influence, since

336

Ibid, p. 38-39.
Ibid, p. 43-48.
338
Marie, 1976. Lhomme musical, p. 50.
339
Ibid.
337

150
the idea had only been addressed once before, by Cowell himself in his New Musical
Resources. Wyschnegradskys Klangkontinua, a sound continuum, of both pitch and
rhythm, can be equated quite easily to polytempic polymicrotonality, since there is an
element of infinite division, as in Aristoxenus, inherent in the idea. In a sense,
Wyschnegradsky is a type of amalgamation of both Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen.
Also, what lends credence to Wyschnegradsky as a polymicrotonalist is his stratification
of layers, rather than a holistic and interwoven texture.
As for a harmonic analysis of Arc en ciel, there is a Bartkian approach to the
waxing and waning of the texture and intervallic compression and expansion. A 5/12 tone
interval grows to a half step, and then from a third tone, down to a quartertone, all in tight
clusters of microchromatic harmony. (Please see Ex. 4.10)
Merkmale des rhythmischen Ultrachromatismus marks the area of
Wyschnegradskys thought that parallels metaphysical ideas of space in music that is
realized in his ultrachromatic harmony, vorstellungsraum.340 Wyshnegradsky was
concernced about the imprecise nature of musical directions for tempo and came upon a
type of metric modulation similar to Carters, in order to gain more control over time and
tempo within a composition. From a time continuum, Wyschnegradsky devised a
uniform system as equal divisions of the octave[s], he also thought of equal divisions of
the whole note, harkening back to Cowell. This would be a type of rhythmic
temperament.341
La loi de la Pansonorit is an example of polyrhythmic counterpoint in four
categories : I applying 3:2, II applying 2:3, III applying 6:7, and IV applying 7:6 to
340

Barthelmes, 1995. Raum und Klang: das musikalishce und theoretische schaffen Ivan Wyschnegradsy.
p. 65-69.
341
Ibid.

151
different ratios in a system of inversion and retrograde techniques.342 The system is quite
remarkable in that it is a system based on limits (please see examples 4.7 and 4.11), and
four contrapuntal techniques found in serialism: prime, inversion, retrograde, and
retrograde inversion. The system is dictated by the intervallic ratio in question, as it
appears alongside the rhythms of the rows. If the fraction is less than 1, it slows down. If
the fractional interval is greater than 1, it speeds up.

342

Ibid., pp. 86-87.

152

Ex. 4.11 Wyschnegradskys rhythmic system in four categories, P, I, R, and RI. 343

343

Ibid. p. 74.

153

Ex. 4.12 Wyschnegradskys rhythmically derived system from his pitch system.344

344

Ibid. p. 74.

154

Ex. 4.13 Maries admiration for Wyschnegradskys system of combining pitch and
rhythm as a solution to an age old problem.345

In Ex. 4.13, Wyschnegradsky has paired the functionality of the ratio of pitch to
the ratio of rhythmic value. The 5/4, for example, is shown as a 5 in the space of 4 tuplet,

345

Marie, p. 52.

155
The 5/4 ratio is the just major third at 386 cents. So the realm of microintervallic ratios
are now controlling rhythmic behavior.
Wyschnegradskys ratio-based rhythmic system (Ex. 4.12) involved natural
numbers up to 13 in a grid of 169 numbers represented as fractions. After removing
duplications, there remained 115 different values he applied as rates of duration and
overtone positions. For example, if Eb is the octave at 2/1, then the numbers 27-45-75125 correspond to C, A, F#, and D#/Eb, when broken down into their factors with respect
to the overtone series for Eb. Similarly, the number 125, 5*5*5, is three consecutive
major thirds away from Eb, which is, again, Eb, or D#; but when assigned as rhythm, the
prime factors of the numbers become rhythmic values, such as 27th notes, as 3*9,
correspond to triplets, and 45, 5*9, corresponds to prime numbers five and three, and 125
becomes a complex of quintuplets.346
Wyschnegradskys system can be represented as a formula: a+1/b+1, where the
coefficients represent rhythmic values, such as an arithmetic series , 2/3, , 4/5, etc.
When put into rows, each row can then represent divisions of the octave. (please see Ex.
4.14)
Row 1 in

whole tones
Row 2 in half 1/3
tones
Row 3 in third
tones
Row 4 in
1/5
quartertones

2/3

4/5

5/6

2/4

3/5

4/6

5/7

2/5

3/6

4/7

5/8

2/6

3/7

4/8

5/9

Table 4.14 Wyshnegradskys pitch to rhythm system based on the overtone series.

346

Ibid., p. 73-75.

156
The four categories can then be generalized as follows: category I, the ground
row, slower; category II, inverted row, a little faster; category III, retrograde, still faster;
and category IV, retrograde inversion, fastest. The influence of the Second Viennese is
obvious, as well as the influence of Cowell. Wyschnegradsky was unique in bridging the
most unique schools of both Europe and America. In addition to the above,
Wyschnegradsky chose C as the ground note to base his system on, again, just as
Cowell did, but it is probably a universally convenient starting point. Larger fractions in
Wyschnegradskys system are used for larger rhythmic constructions, not for
pitch/duration relationships. Although this system is fairly comprehensive, it is still
arbitrary, and it is also mostly unknown in America, as Ivan Wyschnegradskys name is
rarely mentioned in any graduate textbooks on music. I found out about Wyschnegradsky
in year 2000 while trying to inquire into a quartertone theory of harmony and finding his
book written on an extension of chromatic harmony in terms of quartertones.

Ben Johnston (born 1926), although not a dedicated polymicrotonalist, is an


extended just intoned, singlularly microtonal composer who uses up to 53 pitches per
octave. He has also engaged in the use of Cowells tempo scales, and to some degree,
polytempo. In a polytempic setting, including microtonality, Johnston comes very close
to the auditory experience of Ives himself.
In the area of tying pitch relationships to rhythm, Johnston brought the two
together elegantly in his Knocking Piece, 1978, a percussive piece derived from the just

157
intoned chords from his A Sea Dirge.347 Knocking Piece features a good deal of metric
modulation, like Carter, and tempo and just intonation are related by just ratios.348
Johnstons metric modulations are also based on an elaborate system of tempo
realtionships via ratios from his just intonation scales. This is the keystone, or the master
stroke of Johnstons system, which ties everything together: pitch and tempo are related
by tuning, essentially through the overtone/just rational system, pioneered by Henry
Cowell, from 1922.
Johnston does have an example of polymicrotonality: his Sonata for Microtonal
Piano, 1962-67.349 Johnston is serial in this piece, where there is a tuned piano spanning
7 octaves and encompassing 81 separate microtonal pitches, based on a 4:5:6 ratio of a
major triad.350 Similar to Hindemith, Johnston has a consonance continuum, of a very
large collection of intervals, due to an 81/octave scale. Additionally, there is an element
of polymicrotonality to this work, where 5-limit Just intonation and

347

Von Gunden, 1986. The Music of Ben Johnston. p. 140.


