Haas-mikrotonalitat_und_spektrale_musik_en.pdf

Georg Friedrich Haas, “Mikrotonalität und spektrale Musik seit 1980.” In Orientierungen: Wege im Pluralismus der Gegenwartsmusik, edited by Jörn Peter Hiekel. Mainz: Schott, 2007, 138-150. Translation by Robert Hasegawa Microtonality and spectral music since 1980 There has always been microtonality. First, as a component of theoretical discourse on the question of how tunings and pitch systems should be established. And in musical practice, microtonality was and is a matter of course. However, microtonal variations and alterations were in previous centuries not notated, but left to the responsibility of the performer. Tone adjustments were part of the oral legacy of the interpretive tradition—they were not composed. In the twentieth century, more and more composers dealt with this subject. Here were phenomena to discover and invent, which heretofore were not accessible to compositional reflection. By 1980 we can determine that the approaches to microtonality had changed: 1979 is the year of the death of Ivan Wyschnegradsky, 1983 that of Hába. These two pioneers of quartertone music have entered into music history—they are no longer a contemporary presence. The use of microtones became around this time a regular resource for new music (Ligeti, Boulez, Xenakis, Lutoslawski, etc.). In 1978 and 1980, Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail presented on their spectral composition techniques at Darmstadt. And most important: through the development of the computer and the synthesizer, microtonal pitch configurations became widely accessible. Wyschnegradsky and Hába had to have their quartertone pianos produced as expensive custom constructions. The built-in tone generators of computers and the legendary Yamaha DX-7 allowed a much more complex and differentiated control of pitch than was available to Hába or Wyschnegradsky, and delivered it to the living room of every music student. Today, for example, the music notation program Sibelius comes with quartertone accidentals, with which notated music can be played back at the press of a button. Other microtonal intervals need only a few extra minutes of time to be made audible. Microtonality has lost its exclusivity, it is now widely accessible. But there is no canon of microtonal compositional technique. While twelve-tone technique—and with restrictions, serial music—can be taught didactically, there is no comparable standardized microtonal musical language, but rather a remarkably large number of individual solutions. “Microtonal” means beyond the twelve (tempered) semitones. And there can be many reasons that one as a composer might want to go beyond the twelve semitones. I would like to try to develop a systematic description here: 1) Scales a) Non-European scales. A caution: it is Eurocentric to concentrate here on the pitch organization alone. Music is determined by many other elements: sound, rhythm, space, and social context. (Apart from that, I recognize that the term “non-European” as both awkward and politically incorrect. Unfortunately I can think of no better terminology.) Two special cases seem worthy of special mention: —“non-European” music, that recognizes no scales at all; —heterophonic “non-European” music, in which deviations from the scales are considered as systemic. An example of an artistic reflection of this heterophony is Karuka, a 2000 concerto for

oboe and chamber orchestra by Akira Nishimura. The pitches are very precisely notated but in terms of their musical sense they are not precisely defined fixed points, but are constantly changing, usually in slow glissandi. b) Quartertones, sixth-tones, eighth-tones, twelfth-tones, and divisions of the octave into 17, 19, 31, 53, or 171 (etc.) equal parts. Bernhard Lang, for example, works with all interval rows in the sixth-tone system (36 tones, 35 intervals). Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf writes complex, post-serial music in eighth-tones. A group of composers centered around Georg Hajdu experiments with a 17-part division of the octave, producing a collection of pieces varying from algorithmic compositions to compositions with folkloric overtones. The American composer Easley Blackwood published in 1982 his Twelve Microtonal Etudes, op. 28, in which he systemically examined the possibility of approximating harmonies from major/minor tonality in tunings dividing the octave equally into 13 to 24 parts. The existence of special instruments can be the starting point for compositional work, for example the works written for the sixteenth-tone piano and the interpreter Martine Joste. c) Irregularly structured scales, including selections from the quartertone system (Hába) or freely composed scales (the 43-tone system of Harry Partch). 2) Microtonality uncontrollable at the detailed level From the multiphonics of wind instruments result microtonal chords, whose structure is determined by the instrument and is not the result of compositional design. Once cannot alter the pitches (or only by a little bit), so one must accept the sounds as a whole, as they are. They are however, with some margin for error, repeatable and predetermined. Once can thus react to these sounds compositionally and incorporate them into a pitch structure. Published research on these multiphonics (Peter Veale for the oboe family, Philip Rehfeldt for the clarinets, Carin Levine for flute, and Marcus Weiss for the saxophone) has recently opened up new worlds for composers. Still greater is the range of indefinite microtonality resulting from the prepared piano. John cage described very precisely where exactly in the strings to attach a screw. But the pitches that result are not precisely determined in advance. Many percussion instruments also produce an uncontrollable microtonality. 3) “Split sounds” (Spaltklänge) or blurred unisons Several closely spaced pitches sound at the same time. Giacinto Scelsi composed this type of narrow microtonal cluster, and the simultaneity of nearly identical pitches appears in the musical practice of many musical traditions of the world—even in Europe, we have something similar in the vibrato-rich unisons of a string section. And if this approach is extended to wind instruments, the sonic result can approach Scelsi’s sound world. But this type of microtonality already existed before 1980. It could be viewed as a further development of this concept, when not only single tones, but rather complex musical entities are combined with pitches only a small distance away. Olga Neuwirth, for example, works in her piano concerto with a “shadow instrument,” that repeats the chords of the solo instrument slightly less than a quartertone lower. 4) Overtone chords and spectral music The overtone series is well known. We know that along with the sounding of a fundamental frequency there also vibrate other frequencies, whose pitches are located outside the tempered

