Ivor Darreg (May 5, 1917 – February 12, 1994) was an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and leading proponent of

microtonal 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 twelve equal interv ...

or " xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of

experimental musical instrument An experimental musical instrument (or custom-made instrument) is a musical instrument that modifies or extends an existing instrument or class of instruments, or defines or creates a new class of instrument. Some are created through simple modif ...

Biography

Darreg, a contemporary of

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

and a close colleague of John H. Chalmers,

Erv Wilson Ervin Wilson (June 11, 1928 – December 8, 2016) was a Mexican/ American (dual citizen) music theorist. Early life Ervin Wilson was born iColonia Pacheco a small village in the remote mountains of northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, where he lived u ...

, and Joel Mandelbaum, was one of America's leading theorists and practitioners of experimental intonation and experimental instrument building. Frequently he published his writings in his own Xenharmonic Bulletin. Darreg was born Kenneth Vincent Gerard O'Hara in Portland,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. His father John O'Hara was editor of the (Portland) Catholic Sentinel newspaper and his mother was an artist. (His Uncle, Edwin Vincent O'Hara, was a Roman Catholic Bishop.NCWC Review
, ''Cuislandora.WRLC.org''.) He dropped out of school as a teenager, but he had both self-taught facility in at least ten languages and a basic understanding of all the sciences. His real love was music and electronics. Because of his choice of music, his father cast him out, and he and his mother set out on their own with little help from anyone. At that point he took on the name "Ivor," which means "man with bow" (from his cello-playing talents) and "Drareg" (the retrograde of "Gerard"), which he soon changed to "Darreg". In the forties, Ivor built an

Amplified Cello Amplification or Amplified or Amplify may refer to: Science and technology * Amplification, the operation of an amplifier, a natural or artificial device intended to make a signal stronger * Amplification (molecular biology), a mechanism leading t ...

, Amplified Clavichord, and

Electric Organ An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since develop ...

, the Electric Keyboard Oboe and the Electric Keyboard Drum. The Amplified Clavichord and Electric Organ no longer exist, but the Electric Keyboard Oboe - like the organ, based on blocking oscillator circuits and capable of microtonality -, the Electric Keyboard Drum, which uses buzzer-like relays, and the Amplified Cello are still working. In the 1970s Darreg built a series of instruments he called Megalyras. Part of his concept was that the several strings were to be tuned like the several pipes that comprise a single "note" in an organ stop—multiple pipes at sounding together at selected, closely related pitches to create the sense not of several tones but of one grand composite tone. Darreg lived for much of his adult life in or near

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, then spent his final nine years in

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

. He devoted his entire life to his music and microtonality. Ivor sported a long beard to cover the fact that due to both an illness and confrontation from a violent break-in to his home in the 1950s, he had lost his teeth. He consequently taught himself to pronounce words and sing without them. He would often accompany his music with singing. He would sing the high notes in the morning when his vocal cords were tighter and the low notes in the evenings when they were more relaxed. His songs were often in Esperanto, a language in which he was fluent. He coined the term " xenharmonic", designed and built many original microtonal

musical instruments A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

, and wrote voluminous amounts of material about various

musical tuning In music, there are two common meanings for tuning: * #Tuning practice, Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice. * #Tuning systems, Tuning systems, the various systems of Pitch (music), pitches used to tune an instrument, and ...

s. Perhaps his most important contribution to

music theory Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ...

was his idea that different tunings exhibit different "moods". Darreg's informal network of microtonal musicians writing letters to each other later morphed into the more formal '' Xenharmonic Alliance''.

Biography

References

External links