Gibbens, 1985, p. 1-12.
349
Ibid.
350
Ibid.
348

158

Ex. 4.15 Table showing Johnstons ratios to tempos.351


extended Pythagorean tuning coexist.352 In this elaborate pitch scheme, even the
Pythagorean comma, at 24 cents, is utilized, written as Db- -, vs C#++.353

351

Ibid. p. 73.
Ibid, p. 27.
353
Ibid. p. 38.
352

159

Ex. 4.16 Ben Johnstons tempo scale from Sonata for Microtonal Piano.354

Johnston, like Nancarrow, was influenced by both Ives and Cowell (via Harry
Partch), and used ratios from his tuning table to apply to note durations and eventually
tempi. The 2-dimensional lattice Johnston uses for Sonata for Microtonal Piano consists
of two arrays: one Pythagorean, based on the Major triad 4:5:6, represented as x, and y is
5 limit Just intonation. For future purposes, Johnston added a new dimension per newly
introduced prime number, with respect to Just tuning, for example, adding 7 would result
in a 3 dimensional lattice, 11, a four dimensional lattice, and so on. Thus, this particular
piece by Johnston is polymicrotonal; even if it is considered a Pythagorean gamut of 81
pitches, it is still relying on prime numbers 2, 3, and 5, meaning that there really are two

354

Ibid. p. 35.

160
systems at work: 5-limit just and Pythagorean tuning. Ex. 4.15 and 4.16 are both
Cowellss ideas applied, by correlating tempo to intervallic ratio.
Ultimately, Johnstons philosophy is about tuning purity, rather than
polymicrotonality. He maintains that scales depend upon cultural conditioning by
intervals of negligable amounts.355 Johnstons 53 tone tuning is based on interlocking
triads from Fokker and Euler via Pythagorean extensions.356 Johnstons lattices similarly
derive from Leonhard Eulers theories.
Johnston credits Schoenberg by stating that the emancipation of dissonance
helped extend the range of consonance.357 In league with Euler, Johnston throws out
octave equivalences and replaces it with other areas of consonance, such as fifths and
thirds. Ultimately, Johnston is triadic, and tonal, even if hyper microtonal, even using an
interval 2 cents wide, known as the schisma. Within Johnstons tonality, there are also
serial procedures, quotes, and Elliott Carters metric modulations, as seen in his Knocking
Piece. Like Ives, Johnston sees microtones as teasing the listener with a type of out of
tuneness.
For Johnston, laws of harmony and tempo come from ratios of overtones and
proportional tuning. Johnstons ratio based proportional organization creates complete
unity between pitch organization and rhythmic structure by using a tuning scheme in
ratios and then applying those particular ratios as multipliers to a general base tempo,

355

Johnston, 2006. Maximum Clarity and other Writings on Music, p. 13


Euler Fokker genera are based on prime numbers. Euler genera are generated from the prime factors 3
and 5, whereas an EulerFokker genus can have factors of 7 or any higher prime number. The degree is the
number of intervals which generate a genus. However, not all genera of the same degree have the same
number of tones since [XXXYYY] may also be notated [X xYy], "the degree is thus the sum of the
exponents," and the number of pitches is obtained adding one to each exponent and then multiplying those
((X+1)(Y+1)=Z), according to HuygensFokker.org.
357
Johnston, Maximum Clarity, p. 34.
356

161
creating a tempo scale, through which he used metric modulation from tempo to tempo.
Again, the work of Cowell, Carter, and Nancarrow comes to mind.
Amazing Grace, String Quartet No. 4, is also polymicrotonal since it uses both
Pythagorean and Just tuning. Johnston uses limits of Just intonation to create a family of
tuning lattices, which reflect each pieces tuning. Johnston has gone well beyond 7-limit

4.17 Johnstons meticulous nature and uncompromising attitude towards tuning.358

to include 11-limit Just intonation, creating gestalts, or triadic gestalts for the
comparison and inclusion of new tunings.359 The symbol denoted for the seventh from the
358

This is a tuning legend leaflet in all of Johnstons String Quartets.

162
above tuning legend from String Quartet No. 5 is borrowed from Adriaan Fokkers
adoption of Tartinis flat diesis symbol from geometry; Johnston uses it as a number 7
indicating the seventh harmonic.360 The thirteenth is self-explanatory.
According to Johnston, tonality is the organization of pitches by ratio.361 Tempo,
similarly is also the organization of rate of speed by ratio. Johnston also thinks that pitch
is tempo, or rather that tonality is merely a system of proportional tempi, where meter is
but a simplistic example. Therefore, a succession of pitches is a fluctuation of rapid
tempi, where the pitches themselves are hyper-rhythms, or tempi, beating so fast that they
become tones in themselves. It is basic acoustics, if we think about it, but we rarely do,
and it comes as a sudden shock when we realize that tempo equals pitch: polytempo
equals polymicrotonality. Polytempo is polymicrotonality. They are the same
phenomenon, but only at different relative speeds. Since pitch is rhythm, then does
matching them become a moot point, or a philosophical redundancy? It is akin to the
three states of matter: water, ice, vapor. All is water, yet we are trying to find a way to
relate one state to the next, as though we were ignorant of the fact that they are the same
thing.
William Sethares offers the perspective of tuning from a psychoacoustical point
of view. He maintains that pitch and rhythm may be related, but are perceived differently
by listeners. Pitch and rhythm may be the same phenomenon, but are seen initially
differently due to their disparate natures. Pitch and rhythm are seen as polar opposites in
the psyche in terms of human perception. In fact, they are polar opposites because rhythm

359

Ibid, p. 62-68.
Fokker D. A., 1949. Just Intonation. p.18. Also this is the Tartini sign for indicating the flat seventh
partial.
361
Johnston, 2006. Maximum Clarity. p. 99.
360

163
is pitch slowed down to 20 cycles per second, or less, which are perceived as beats, or
rhythm. 21 cycles or more fall within the domain of pitch, since the jnd (just noticeable
difference) of the periodicity is blurred. Sethares maintains that perception research and
psychology have proven that there is a limit to the discreteness of beats blurring into
pitch, and that is fundamentally based on human limitations. Similarly, humans cannot
hear beyond 20,000 cycles per second, as that is too far out of our ciliac nerve range in
our inner ears.362
According to Johnston, the translation of techniques of rhythmic organization
from one time scale to another is characteristic of contemporary composition.363 Tonality
and harmonic thinking imply microtonal pitch distinctions, and it is due to the
sumpremacy of the earIves, Aristoxenus,Varse, and Xenakis all agree. Ben Johnston,
for instance, is an example of a just intonation composer who translates his ratios of pitch
intervals into tempo relationships, but only in terms of tempo modulations, and not
polytempo. Just intonation is also not polymicrotonal, since it is a singular system. Just
can, however, be divided into subsets of competing limits, e.g. 5-limit vs. 7-limit, just as
just intonation lattices of Euler-Fokker elucidate. Nevertheless, these are only extensions
of one type of system, called just intonation.
Elsewhere in Ben Johnstons oeuvre, relationships between pitch and tempo
abound. String Quartet No. 2 features a 3:2 rhythm congruent with the literal perfect
fifth, while the 5:4 Major third equates to a 5:4 rhythm, as well as tempos following the
same ratio patterns. In order to make logic this strict for each piece, Johnston spends a
great deal of time composing them: I work very slowly, with much care and

362
363

Sethares. 1998. Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale. Forward, and p. 11.


Johnston, Maximum Clarity, p. 97-100.

164
computation.364 Johnston also believes that any interval is possible,365 which increases
the likelihood of the potential for polymicrotonality as a new genre of music.
In String Quartet No. 5, 1979, Johnston uses the following ratios: 3:2, 4:3, 5:4,
and 6:4 both in intervallic and rhythmic acuity. There is polytempo, beginning on page
15, in the last measure and continuing for 6 measures with the following scheme: violin I,
at 160 BPM, in 4/4, violin II at 135 BPM, in 9/8, viola at 150 BPM, in 5/4, and the cello
at 120 BPM, in 4/4. All derive structurally from the following chord: tonic doubled, Just
major third, and a Pythagorean major second (Please see Ex. 4.18). Example 4.15 shows
explicit polytempo, both in written instructions and in time signatures. The tempos are a
result of multiplying the fundamental tempo, by the just ratio tunings, 160, 135, 150, and
120 beats per minute. This authors written notes indicate the characteristic intervals of
the pitch content of the measure, 16/15, and 9/8, which translate to notes B and D.

