The fresh sonorities emerging therefrom in musics of sound cultures worldwide are drawing today’s musicians to explore the beauties of various microtonal systems and to find instruments and notations suitable for these new and rediscovered tonalities. In spite of this colonisation of our collective imaginations, the desire to explore finer gradations of harmonic differences is alive and well. It has led, in effect, to the seemingly commonplace acceptance of a tempered (out-of-tune) “system” which pianos, harmoniums and later MIDI keyboards have propagated worldwide.
Just as the art of engraving and printing music has changed the appearance of written manuscripts, scoring software and the possibilities it offers us composers today is radically transforming our work, shaping and sometimes limiting our expressions and imagination.įor example, the decision to ignore certain fine differences (commas) of tuning in Western notation, in spite of numerous proposals for possible notations debated in the mid-16th century, has profoundly affected the course of European music.
As writing evolves, it establishes a grammar of its own, a lexicon of that which may be written, shaping composition.
New musical materials and ways of combining sound are continually stimulating new forms of notation, which, in turn, allow these constellations to be reinterpreted by other musicians. The next article, by Thomas Nicholson, reviews microtonal playback.
Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles exploring microtonal music in Dorico.