twelve-tone scale. Through mathematical and electronic analysis, these frequencies can be derived relatively easily. It is then however a new, additional step to again make instrumental sounds from these analysis-derived partial tones, to detach the partials from the spectrum and build chords from them. This step is an artistic act and leads to a novel result. The term “spectrum” is based on the assumption of an analogy between optics and acoustics. But sound and light are fundamentally different. If one mixes many different colors (or if on a spinning disk many colors are arranged like pie slices), the colors blend to a kind of white. Now if one realizes an overtone chord, in principal the same thing should happen. But the effect of blending does not occur. The individual sounds are perceived to form a chord, not a homogenous sound. This chord has, however, special properties: it is free of beating. Tristan Murail has compared the effect of this overtone chord with the condition that occurs when the sun is at its zenith: it casts no shadows. The approach to this overtone chord again varies from composer to composer. Many composers notate the ideal pitches, thus differentiating between the overtone intervals found in the higher octaves (such as La Monte Young, Horatio Radulescu, Wolfgang von Schweinitz). James Tenney, however, reflects the fact that the perception capabilities of instrumentalists and the acoustics of the instruments will inevitably lead to variations in pitch, and allows in some of his overtone compositions a “tolerance range” of +/- 5 cents (hundredths of a semitone). Another approach to overtone harmonies is to accept the approximations to the overtone series that arise within tempered scales. For example, some traditional chords—the major triad, the dominant seventh chord, and the dominant ninth chord—approximate the overtone series within the tempered twelve-tone scale up to the fifth, seventh, or ninth partial. Gérard Grisey pushes further into the realm of the higher partials: he indicates finer gradations in order to more precisely approach the frequencies of the overtones, or he knowingly uses only a quartertone approximation, in order to reflect the resulting ambiguities in his compositions. Especially close to the overtone series is the twelfth-tone division of the octave (72 tones per octave): partials up to the 11th and 12th can be approximated with no more than a four-cent deviation. Semitones, quartertones, eighth-tones, twelfth-tones… all this is a question of scaling, just as one can choose different resolutions for a computer screen. Generally speaking, one can define the principle of spectral music as an attempt to transfer the results of acoustic analysis into a score. The overtone series is just one of many possible outcomes of an acoustic analysis—of course other techniques of analysis could also be taken as the starting point of a composition. The work of composition begins with the decision of how these analyses will be used. Peter Ablinger plays with the alienation (Verfremdung) that results when the analytical data is taken literally. The electronically recorded sound is projected on a fine grid (of frequencies in time), the amplitude of each frequency range is measured, and then the result is orchestrated. The pitch rastering (approximation) is relatively coarse (three-quarter-tones, or eight steps per octave), and the time rastering is determined by the composer in the working-out of each piece. The analysis of the underlying original (music that is well-known) is no longer recognizable. Quadraturen V: “Musik” was composed in the years 1997-2000. Bernhard Lang composed in his DWA Doubles/Schatten (2004) harmonic systems developed from combination and difference tones. The starting point for these harmonies are not concrete