364
365

Ibid. p. 199.
Von Gunden, 1986, p. 60.

165

4.18 Ben Johnstons String Quartet No. 5 and polytempo.

166
CHAPTER 5:
THE PROGENITOR
CHARLES IVESS UNIVERSE SYMPHONY AND ITS LEGACY: POLYTEMPIC
POLYMICROTONAL ART MUSIC
Larry Austin technically was the first person to put together Ivess Universe
Symphony, from 1974 to 1993. Austins realization was premiered by conductor Gerhard
Samuel and the Cincinnati Philharmonica, combined with the Cincinnati Conservatorys
Percussion Ensemble, in 1993.366
Austin maintains that the Universe Symphony was Ivess largest and most
compelling and visionary work. That opinion seems to be held by many, including
Johnny Reinhard, who also realized Ivess Universe Symphony a few years later.
Austin divided the Universe Symphony into four parts: the Life Pulse Prelude
orchestra, the Heavens orchestra (itself in four parts), Rock Formation orchestra, and the
Earth orchestra. All orchestras follow essentially one tempo, as indicated in Ex. 5.1.

366

Lambert, 1997. Ives Studies. p. 179.

167

Ex. 5.1 Larry Austins arrangement of Ivess Universe Symphony.367


Although Austin does a fantastic job with respect to the LPP, or Life Pulse
Prelude, Ivess Basic Unit percussion orchestra, with all of its ratios in the percussion,
Austin did not pick up on the extended Pythagorean tuning indicated in Ivess score by
deliberate enharmonic notation, where D#, for example, does not equal Eb (please see
below). Nor does Austin incorporate eighth tones, also implied in Ivess score (please see
below). Austin does incorporate a perfectly tuned overtone machine368 in his section B.
Austins section B also introduces 12 violins tuned in quartertones, a stretched octave

367
368

Ibid. p. 211.
Ibid. p. 206.

168
scale, equal tempered tunings (unspecified), and the just/overtone tuned machine.369
This authors reason for preferring Reinhards realization, is that the arrangements of his
Heavens and Earth orchestras feature the various tunings much more clearly. Reinhard
also discusses in much more detail the nature of the polymicrotonality, and the specifics
in terms of cent values. Another reason I personally prefer Reinhards realization is the
polytempo nature of his particular realization, where three, rather than four, orchestras
are in three different tempos, as will be explained below.
For this authors intents and purposes of this paper, it was more logical for me to
choose Reinhards version over Austins without any bias towards either gentlemans
aesthetic, but only for helping me to establish this authors aesthetic of combining both
polytempo with polymicrotonality, which is much more explicit in the Reinhard version.

5.1 Johnny Reinhards Universe Symphony Realization


Microtones are an Ives family tradition.370 George Ives, Charless father, is
effectively Americas first potential microtonalist. A naturalist, obsessed with bells and
natural sonorities and figuring out pitches and chords found in the real world. George
opened up Charless mind to allow him in becoming the great pioneer he was.371
George Ives gave Charles several ideas: small intervals on slide cornet, water
filled glasses for eighth tones (commas), an overtone piano, non-octave scales, and
makeshift monochords with weights, for tuning in just intonationa contraption made

369

Ibid.
Reinhard, The Ives Universe: a symphonic odyssey, 2004, p. 99.
371
Burkholder, 1983. The Evolution of Charles Ivess Music.
370

169
from a clothes press and violin strings.372 Ives later employed these experiments in his
Universe Symphony, the score of which includes a just intonation machine and a justly
tuned harp as well. Why cant the ear learn 100 other intervals if it wants to try? was a
question Ives took seriously, in true trail-blazing fashion.373
Ivess experimentation led to non-octave scales, Pythagorean tuning, and eighth
tone tuning, not to mention standard quartertones. Ives also possessed a keen interest in
inharmonic timbres including non-tuned percussion and metallic sounds such as anvils
and brake pads. These sounds represent his adopted family interest in representing the
natural world and its infinite continuum in music. Ivess open-minded approach is again
summarized by his whimsical, yet vitriolic, personal expressions: Why tonality should
be thrown out? I cant see. Why tonality should be kept? I cant see. It depends as clothes
upon the thermometeron what one is trying to do. 374
Ives agreed with John Cornelius Griggs: The tempered system is not conducive
to correct and vigorous musical thinking, as has been the violin and voice training of
earlier centuries.375
It was also through his father that Charles came into possession of Helmholtzs
On the Sensations of Tones, which argues for the case of extended Pythagorean tuning.
Helmholtz had, in fact, devised his own notation, which Ives borrowed (or rather coopted). Alexander Ellis, through his attitude of questioning, had opened the door for
young Charles about the speculation of notation and the possible alternatives of tuning.376

372

Ibid.
Ibid., p. 102.
374
Taruskin, 2000, p. 292.
375
Op. cit. p. 103.
376
Ibid.
373

170
Just as Helmholtz scaled the Pythagorean spiral of fifths to 26, thus avoiding
enharmonic tones, Ives used extended Pythagorean tuning to 21 pitches in the Universe
Symphony, so that all enharmonic equivalences would be absent: A-Bb-A#-Cb-B-E-B#Db-C#-D-Eb-D#-Fb-E-F-E#-Gb-F#-G-Ab-and G# correspond to: 0-90-114-180-204-294318-384-408-498-588-612-678-702-792-816-892-906-996-1086-1110 cents.377 Ives also
did not favor small super-particular ratio consonances, and liked harsher dissonances
from equal divisions of the octave and larger ratiosif they hear anything but do-misol, or a near cousin, they have to be carried out on a stretcher. 378 (Please see Ex. 5)
Ivess acoustical plan is based on fifths and octaves, and reinstates the Pythagorean major
third at 408 cents. Ives liked to poke fun at the temperament limitations of the piano (and
12 tone equal temperament in general) by breaking out of the harmonic series by
featuring competing tunings: Pythagorean, Just, quartertones, and eighth tones.379
In the Universe Symphony, at measure 78, there is a D flat and F# in the cellos,
and a B in the double bass. This chord is spelled purposefully, as it otherwise would have
been re-spelled with C#, or perhaps, G flat. The B-D flat interval is 180 cents (two
limmas, if we are talking Pythagorean terminology) and the D flat to F# is 522 cents, a bit
larger than a perfect fourth, showing Ivess penchant for dissonance. The F flat and E
together in the Orchestra Unite, measure 112, shows an intervallic difference of a comma,
or 22 cents, while there is a B flat-C flat in measure 224, showing a difference of 90
cents, a limma. All these reveal the nature of Pythagorean tuning.
Charles Boatwright once said that in the last analysis, finer distinctions between
pitches rests on Charless ear, (reminiscent of Aristoxenus) in fact, on the judgment of
377

Reinhard, p.103.
Ibid, p. 104.
379
Ibid, p. 105.
378

171
his ear, and in his case a very sharp ear. 380 Intonation is fully tied in with Ivess higher
level of thought, where the Universe Symphony represents Ivess physical manifestations
of the possibilities of the sounds of nature.

380

Ibid, p. 110.

172

Ex. 5.1.1 The legend from Ivess Universe Symphony. (above)

173

Ex. 5.1.2 Polymicrotonality in Ivess Universe Symphony.

