![Xenharmonic versus microtonal P4](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Xenharmonic_versus_microtonal_P4.png)
Xenharmonic music is music that uses a
tuning system
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:
* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.
* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.
Tuning practice
Tun ...
that is unlike the
12-tone equal temperament
Twelve-tone equal temperament (12-TET) is the musical system that divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equally tempered (equally spaced) on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the 12th root of 2 ( ≈ 1.05946). That resultin ...
scale. It was named by
Ivor Darreg
Ivor Darreg (May 5, 1917 – February 12, 1994) was an American composer and leading proponent of microtonal or " xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments.
Biography
Darreg, a contemporary of Harry Part ...
, from
Xenia (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
ξενία), ''hospitable,'' and
Xenos (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
ξένος) ''foreign.'' He stated that it was "intended to include
just intonation
In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals
Interval may refer to:
Mathematics and physics
* Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers
** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to ...
and such temperaments as the 5-, 7-, and 11-tone, along with the higher-numbered really-
microtonal
Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of t ...
systems as far as one wishes to go."
John Chalmers, author of ''Divisions of the Tetrachord'', wrote, "The converse of this definition is that music which can be performed in 12-tone equal temperament without significant loss of its identity is not truly ''microtonal''." Thus xenharmonic music may be distinguished from twelve-tone equal temperament, as well as use of intonation and equal temperaments, by the use of unfamiliar intervals, harmonies, and
timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
s..
Theorists other than Chalmers consider xenharmonic and non-xenharmonic to be subjective. Edward Foote, in his program notes for ''6 degrees of tonality'', refers to the differences in his response to the tunings he uses, such as
Kirnberger and DeMorgan, from "shocking," to "too subtle to immediately notice," saying that "
mperaments are new territory for 20th-century ears. The first-time listener may find it shocking to hear the harmony change 'color' during modulations or too subtle to immediately notice."
Diatonic xenharmonic music
Music also can share much of the familiar territory of twelve-tone music yet also contain xenharmonic features. For example,
Easley Blackwood, author of ''The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings'' (1985), wrote many etudes in equal temperament systems ranging from 12 to 24 tones. These etudes bring out connections and resemblances to twelve-tone music as well as various xenharmonic characteristics, reflected in ''
Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media''.
More radically, for his sixteen notes, Andantino
writes:
Darreg explains: "I devised the term 'xenharmonic' to refer to everything that does not sound like 12-tone equal temperament."
Tunings, instruments, and composers
Music using scales or tuning other than 12-tone equal temperament can be classified as xenharmonic music. This includes other equal divisions of the octave and scales based on
extended just intonation.
Tunings derived from the partials or overtones of physical objects with an
inharmonic
In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (also known as partials or partial tones) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency ( harmonic series).
Acoustically, a note perceived to have a singl ...
spectrum or
overtone series
A harmonic series (also overtone series) is the sequence of harmonics, musical tones, or pure tones whose frequency is an integer multiple of a ''fundamental frequency''.
Pitched musical instruments are often based on an acoustic resonator su ...
such as rods, prongs, plates, discs, spheroids and rocks occasionally are the basis of xenharmonic exploration.
William Colvig
William (Bill) Colvig (March 13, 1917 – March 1, 2000) was an electrician and amateur musician who was the partner for 33 years of composer Lou Harrison, whom he met in San Francisco in 1967. Colvig helped construct the American gamelan used in ...
, who worked with the composer
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...
created the ''tubulong'', a set of xenharmonic tubes.
Electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
composed with arbitrarily chosen xenharmonic scales was explored on the album ''Radionics Radio: An Album of Musical Radionic Thought Frequencies'' (2016) by British composer
Daniel Wilson, who composed with frequency-runs submitted by users of a
web application
A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection.
History
In earlier computing models like client-serve ...
that replicated
radionics-based electronic soundmaking equipment used by Oxford's
De La Warr Laboratories in the late 1940s.
Elaine Walker (composer)
Elaine Walker is a composer, electronic musician and author born in 1969. She wrote a physics/philosophy book, “Matter Over Mind: Cosmos, Chaos, and Curiosity” (2016). She specializes in microtonal music, including founding ZIA, an all electr ...
is an electronic musician who writes xenharmonic music by building new types of music keyboards.
The
Non-Pythagorean scale
Robert Peter Schneider (born March 9, 1971) is an American musician and mathematician. He is the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer of rock/pop band the Apples in Stereo and has produced and performed on albums by Neutral Milk Ho ...
utilized by
Robert Schneider
Robert Peter Schneider (born March 9, 1971) is an American musician and mathematician. He is the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer of rock/pop band the Apples in Stereo and has produced and performed on albums by Neutral Milk Ho ...
of
The Apples in Stereo
The Apples in Stereo, styled as The Apples in stereo, are an American pop/rock band associated with Elephant 6 Collective, a group of bands also including Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and Circulatory S ...
, based on a sequence of
logarithms
In mathematics, the logarithm is the inverse function to exponentiation. That means the logarithm of a number to the base is the exponent to which must be raised, to produce . For example, since , the ''logarithm base'' 10 o ...
, may be considered xenharmonic, as well as
Annie Gosfield
Annie Gosfield (born September 11, 1960 in Philadelphia) is a New York City, New-York-based composer who works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. She composes for o ...
's purposefully "out of tune" sampler-based music using non systematic tunings and the work of other composers including
Elodie Lauten
Elodie Lauten (October 20, 1950 – June 3, 2014) was a French-born American composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist.
Biography
Born in Paris, France as Genevieve Schecroun, and educated in Paris at the Lycée Claude Monet, th ...
,
Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos, November 14, 1939) is an American musician and composer best known for her electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving ...
,
Ivor Darreg
Ivor Darreg (May 5, 1917 – February 12, 1994) was an American composer and leading proponent of microtonal or " xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments.
Biography
Darreg, a contemporary of Harry Part ...
, and
Paul Erlich.
See also
*
Bohlen–Pierce scale
The Bohlen–Pierce scale (BP scale) is a musical tuning and scale, first described in the 1970s, that offers an alternative to the octave-repeating scales typical in Western and other musics, specifically the equal-tempered diatonic scale.
T ...
*
Regular temperament
Regular temperament is any tempered system of musical tuning such that each frequency ratio is obtainable as a product of powers of a finite number of generators, or generating frequency ratios. For instance, in 12-TET, the system of music most ...
References
Further reading
*Sethares, William (2004
''Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale'' .
External links
Microtonality - WebHomepage for William SetharesThe Xenharmonic Wiki formerly at
Wikispaces
Wikispaces was a wiki hosting service based in San Francisco, California. Launched by Tangient LLC in March 2005, Wikispaces was purchased by Tes Global (formerly TSL Education) in March 2014. It competed with PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, and Googl ...
Xenharmonic Alliance* Barbieri, Patrizio
(2008) Latina, Il Levante Libreria Editrice
Blackwood Microtonal Compositions Easley Blackwood & Jeffrey Kust, on iTunesIncludes ''Fanfare in 19-EDO''. Also includes the ''16 notes Andantino'' as the first of the twelve etudes in that collection.
microtonal piano work of Noah Jordan
{{Microtonal music
Microtonality