recordings of music, but rather intervals, from which through frequency summation or subtraction chord fields could be produced. Through this the intervals of the live electronics could be transferred to the musicians of the orchestra, resulting in a shimmering, fascinating sound world. For Lang, the idea of “doubling” is crucial—and the deviations, which must result because an exact doubling is not possible. For my own work, the overtone chord in its original form plays a central role. Though it is impossible to create a “collective sound” or “super-sound” comparable to the synthetic white of optics out of the combination of instrumental “partial tones,” the power, the beauty, and the unique quality of the chord derived from the overtone series is for me still a fascinating, exciting experience. In in vain (2000), excerpts from the overtone series are played in long durations, gradually changing from chord to chord. I think that the perception of microtonal structures is closely connected with the compositional use of time. The same event may be perceived quite differently in different tempi, depending on whether the time is available for the special intonation quality of the music to “lock in” or not. Towards the end of in vain, I compose a prolonged process, which begins with slow glissandi, always rising from one overtone chord to the next. At the same time, the fundamental tome sinks in contrary motion towards the bass. The glissando climbs, for example, from the 8th partial of the first chord to the 10th partial of the next (the 8th and 10th partials are a major third apart), while the fundamental tone sinks by a semitone. Then the glissandi disappear and only the falling overtone chords remain, always faster and faster. The fundamentals always remain within the tempered system. The overtones are therefore outside of this system. When the distance between two chords reaches a duration of about one second, these intonation differences of the overtones become more and more disturbing, while at the same time it becomes more difficult for the performers to realize them. A tone that was just played as the third (5th partial) of a tempered fundamental (and thus a twelfth-tone lower than in equal temperament) will a little later, when the fundamental has sunk by a tritone, be a minor seventh (7th partial) and must thus be player a sixth-tone deeper, and so on. The overtone chord character is gradually lost, and finally all ends in a very fast moving twelve-tone tempered vortex. In the area of overtone harmony there is still much work to do. Particularly, clarifying the question of how different overtone spectra can be related to one another. In in vain I made it very simple and used only tempered fundamentals. In my First String Quartet (1997), however, I went further: I tuned the strings of the instruments microtonally, so that four independent overtone chords with root, third, and seventh could be realized (for example, with the 4th string of the cello, the 3rd strings of the viola and second violin, and the 2nd string of the first violin). Then largely only natural harmonics are played, resulting in a network of pitches on the basis of the four independent fundamentals. In the orchestra piece Natures mortes (2003) there are five overtone chords strung together in the final section, which all stand in a spectral relationship to the pitch C. Yes, I use overtone spectra. But I would protest against being called a “spectralist.” In all of my works discussed so far here, I set against the overtone chords other harmonies, which are based on the major seventh, and thus stand in the tradition of the Wiener Schule, and especially of Anton Webern. In these non-microtonal chords I use concepts from Ivan Wyschnegradsky—this is perhaps another similarity to established microtonal traditions. But there are also differences. In flow and friction for sixteenth-tone piano, four hands (2000) I work with the beating of intervals, which becomes ever more acute, and set this in contrast with

glissando-like motions in approximate overtone intervals. (The sixteenth-tone piano has a manual with 8 octaves, but a range of only a single octave.) And in Ein Schattenspiel for piano and live electronics (2005) I have addressed an apparently extramusical theme: the confrontation with one’s own past. The live electronics are simple: what is played by the piano is recorded and delayed before being played back a quartertone higher. Through this the tempo is a little faster, as if the whole was recorded on a tape recorder, which was then played back at a slightly faster speed. Thus, the distance from one’s own past is dwindling. The piece ends at the moment when the pianist is overtaken by his past. Also in musical hindsight, I quote from the past: Wyschnegradsky’s chords appear this time in their quartertone version, which comes from the quartertone harmonic concepts of the late Romantic Richard Heinrich Stein. And I recall in my own compositions my own past as a pianist of quartertone piano music. This is not spectral music. I have not yet entered into another, wider topic: melodic phrases, which imitate the flow of speech melodies, as for example at the beginning of my solo violin piece de terrae fine or in the opera Melancholia, on which I’m working now, where for the first time I expect these melodies from singers as well. And also unmentioned until now is the exciting technique of playing different pitch systems against one another, for example, music in the tempered twelve-tone system against overtone chords. Or quartertones against multiphonics. Or slow glissandi against static chords, however they might be structured. As we see here, there is still much to be done. I cannot (and do not want to) give a specific direction within the plurality of musical languages. But perhaps I can, like a seasoned mushroom hunter, point to places in the forest where it there may be something to find.