174

In Prelude 3 of the Universe Symphony, there are 24 quartertone chords, but the
tonality is also modulated to quartertone tonality, a brief respite from the overall extended
Pythagorean tonality underlying the work. The Wusta Zal-Zal, named for a dark ages
Middle Eastern music theorist, comes to mind, at 350 cents, representing the influence of
quartertones in early Arabic maqam, and that quartertone tonality has existed
independently from 12TET, Pythagorean, just, and meantone. The Wusta Zal-Zal is the
neutral third that exists as the midpoint between the classic tunings of the just major and
minor third, between 316 to 386 cents, used by Persian and Arabic musicians. 381
Ives tuned the harp to Just intonation, which improvises, alongside the Just
intonation machine (Ex. 5.2), and the trumpets are tuned to eighth tones, reminiscent of
Georges influence on his slide cornet. According to Joe Monzo, Ives created a nonoctave stretched scale in eighth tones, of seven pitches: C-G-E 1/8th -B 1/8th -E
1/8th -D- and A 1/8th, which perform a free cadenza for the percussion entrance at
measure 131. (Ex. 5.2)382 In fact, the very first measure of the Universe Symphony
features an E-A#- E chord, where the E-A# tritone is 25 cents larger, an eighth tone,
and the A#-E is 25 cents smaller, also an eighth tone. The polymicrotonal intent is
evident from the beginning of the work.
In terms of tempo, the Universe Symphony is divided into three strata: the Basic
Unit, at 16 seconds, or roughly the metronome marking of 15, an Orchestral Unit of
30BPM, and the Earth Orchestra, and the Heavens Unit, at 45 beats per minute. The
381
382

Wright, 1978, p. 41.


Ives, 1911-1926. Universe Symphony: realized by Johnny Reinhard, 1993-1996.

175
three divisions of the orchestra represent possibly the trinity, but more concretely, the
Harmonic Series, where the bottom strata, the Basic Unit, is composed entirely of
percussion and inharmonics and is itself divided into 25 layers of polyrhythms, from
prime numbers up to 43 (Please see Ex. 5.1.3). The three tempi coincide at measure 27,
Ex. 5.1.4, showing Ivess masterstroke and his innovation in terms of vision and concrete
composition.
Actually, there really is an additional microtonal resource at work in Ivess
Universe Symphony: inharmonicity. At measure 137, there is an instruction for
percussion to play on a marble surface, along with the Just intonation machine. Since Ives
is already exploring the limits of tuning, it also appears that he was also exploring tuning
in terms of timbre, as well (Please see Ex. 5.1.5).
Measure 199 is the point where polymicrotonality begins, as quartertones are
played in the brass while the orchestra plays in Pythagorean tuning. It is not the case that
polymicrotonality is an isolated effect. The tonality of the work reduces to a simple
layer of tuning: there are mixtures of tunings and there is a deliberate pairing of tunings
within each orchestral division.
The ending of the Universe Symphony reveals distinctly the Pythagorean
influence of the work as the last chord is spaced on fifths, C-D-A-E-B. As mentioned
earlier, this paper is not an analysis of form or harmony, but the tonal plan behind the
Universe Symphony is also multileveled. Pythagorean tuning focuses on the fifths
relationships, the just intonation machine and harp focus on improvisation, the eighth
tones are featured linearly in the trumpets, in particular, and the quartertones are chordal,
in texture, and in harmony. There is a conflation and melding of harmonic purpose within

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each tuning that is sculpted out of the density with rhythmically identifiable motives and
register.

Ex. 5.1.3 Ivess Universe Symphony showing the polyrhythmic divisions.

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Ex. 5.1.4 The polytempi of the Universe Symphony.

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Ex. 5.1.5 An example of Just intonation in the Universe Symphony.

The Heavens Orchestra, the highest of the three divisions, features nine flutes,
glockenspiel, and other high-frequency timbres, revealing further the overall overtone

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series plan in Ivess conception. The fixed register of frequency is counterbalanced by the
freedom of the improvisation of the harp and just intonation machine.
The harmony can be said to be ultra-chromatic, or polymicrochromatic, where
one can see sets of intervallic cells based on (01). The orchestra itself is sub-grouped into
chamber ensembles for the convenience of the hemiola (3:2) tempo relationship. The
Basic Unit, composed of percussion, expands and contracts, much like modern theories
of cosmology, and is represented by 25 layers of polyrythmic percussion, like small
planets cycling a star, or even stars encircling a black hole.
The Heavens Orchestra, the highest registrally and timbrally, as well as the fastest
moving tempo at 45 beats per minute, has five groups of rhythmic subdivisions, all in
turn subdivided into small chamber ensembles: group one moves in half-note triplets and
has 3 flutes, 3 violins and a viola; group two moves in common time and is composed of
2 violins, 2 violas, and one flute; group three moves in quintuplet rhythmic subdivisions
and has 3 flutes and 2 violins; group four is a general movement of septuplets by any
instrument, and group five is composed of the glockenspiel and celeste. All these timbres
represent the highest overtones possible as they reach into Heaven. Ives called these
cloud shapes, where each group is a particular code that represents a chordal
counterpoint.383
Is there an actual correspondence between pitch and rhythm in Ivess Universe?
In other words, if we find triplets, are they related to the perfect fifth, as the 3:2 ratio
relates to the fifth in the harmonic series, or is there, per chance, an elaborate system for
pairing pitch to rhythm, or tempo, in Ivess Universe Symphony? No, there is not;
however, the tempo relationships are differentiated more by texture and timbre than by
383

Reinhard, 2004. The Ives Universe: a symphonic odyssey. p 38.

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pitch, whereby there is similarly no system at work. There are only a few generalizations
based on circumspect analysis: the Basic Unit consists of percussion, mostly non-pitched
and metallic sounds, but does have a hierarchical rhythmic structure within itself; the
Earth Orchestra, the middle level tempo moving at 30 BPM., has mid-ranged and low
frequency instruments; and the Heavens Orchestra, the highest ranged frequency division,
has the faster moving elements composed of five subgroups, as discussed previously.
There is no correlation between polymicrotonality and polytempo, even though they both
coexist within this one work, albeit separately. Ives appeared to be working more in the
direction of timbre towards the end of his compositional career.
Example 5.1.6 shows the minutiae of the divisions of pulse time by Ivess Basic
Unit of 16 seconds, with rhythmic divisions from 1 through 19, 21, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41,
and 43, mostly prime numbers, totaling 25 divisions of the 8/4 double whole note.
There are ten cycles of the expansion and contraction of this ensemble,
representing the pulse of the cosmos. It is also the articulated surface of the Universe
Symphony under which there still operate three divisions of structural tempo, from 45, 30,
to 15 BPM, showing both 2:1 and 3:2 ratios, which happen to be the two intervallically
significant structural scaffolding underneath the work.
There is a recording of the Universe Symphony, on The Stereo Societys label, from
2005, recorded by James Rosenthal and Mike Thorne. Conducted by Johnny Reinhard,
and performed by the American Festival of Microtonal Music Orchestra, it spans an hour
and five minutes in length.384
Please note Ex. 5.1.7, an original page from Ivess own hand-writing, showing the
precarious nature both Reinhard and Austin were placed in. Ives is known for his bad
384

Universe Symphony, 2005, CD liner notes.

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hand-writing. The challenge to pick up his work where he left off, was steep; in addition
to the complexity of Ivess musical architecture, there was the difficulty in deciphering
the notes themselves.

182

Ex. 5.1.6 This authors notes on the exact percussion and rhythmic subdivisions in the
Basic Unit.

