Microtonality: Off the Grid/Out of the Box
Straight lines and equal increments are rare in nature. And the return of non-tempered tunings has opened exciting new possibilities for moving Western music off the grid and out of the box.
Society For American Music names new Executive Director and establishes new headquarters
Mariana Whitmer Mariana Sonntag Whitmer has been appointed the new Executive Director of the Society for American Music (formerly The Sonneck Society). Whitmer will work with President Rae Linda Brown and the other ten members of the Board to carry out the Society’s mission: “to stimulate the appreciation, performance, creation, and study of American music… Read more »
National Music Theater Conference inaugurates "laboratory"
August 12th marked the end of the 23rd National Music Theatre Conference, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, CT. This year, the directors inaugurated the “NMTC Laboratory.” Eight writers and composers were invited to create new pieces, while exploring the collaborative process. Each artist worked with four collaborators, writing specifically for a… Read more »
New Music Connoisseur to honor four at September gala
New Music Connoisseur As part of their Gala 2000 concert, New Music Connoisseur will be honoring four advocates of new music. The concert and awards ceremony, which will be held on September 18th at New York University, will dedicated to the memory of Otto Luening, to mark the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Joel… Read more »
Lou Harrison receives Macdowell medal
Lou Harrison Photo by Dennis Keeley Composer Lou Harrison was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on Sunday, August 20. Virgil Thomson, himself a recipient of the Medal in 1977, once said, “It was Mozart‘s boast that he could master any musical style within a week and by the end of that… Read more »
Present Music announces commission
Kamran Ince Photo courtesy European-American Present Music and the Milwaukee Art Museum recently announced the commission of a new work by composer Kamran Ince that will be premiered in May of 2001 at the much-anticipated opening of the Museum’s building expansion. The new structure was designed by internationally-renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It will provide… Read more »
Millennium Consortium Project means multiple performances of new Zwilich work
Jeffrey Biegel / Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Photo courtesy Jeffrey Biegel Unlike many premieres, the first performance of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Millennium Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra will certainly not be the last. This is thanks to the Millennium Consortium Project, the brainchild of pianist Jeffrey Biegel, for whom the Fantasy was written, and arts consultant… Read more »
What is your favorite tuning system? Why? Lois V Vierk, Composer
Lois V Vierk Photo by Kurt Ritta Many of my pieces use glissandi, but only a few of my works are actually microtonal. Of these, my favorite tuning is in “Go Guitars” for 5 electric guitars. Each guitar is tuned as follows: lowest string is low E, next string is middle E quarter tone down,… Read more »
musicnotes.com continues trend toward online publishing
Digital sheet music publisher Musicnotes.com has announced a distribution agreement with Warner Bros and Mel Bay. Warner Bros. Publications handles the imprints of thousands of titles printed by smaller publishing firms like Belwin Mills, Kalmus, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Studio P/R, Inc. Other publishers represented by Musicnotes include Theodore Presser, Boosey & Hawkes, and… Read more »
What is your favorite tuning system? Why? Joe Maneri, Composer and Saxophonist
Joe Maneri Photo courtesy of Joe Maneri I was always interested in microtonal music. Over 40 years ago I started playing Turkish and Albanian music which includes quartertones and other intervals as many folk musics do. And then, in 1972, I was moved to write a microtonal piece. I had a cousin who was unable… Read more »
musicmaker.com expands classical offerings
Musicmaker.com recently unveiled its new web site featuring expanded classical music offerings. Music lovers and collectors can now access a library of more than 60,000 licensed classical tracks and create custom CDs from their computers. Among the company’s classical offerings are tracks from labels such as EMI, Naxos, Koch, Newport Classic, Platinum, AVC, Nimbus, and… Read more »
What is your favorite tuning system? Why? Joe Monzo, Composer and Theorist
Joe Monzo Photo courtesy Joe Monzo Ever since encountering Harry Partch‘s Genesis of a Music in the early 1980s, I’ve been most interested in just-intonation (JI) tuning systems. The initial reason for my interest was that I realized there were far more pitches available to composers than the usual 12, and that their relationships could… Read more »
NEA releases landmark study on multiple jobholding in the arts
On August 9, the National Endowment for the Arts announced the release of a landmark research report on artists’ employment, specifically examining multiple jobholding or “moonlighting.” Commissioned by the NEA’s Research Division, More Than Once in a Blue Moon: Multiple Jobholdings by American Artists is unprecedented for the breadth of data examined that compares artists’… Read more »
What is your favorite tuning system? Why? Johnny Reinhard, Composer, Bassoonist, Director of the American Festival of Microtonal Music
Johnny Reinhard in Kazan, Russia Photo by Svetlana Sokolova Here in the new millennium composers look about and wonder what connects them together. The answer appears to be the musical intelligence that they possess. Ever since Howard Gardner designated “musical intelligence” as the one of the legitimate human intelligences in his book Frames of Mind,… Read more »
BETWEEN U S: A HyperHistory of American Microtonalists
Twelve-tone equal temperament, as this common tuning is called, is a 20th-century phenomenon, a blandly homogenous tuning increasingly imposed on all the world’s musics in the name of scientific progress. In short, twelve-tone equal temperament is to tuning what the McDonald’s hamburger is to food.
Staying On Key in a Microtonal World
I’ll never forget the utter amazement I experienced the first time I was exposed to the notion of “microtonal music.”
What is your favorite tuning system? Why?
Johnny Reinhard “What is the virtue of sticking to any single system of tuning? Why a system, and not an approach, or multi-systems?…” Joe Monzo “The desire to simplify Partch’s numerical (ratio-based) notation led to me create harmonic lattice-diagrams to represent the pitches in ‘ratio-space’…” Joe Manieri “I’m sorry for all you just people, but… Read more »
American Masters Photographed by Betty Freeman: John Adams and Morton Feldman
John Adams & Morton Feldman
Theodore Presser Company Enters the Digital Age of Music Publishing
Tom and Arnold Broido Photo courtesy of Theodore Presser Co. The Theodore Presser Company recently gave a glimpse of what music publishing in the 21st century will look like. By teaming up with a CD-ROM company called CD Sheet Music, the company recently began publishing sheet music as PDF files on CD-ROM disks. This means… Read more »
Daniel Steiner Named NEC President
Daniel Steiner Photo by Paul Foley Daniel Steiner was recently named President of the New England Conservatory of Music by Board Chairman David W. Scudder. Steiner has been serving as Acting President since July 1999. The appointment concludes a year-long search by a Presidential Search Committee and follows its recommendation. “In little less than a… Read more »
