This Week in Classical Music: August 23, 2021.Microtonal Music and Easley Blackwood.When we listen to music, we rarely think about tuning: while dissonances abound, the basic scale sounds good to our ear.But in reality, this is not quite right: take 12 fifths up from a C, and you'll arrive at B-sharp, which, in perfect-fifth-based tuning is a little higher in pitch than C. But B-sharp and C are meant to be the same in standard tuning! Assuming C is equal to 256 Hz, a perfect-fifth based B-sharp (octave-reduced) is about 259.5 Hz, which is about 23 cents too sharp (or, about a fifth of the way from one note to the next on the standard piano). Even if not perfect, a “well-tempered” (remember Bach?) scale sounds good to our ear.But what if we decided to use microtones intentionally, to create music?Stephen Weigel, a composer and performer, writes about Easley Blackwood, who did just that: he composed many pieces using microtonal scales.Here are two etudes by Blackwood to illustrate his music, the 17-note Etude (that is, when one octave is divided into 17 equal intervals; equal in the sense that the frequency ratios of all intervals are equal) called Con moto and the 21-note, Suite in four movements. The Etudes referenced below.And now, to Stephen Weigel.
Easley Blackwood was born on April 21, 1933, in Indianapolis, Indiana of the United States. He was a composer, pianist, theorist, and professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. One of his most well-known compositions is the Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media, which is a set of electronic pieces written in microtonal equal temperaments. For those who are unfamiliar, "microtonal" scales are those that divide the octave into a different number of notes than the standard twelve found on a piano. Microtonality is regularly used in traditional non-Western music, and it allows the opportunity to create completely new-sounding melodies and chord progressions, which is part of the reason why Easley Blackwood wrote music in these novel tunings. The Twelve Microtonal Etudes use equal tunings 13 through 24 individually, and each equal tuning has its own sort of feeling or character. Most of the individual movements are in a strongly tonal style, while some rely less on functional chord progressions and more so on complex altered chord changes or melodic ideas. The tonality you might hear in these pieces is unlike anything you will hear in 12-tone equal temperament. People commonly cite microtonal chord progressions as having a "warped" feeling, like looking in a funhouse mirror. Twelve Microtonal Etudes was recorded in 1981 with the Polyfusion synthesizer, housed in St. Louis's Webster College. It was a lot more difficult to synthesize microtonal scales with the Polyfusion synthesizer back then than it is today with digital synthesizers, which is part of the reason why these pieces are such a monumental achievement for the time period. Blackwood not only had to play each part one melodic line at a time (monophonically), but he also had to create his own notation for each tuning system, and read that on the standard keyboard with the offset! This meant that if he was playing with 13 equal notes per octave, for example, that an octave would span 13 notes on the keyboard instead of the usual 12 - and that logic applies to each equal tuning used. The project was also completed within an extremely short 13-day time period. The tactful composition, golden analog charm, and history have made this piece into a microtonal classic. Recently there has also been a revival of interest in these pieces, because of their age and accessibility. It is commonly cited as microtonal inspiration, and Matthew Sheeran, Stephen Malinowski, and Stephen Weigel have also created arrangements and MIDI follow along videos.
Stephen Weigel on Microtonal music of Blackwood
This Week in Classical Music: August 23, 2021. Microtonal Music and Easley Blackwood. When we listen to music, we rarely think about tuning: while dissonances abound, the basic scale
sounds good to our ear. But in reality, this is not quite right: take 12 fifths up from a C, and you'll arrive at B-sharp, which, in perfect-fifth-based tuning is a little higher in pitch than C. But B-sharp and C are meant to be the same in standard tuning! Assuming C is equal to 256 Hz, a perfect-fifth based B-sharp (octave-reduced) is about 259.5 Hz, which is about 23 cents too sharp (or, about a fifth of the way from one note to the next on the standard piano). Even if not perfect, a “well-tempered” (remember Bach?) scale sounds good to our ear. But what if we decided to use microtones intentionally, to create music? Stephen Weigel, a composer and performer, writes about Easley Blackwood, who did just that: he composed many pieces using microtonal scales. Here are two etudes by Blackwood to illustrate his music, the 17-note Etude (that is, when one octave is divided into 17 equal intervals; equal in the sense that the frequency ratios of all intervals are equal) called Con moto and the 21-note, Suite in four movements. The Etudes referenced below. And now, to Stephen Weigel.
Easley Blackwood was born on April 21, 1933, in Indianapolis, Indiana of the United States. He was a composer, pianist, theorist, and professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. One of his most well-known compositions is the Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media, which is a set of electronic pieces written in microtonal equal temperaments. For those who are unfamiliar, "microtonal" scales are those that divide the octave into a different number of notes than the standard twelve found on a piano. Microtonality is regularly used in traditional non-Western music, and it allows the opportunity to create completely new-sounding melodies and chord progressions, which is part of the reason why Easley Blackwood wrote music in these novel tunings. The Twelve Microtonal Etudes use equal tunings 13 through 24 individually, and each equal tuning has its own sort of feeling or character. Most of the individual movements are in a strongly tonal style, while some rely less on functional chord progressions and more so on complex altered chord changes or melodic ideas. The tonality you might hear in these pieces is unlike anything you will hear in 12-tone equal temperament. People commonly cite microtonal chord progressions as having a "warped" feeling, like looking in a funhouse mirror. Twelve Microtonal Etudes was recorded in 1981 with the Polyfusion synthesizer, housed in St. Louis's Webster College. It was a lot more difficult to synthesize microtonal scales with the Polyfusion synthesizer back then than it is today with digital synthesizers, which is part of the reason why these pieces are such a monumental achievement for the time period. Blackwood not only had to play each part one melodic line at a time (monophonically), but he also had to create his own notation for each tuning system, and read that on the standard keyboard with the offset! This meant that if he was playing with 13 equal notes per octave, for example, that an octave would span 13 notes on the keyboard instead of the usual 12 - and that logic applies to each equal tuning used. The project was also completed within an extremely short 13-day time period. The tactful composition, golden analog charm, and history have made this piece into a microtonal classic. Recently there has also been a revival of interest in these pieces, because of their age and accessibility. It is commonly cited as microtonal inspiration, and Matthew Sheeran, Stephen Malinowski, and Stephen Weigel have also created arrangements and MIDI follow along videos.