183

Ex. 5.1.7 Original sketch from Ivess Universe Symphony.385

385

Austin, p. 226.

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5.2 IVESS LEGACY: POLYTEMPIC POLYMICROTONAL ART MUSIC


The possibility of this notion of polytempic polymicrotonality has been hinted in
music in the examples provided in this paper. This author inquired about music in
different tunings from several composers and musicians who thought the idea absurd.
After researching the internet for dissertations, theses, and other research papers on the
subject, Johnny Reinhard, a fierce polymicrotonal warrior in New York, appeared on the
internet, through whom he discovered Ivess Universe Symphony. An open and unbiased
mind capable of connecting ideas in new ways is helpful when considering something
this far outside the box of the status quo. Polytempo is not new anymore, but
polymicrotonality is still an outlandish concept, and when coupled with a one to one
corresponding tempo, or rhythmic reassignment, there seems to be a wall, conceptually,
into which musicians collide.
After discussing various theories and methods of combining pitch and rhythm
through the ages, the immensity of the infinite possibilities of music, when all is said and
done, is staggering. There is a similarity that occurs in art and culture that also occurs in
the individual: growth. There are times in history where different ideas of tuning have
overlapped, competing for supremacy, at a point in time where one tuning system was
thought to be the way music ought to be, in direct violation of the thoughts of the Greeks
and of Anaximander. This same thing occurs in humans unconsciously, when opposing
aspects of the personality compete for dominance, when ultimately one or the other wins
out. This authors point is that when Ives deliberately put together four different tuning
systems, he did so consciously, not out of overlapping tuning philosophies, as we have

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seen, particularly in the middle ages and Renaissance, and even the Baroque. Yet, all
along, composers were becoming more aware of tuning differences as aesthetical and that
at some point they could be used together in an amalgamation, or used simultaneously.
This is akin to an individual, over time, accepting and coming to terms consciously with
their inner aspects that once were so secret and hidden, but through constant reworking,
came to light and became consciously integrated with the personality. This is the same as
art music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries coming consciously to the point
where tuning is not so dark and mysterious, but can be integrated, amalgamated, and used
in a deliberate, conscious, and artistic way. This is essentially what this author is arguing
for. He believes that setting each part in a different tuning in a separate tempo is a similar
process of using relief in art, by elevating a theme off and above the canvas and framing
each part contextually in the ultimate polyphonic texture, polytempic polymicrotonality.

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5.3 POLYMICROTONAL NOTATION TECHNIQUES


This author has had ideas with respect to notating multiple systems of tuning and
temperament by fattening the staff and allowing a visual representation of the microtonal
pitch without the encumbrances of additional accidental notation. As microtonal systems
become smaller, and more varied, the need for accidentals increases, forcing the
performer to learn whole sets of symbols for each piece. This is burdensome and can
easily deter performers from even considering microtonal works. But perhaps a new staff
can offer a solution, rather than additional microtonal symbols, which also inadvertently
lengthen the measure, particularly when there are complex rhythms at the 32nd-note level,
which can draw a measure out to a full page. A visually based fattened staff approach,
eliminating all microtonal symbols, could be a solution to this problem and provide more
visual continuity with respect to score reading (Please see Ex. 5.3.3, 5.3.4, and 5.3.5).
One can argue that learning a new staff is also asking the performer to learn new
nomenclature, too, but far less when dealing with polymicrotonal systems and their huge
concomitant array of accidentals that clutter up the line.
As a futher demonstration of this new proposal, this authors piece Jove Defeats
Saturn, for polymicrotonal saxophone solo (Ex. 5.3.2-5.3.5), was written using this new
staff method. Nathan Mandel, the saxophonist, was the first person to try out this authors
new system. He had some corrections for me and helped me by redrawing the staff larger
and with greater clarity. There was to be no confusion to identifying any pitch laying
anywhere in the staff, even without the accidentals. The lines flowed visually. Nathan is
now willing to use this system and has helped me to edit and improve the system.

187
Another more practical way for polymicrotonal notation is to simply use what
symbols we have, the quartertone symbol, but to also combine them with cent numbers
above the note in question. Therefore numbering from 0-49 cents, since 50 cents is the
quartertone, would allow perfect precision. This technique is used by Johnny Reinhard
and has proven to work for him and the AFMM for a number of years.
Either method cuts down on the plethora of microtonal symbols, which have
appeared in many treatises but have proven incomprehensible. As a polymicrotonal
composer, this author wants people to want to play his music, where fancy and extensive
microtonal symbols seem a bit contrived and elitist, not to mention difficult to memorize.
Fattening the staff, an idea this author picked up from artist Agnes Martins artwork,
seems the most beneficial in the long run, but there are problems to work out, such as
accurately identifying the pitch at first sight by definitively allocating the spaces, lines,
dashed lines and borders to gradations of pitch. As mentioned earlier, this author
currently has a piece for polymicrotonal solo saxophone, Jove Defeats Saturn, in 12, 19,
31, and 53TET, utilizing fattened staves in different colors, for the enhancement of visual
acuity, which thus far has proved better than 51% advocacy, which means in its test run
it can be useful after making edits and adjustments. One of the ways Nathan Mandel
improved this authors Poly staff, was to actually draw it larger, with more clearly
defined edges to the colors and dashed lines in the center of the spaces for the natural
pitch. The staff remains the standard EGBDF, but expanded for visual acuity.
(continued below. please see Ex. 5.3.1)

188

Ex. 5.3.1 An example of artist Agnes Martins work that inspired me to incorporate larger
staff systems that help reduce linear space cluttered up by unlimited microtonal
symbols.386

386

Agnes Martin, Canadian artist, b. 1912, http://www.abstractart.com/abstraction/l3_more_artists/ma57a_agnes_martin.html.

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Ex. 5.3.2 Jove Defeats Saturn legend with color scheme for different tunings.

In Ex. 5.3.2, the staves are changed, rather than the inclusion of excessive
microtonal symbols that will ultimately conflict with each other for the performer, so I
chose to by-pass microtonal symbols and fatten the staff, instead. Color codes drape the
staves of different tunings as the main visual indication of a tuning change.

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Ex. 5.3.3 Section B of the rondo form Jove Defeats Saturn in 19TET.

Ex. 5.3.3 is the B section of Jove and is color coded in pink highlight to designate
the tuning system of 19TET. The colors do not indicate synesthesia, but are randomly
chosen from any pack of highlighters for study purposes. The legend, Ex. 5.3.2, shows
clearly which shade of pitch from each system lies in its delineated area of the staff. The
staff is kept at the common practice EGBDF, so the basic shape remains the same for
familiarity.

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Ex. 5.3.4 Section C of Jove, in 31TET.

Ex. 5.3.4 is color coded blue for 31TET and its shades of pitches are also found in
the legend. This fattening of the staves will accommodate a full 31-note vertical chord,
but not much more, depending on how thick the staves are drawn. The linear flow is kept
as horizontal distances are minimized by the absence of extraneous and confusing
microtonal accidentals. As a very rhythmic composer, I find that the visual impact of the
line maintains its integrity, instead of being haplessly pulled across the page by the clutter
of accidentals.

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Ex. 5.3.5 Section D of Jove, in 53TET, but in a restricted pitch set spanning a perfect
fourth tetrachord.

Ex. 5.3.5 is color coded in orange, for 53TET, which is not fully employed. Only
a small set is used form the gamut of pitches in 53, encompassing a set of 21 pitches.
Again, the horizontal space is saved and the rhythmic linearity and continuity is kept
intact, due to the lack of excessive symbols.
This authors string quartet Hypercube (2012) uses Reinhards system of
numerical cents above the note and a written out legend showing the pitch to cents
relationship (Please see Ex. 5.5.1-5.5.2). I chose to use both systems of polymicrotonal
pitch notation in order to investigate the expediency of each system.
One drawback to the fat staff technique is that it must be composed free-hand,
since a professional notation software program will not be able to duplicate it. On the
other hand, composers now-a-days are falling into the habit of composing for the notation
program, and not for themselves. In other words, the limitations of Finale and Sibelius
are beginning to restrict composers and dictate their terms and limitations onto the
creative process. Free hand composition is probably something that needs to return.

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The open-source free ware MuseScore is probably the only graphical notation
program in existence that can allow any tuning system by way of plug-ins, aside from
Lilypond, or other programming language-based music notation software.387 But in terms
of employing polytempo, with different measure lengths, there are no acceptable
professional notation programs capable of achieving this.

5.4 POLYTEMPO NOTATION, APPROACH, AND ORGANIZATION


Though there is no particular notational technique over and beyond what is
currently examined in this document, there is an approach that needs to be discussed.
Polytempo can be explicitly notated by a metronome marking, or it can be implied within
the score itself. Both Nancarrow and Ives provide examples of this. Nevertheless, there is
the whole notion of what polytempo really means, in the deeper sense, with respect to
composition.
For this author, polytempo is the furtherance of part identity coming alive within
the scope of a musical work. By coming alive, the part develops its own identity, as in
Carters polyrhythmic structures that are also polytempic (Third String Quartet), but it
can also develop its own tempo, or life, independent and intrinsically related to the piece
from which it grows. Polytempo is akin to the techniques of high relief in densely textural
artwork, such as Rembrandts impasto technique, which is stratified above the twodimensional canvas to project a three-dimensional character and play of light.
387

MuseScore, 2012, http://musescore.org. (Accessed 11/11/11).

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One can begin by setting, or framing, different polyrhythmic motives in different
time signatures with a common downbeat which then, over time, develop their own
intrinsic tempi which then begin to give life to the musical voice in question, where it
can then do whatever it wants to do, as it has established its own identity.
The error Cowell encountered in the clumsy recurrent downbeat alignments of his
polymeter ideas can be overcome by skillful part writing (which is among the primary
values in the art of composition). Does not 4/4 time, similarly, have downbeat
convergence points every four beats, and havent composers adapted to writing
downbeatless music that perpetuates momentum and avoids the banal nature of the
absence of surprise? Then how is this any different, unless one is expecting the differing
time signatures to compose in lieu of them, instead of the composer creating within and
without them? Of course it is always possible for music in 4/4 to be free as well, and
there are many examples of it. Free Jazz, for example, is an excellent illustration of that.
The point is to not allow boredom to manifest. Nevertheless, it is the will and artifice of
the composer that makes the difference, which when applying polytempo, can push the
art of polyphony even further and by developing truly independent characters in the
narrative of time and music.
Again, notation programs preclude the use of competing tempi and meter, so it is
an arduous task to overcome via commercial notation programs. One must go into the
staff and discontinue meter signatures and write them in by special time consuming
procedures within the program, as in Finale, for example. Todays reality is that scores
must be printed, and unless one has fantastic drawing skills, scores must be processed and

195
printed by computer, as most of us act as our own publishers and editors in this day and
age.
Tempo organization strategies, however, can stem from Cowells correspondence
alluding to the overtone series with tempo ratios equating to the overtone series, as has
been demonstrated by Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Ben Johnston, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and
Conlon Nancarrow. Tempo canons, based on the pitch structure, can provide cohesion
and logic to the piece overall. One can invent a series of different tunings to which,
numerically, tempi can be ascribed, such as a four-voice quartet, which can be set in the
equal temperaments of 12, 19, 31, and 53 tones per octave with corresponding tempi at
either exact numerical values, or their multiples, such as 144, 57, 93, and 53 BPM,
respectively. Even if there is some arbitrariness in choosing these musical parameters,
does that negate the value of the work, particularly if the uncertainty is drastically
reduced by direct mathematical relationships?
There can also be perfectly exact relationships between pitch and rhythm, as
described earlier in this paper, where rhythms multiplied by certain constants will yield
the pitch content, showing the very same acoustical phenomenon, yet, this will lead to the
type of connect-the-dots integral serialistic compositional techniques that deprive any
intuition, choice, and thought. Since 1950, choice has been equated with a lack of logical
rigor; in other words, having aesthetic druthers is a bad thing. Nevertheless, even Xenakis
would interrupt his own processes of stochastic music and interject his own musical
aesthetic in his works and he did not deny that, either.
Both Nancarrow and Carter would draw out their large scale tempos onto either
piano rolls, or graph paper, in order to give a physical perspective on the scale of the

196
relationships. The exact mathematical objectification of numbers gives solid scaffolding
of the pure structure of the work.

5.5 POLYMICROTONAL PITCH ORGANIZATION AND FORM


In considering pitch organizational methods, John Chalmers has suggested the
construction of new genera by using the CI, the characteristic interval, which can vary
from 13/10, at 454 cents, to 10/9, at 182 cents, yielding approximately 73 different
classes of CIs.388 Also, as the Greeks employed katapyknosis, which is the procedure of
linear division, composers can further produce intervals of ever diminishing size, in the
spirit of Aristoxenus.
David Doty, similarly, has suggested using tetrachords spanning the perfect
fourth, as the Greeks did, as a method of organization for microtonal pitches. Ben
Johnston has used Alexander Elliss duodenal method of dimensional grids for each
prime number in constructing just intoned systems, leading to vast architectural lattices,
such as those by Erv Wilson.389
Enrique Moreno and Easley Blackwood have used the process of equally dividing
the whole tone into a continuum of equal tempered infinitude, akin to what Aristoxenus
may have thought had he lived today. Also, the division of pitch materials into octave and
non-octave equivalents can be another area of pitch polarity. Xenakis used sieves and
stochastic methods to generate pitch materials and to order them.

388
389

Chalmers, 1993. p. 25.


Doty, 1993, p. 30.

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The best way to approach polymicrotonality is to investigate the exact cents of
each tuning system and make a diagram about near unities between pitches within 10
cents, for modulation purposes. For large systems, cutting down the materials into
manageable sets, or cells, seems only common sense. Josef Strauss book on atonal
theory is an excellent resource for investigating music created by way of pitch sets, which
would work quite well in polymicrotonality.
Tetrachordal approaches are already within this realm of organization, so having
boundaries of a particular interval within which to work is a good start. One of the
reasons this paper dwells a good deal on previous historical theory, such as the Greek
genera, is that that information can serve as case histories, providing much needed
tutorials for the newly initiated.
Just as in Greek tetrachords, the bounded or fixed intervals can serve as tonic or
convenient reference points, or can even be considered a microtonal centricity. Each
tuning, or temperament, in a polymicrotonal work can have its own tonic, or tonus. One
could even use chance operations to choose notes randomly from many different tuning
systems, to employ in tetrachords, pentachords, or any interval, or set number one wishes.
The doors are wide open.
Below, in Ex. 5.5.1 and 5.5.2, one can utilize boundaries and tempo
differentiation with respect to pitch organization.

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Ex. 5.5.1 Legend from this authors polytempic polymicrotonal string quartet Hypercube.

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In Ex. 5.5.1, there are four temperaments. They are temperaments, and not
tunings, due to the fact that the fifths are tempered down by a few cents, so they are not
pure. I am careful to introduce this mixed temperamental, and polymicrotonal, piece by
allowing the 12TET first violin to serve as the lead instrument using the foundation
tempo, set to 96 beats per minute. Each part of the string quartet has its own tuning,
tempo, and behavior, so that when the texture is at its thickest and most dense, the parts
can still be perceived.

200

Ex. 5.5.2 First page from Hypercube,in four temperaments and four tempos.

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5.6 COMPOSITIONAL RESOURCES: SCALE AND TUNING RESOURCES
AND COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR THE COMPOSITION OF POLYTEMPIC
POLYMICROTONAL MUSIC
We live in the computer age; all things seem possible with respect to tricky
performance issues, such as tuning and rhythm. Some of us are not computer savvy, with
respect to pure computer programming, yet there is software that can help with the
production and notation of polymicrotonality. As far as polytempo, there are really not
many programs that can do this, in terms of sequencing due to the availability of only a
singular global tempo. Due to this limitation in the software, composers would have to
map out the tempo relationships vis--vis a global tempo separately on scratch paper. In a
way this limitation defeats the whole purpose. The ultimate timeline, of course, is time
itself, set to 60 beats to the minute.
MuseScore, an open-source music notation program free to the public, features
downloadable plugins that can work with the minutiae of microtonal pitches. There is
also a playback function for auditioning the sound, which is very important. Open-source
software is Scala, from the Huygens-Fokker organization.390 Scala has a bank of literally
hundreds of tunings that can be imported to any program, for midi tuning playback, and
is perfect for polymicrotonal usage. One can store, edit, compare, build, analyze, and
convert tuning for midi instruments, both hardware and software.391
Old synthesizers are an excellent source for polymicrotonal music. E-mu
synthesizers, for example, feature five built-in tunings, 12TET, Just, Pelog/Slendro,
Valotti, and 19-tone meantone temperament. Each channel, 1-16, can be programmed to

390
391

Scala, 2011.
Ibid.

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have its own individual tuning, not to mention the user tuning, which can be saved to
RAM.392
This authors intent, though, for polytempic polymicrotonal music, is for acoustic
instruments and the invitation, or cajoling, of instrumentalists to expand their extended
technical means by learning to produce microtones of a great many shades. This authors
piece Saturn Defeats Jove features 12, 19, 31, and 53TET for the saxophone family, for
solo performer. Nathan Mandel, who premiered the work, agreed to work with me in the
development of new fingerings to achieve the tunings. As a composer, one must be more
than willing to admit faults and learn to overcome obstacles to this new music by learning
from the players and their instruments, since they are the true source of all knowledge
concerning orchestration. The composer must have humility, and be willing to make
changes, and to admit when things do not work out favorably.

In terms of scalar resources, Lydia Ayerss Exploring Microtonal Tunings: A


Kaleidoscope of Extended Just Tunings and Their Compositional Applications, Vols. I
and II, 1994, is a magnificent compendium of scales, tunings, and documentation for
anyone interested in microtonality. Volume II contains a collection of systems, scales,
and tools from around the world, including Javanese Gamelan, and the Indian Shruti
system, for composers to discover, in cents, the exact nature of these exotic tunings.393
O. Wrights treatise The Modal System of Arab and Persian Music, A.D. 12501300, 1978, is also a useful compendium of modal maqam, from tetrachords, to

392

E-mu Corporation, Scotts Valley, CA, 1991.


Ayers, Exploring Microtonal Tunings: a kaleidoscope of extended just tunings and their compositional
applications, Vol. I, 1994.

393

203
octachords, comprised of Safi al-dins classifications of 84 modes, and their notation.
There is also Qutb al-dins compendium, based on combinations of modes.394

394

Wright, 1978.

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CHAPTER 6:
CONCLUSION
Much material has been covered in this thesis. The reason for this is because this
author wanted to show that microtonality, and possibly polymicrotonality has been a
normal state of affairs since ancient Greek music. The tetrachords made their way into
Europe during the dark ages, and into the middle ages. The Greek humanist revival in the
Renaissance brought back the Greek genera again, where composers such as Vicentino,
Gesualdo, and even Claude le Jeune,395 engaged in Greek humanism, and the three
genera, including the enharmonic genus and its quartertones.
Werckmeister and Bach and the Thuringians, who preferred their unequal tunings,
lived in a time when there were approximately 150 differing meantone tempered tunings,
where there was probably some overlap, or mixing. This mixing could have resulted in
potential microtonal shades of different tunings by different musicians resulting in
inadvertent polymicrotonality in performance practice.
The twentieth century had its own Greek revivalism, from the work of John
Chalmers, and Kathleen Schlesinger, to David Doty, all incorporating aspects of Greek
tuning theories in the Greek revivalism of the current times. Ives, too, by his discovery of
Elliss translation of Helmholtzs magnificent treatise On the Sensations of Tone, had
been influenced by extended Pythagorean tuning, as explored extensively in that book.
Ivess Universe Symphony, and its mix of tunings and temperaments, as shown by
Reinhard, and Austin, have led this author into a potentially new paradigm. A paradigm
that is ready to be accepted because musical consciousness has risen to it. It has pointed
to it in order to embrace it. Musicians can hear it.
395

The New Grove, 2000. Vol. 14. p. 532.

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What is tuning? Tuning is a set of intonations for intervals or pitch classes,
established by a culture, a group, or a composer. Tuning includes sub-systems and
modes, or sub-sets, of a gamut, or a palette of pitches, which are scales extracted from the
tuning system. There are five constraints that must be adhered to with respect to scalar
structure: pitch sets of a fixed number, the repetition factor (such as the octave), intervals,
hierarchy, and key, or centricity.396 Some tunings have stretched octaves with no octave
equivalence, such as Gamelan tuning. Some will say that a tuning is only that which is
pure as it is derived either by an a priori mathematical law, or from the overtone series of
nature. These two conditions yield both Pythagorean tuning and unlimited ratio overtone
tuning, both being untempered. Temperament is about the manipulation of intervallic
integrity so as to fit into the mold of the aforementioned scale definition of octave
equivalence, for identity. Cultural considerations have also determined tuning around the
world for centuries.
What is polymicrotonality? Polymicrotonality is akin to an omnivorous approach
to the pitch gamut, by incorporating all systems. Polymicrotonality has the potential to be
universal. Polymicrotonality, however is not commonplace, and this is one of this
authors key points. Being out of tune by way of error is absolutely not the same as
polymicrotonality and can never be construed as such. One must be able to deliberately
play and hear pitches to the nearest 10 cents or better. The schisma is 2 cents wide, and
Ben Johnston allowed this narrow interval into his music. This false notion of
polymicrotonality precludes high school bands and orchestral warm-ups, or any other
such amateurish endeavor. Polymicrotonality and the information in this document

396

Polansky, 2009. A Mathematical Model for Tuning Systems. Perspectives of New Music. p. 71.

206
represents a most serious attempt at the ultimate control over intonation and inner
hearing.
To expand the role of the expressive was a late Romantic goal, but is it any less
relevant today? Ferrucio Busoni, in his Sketch for a New Aesthetic(1919) had divided the
octave into third tones in Italy, while Julian Carrillo was dividing the octave into 96 parts
in Mexico. Hba and Wyschnegradsky were dividing up the octave into quartertones and
beyond in Czechoslovakia and Russia. Ives would have said that this was the atmosphere
of the progressive development of humanity, as he devoured his Transcendental New
England writers and philosophers. There seemed to be a new consensus between the
composer and the listener, but somewhere between the early twentieth century and the
early twenty-first century, RocknRoll and the big record companies happened. They reaffirmed 12TET and put it squarely back on the public, reinforcing the tyranny of the
piano, once again, for the sake of profits and selling ear-worms.
Then, the personal computer came along in the 1980s and shifted control over
tuning away from the piano, making possible a panoply of tunings immediately
accessible to the public for the first time in human history. When the internet boom
occurred in the late 1990s, compressed digital audio files became small enough to send
via email and post on the internet. An already growing number of microtonalists around
the world suddenly had access to one another via computers and the proliferation of
microtonal art music once again began to skyrocket. There are numerous online
microtonal musicians, composers, and sound artists all sharing their works and many are
exploring tunings on midi synthesizers and computer music programs. The world seems
ready, finally, to accept what Ives and Carrillo tried to do. The thrust of this movement

207
has taken place outside of academia, in small communities from Ivor Darregs San Diego
microtonal community to AFMM in New York, to the New England area. The outsider
composers are divested from academia and its status quo, where according to Kyle Gann,
art remains stultified (and it does not have to be like this).
Like the polytextual composers of the Ars Nova, this author seeks to combine
various tunings (like combining different languages) framing them in different tempos for
the purpose of featuring each microtonal voice in an audible and contrapuntally
distinguishable way. Also, like the relief painters of the Renaissance, he wants to create a
multidimensional texture that would enhance each separate microtonal voice in a
composition, without uniform movement, such that a type of four-dimensional
perspective could be achieved. By studying the works of Ives, Carter, Nancarrow,
Stockhausen, Ferneyhough, and many others, he has taken the most appropriate qualities
to serve this unique musical adventure.

6.1 ARE THESE MICROTONAL SUBTLETIES PERCEPTIBLE TO THE EAR?

Is polymicrotonality perceptible to the ear, or is this a frivolous endeavor? If one


considers the Middle Eastern maqam, with very small intervals, sung by Arabs every day
in the Azan for their call to prayer at daybreak, and sung for centuries, one cannot ask this
question. In Turkey, the octave is divided into 6 whole tones, each of which is divided
further into 9 commas. Each comma has a name. How does that occur if they cannot be
heard? Llewelyn Lloyd also stated that the ear, though it cannot process pitch at 1/100 of

208
a second, can, given a longer compositional duration, hear any interval.397 Hugh Johnson,
Jr. proved in his thesis Tuning Preferences of a Select Group of Singers with Reference to
Just, Pythagorean, and Equal Temperament (1963) that singers prefer sharper thirds398,
on the order of a comma, which they all can hear, where a comma is circa 25 cents, or an
1/8th tone. The singers seemed to prefer the 408 cent Pythagorean third, contrary to what
Ellis and Helmholtz had written. Alexander Ellis and Helmholtz, initially, had proved in
On the Sensations of Tone that singers sang in just intonation, but that was in the late
nineteenth century. Apparently over time things tend to change.

Also, David Whaleys The Microtonal Capability of the Horn (1975) provides a
rich source of microtonal perception surveys by all ranges and levels of horn players,
where the just noticeable difference index for a microtonal change was consistently found
within 13-16 cents.399
E. Chev of France invented a Pythagorean extended tuning in 53 tones for
vocalists due to the subtle variations of which singers are capable.400 Nevertheless,
Helmholtz held steadfastly to the notion that singers sang in just intonation, and in a
further breakdown, strings performed in Pythagorean tuning, keyboards, historically in
meantone, and brass, naturally used the overtone series to the 19th limit. Although these
are generalities, performers are not always conscious of this. This still does not qualify as
bona fide polymicrotonality, because intent is lacking. Lack of skill, also does not qualify
as polymicrotonality. There are many ways that human effort can be completely
misconstrued and misinterpreted. Mistakes are still mistakes. But systematic practice of a
397

Lloyd, 1963, 1978, Intervals, Scales, and Temperaments. p. 151.


Hugh Johnson, 1963, Tuning Preferences of a Select Group of Singers with References to Pythagorean,
Just, and Equal Temperaments. p. 56.
399
David Whaley, 1975. The Microtonal Capability of the Horn. p. 9.
400
Ellis-Helmholtz, 1954. p. 426.
398

209
system of tunings will ultimately lead to fewer mistakes, and move towards more control
over intonation. Hearing down to the cent, thus making the 1200 cent master grid our
ultimate gamut, is a noble goal. When one hears the cent, one hears a phase discrepancy
between the pitches such that the entire harmonic series will pass by, audibly, in a very
complete cycle, lasting several seconds. That is your beat. Those beatings one hears in
sharp dissonances are actually the overtone series of that particular timbre playing that
particular interval.401

6.2 FUTURE RESEARCH REGARDING POLYTEMPO AND


POLYMICROTONALITY

This paper is just the beginning of a polymicrotonal category of music. There is


much more to explore. This document is a decent foundation, but it is only a start. All
who are interested in this aesthetic can jump in at any time and continue onward.
There are areas of pure microtonal theory and voice leading to consider. Chords in
various tunings and how these sound complexes work together, will be another area of
consideration. One can use his or her ears, or use an FFT, or some other computational
method to measure dissonances, like Setharess dissonance curves. One ought not be
overly dismissive towards harsh dissonances, even though many composers are very
concerned about purity and sweetness of tone. There will be many arguments against this
polymicrotonal approach, but with a new footing in polymicrotonal theory (this authors
next document), some semblance of order can be established. Currently, there is

401

I created a polymicrotonal synthesizer in MaxMSP, where I discovered that at a one cent interval, I
could hear very clearly the overtone series between these two pitches. I realized that this is what a beat is
in slow motion.

210
absolutely nothing wrong with allowing our ears to pave the way: first the music, and
then the theory.
One area of research could possibly be to link rhythm, to pitch, and then to color.
Synesthesia is a condition many composers have had, except all the individual color
schemes fail to match. Rimsky-Korsakovs did not match Skryabins, etc. Nevertheless,
all these phenomena are related by wave frequency. Charles Lucy has used multiplication
and a modulus 12 approach to map directly pitch to color.402 Lucy had to convert
Angstroms into Hertz, but also, these are still apples and oranges, since one form of
energy is mechanical, while the other is electro-magnetic; one deals with hearing, while
the other deals with sight. People become confused by this. This is not to say, however
that pitch and rhythm are completely unrelated, even though they are. They are,
nevertheless, perceived differently. Can one truly hear a pitch tuning of 22TET and its
relationship to a multiple of 22, e.g. 88BPM? No, but there is still logic inherent in this
design. This concerns teleology and intent of the composer. Perhaps it is conceptual to
the extent that Bachs obsession with numerology, or Messiaens charm of
impossibilities also was not audible, but even the concept added logic and continuity to
the deeper layers of his music.
Another area of future research includes the aesthetics and metaphysics of
polytemporality, and its stratification, both in music and how it relates to human
existence, being, and consciousness. Time, temporality, and its meaning in human
consciousness is a rarely covered topic, but has had some discussion, from Jonathon
Kramer. Philosophers from Kant to Heidegger have explored the phenomenon of time,
but it could reside within an area of psycho-musical research, investigating polytemporal
402

Charles Lucy. At: http://www.lucytune.com/new_to_lt/pitch_04.html, accessed 3/5/12.

211
stratification, as described by Maury Yeston (from a musical theoretical perspective),
utilizing some of the phenomenological ideas from Kant to Heidegger; areas could
involve the subject/object split, whether or not time as a construct is completely a priori,
and how human consciousness reconciles time as existence, through being, versus
temporal time in music composition and human consciousnesss ability to occupy
polytemporality, as it exists in music and rhythm.

212
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