[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Julián Carrillo: Preludio a Colón (1924)
From the album Julian Carrillo (date unknown)
Born in Mexico City in 1875, Julián Carrillo is a fascinating and little-known composer of the 20th century. Around 1895, Carrillo began using his violin to experiment with microtonal intervals— distances between notes smaller than the semitone or minor second which is the smallest difference between two pitches in the conventional Western system of tuning. The realization that a virtually infinite world of tones lay dormant between the notes of the equal-tempered scale took on revelatory significance for Carrillo, who christened his discovery “el sonido trece” (“the thirteenth sound”). Carrillo’s experiments in microtonality were among the first efforts in what would become a major strain of new musical investigations in the 20th century— perhaps first brought to public awareness by Ferruccio Busoni in his Outline of a New Aesthetics of Music, written in 1907. (N.B.: The link is to the 1911 translation of the text, which is faulty, but alas, the only English version available.)
Carrillo’s music met with great public success during his lifetime. Championed by Leopold Stokowski from the 1920s on, his works were premiered in several cities in the United States. In 1930, Carrillo returned to Mexico from abroad and formed the “Orquesta Sonido 13,” a group dedicated to his microtonal compositions.
He had a set of 15 microtonal pianos built for him and exhibited at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels— the same event which saw the famous Poème électronique of Varese, Xenakis, and Corbusier. Carrillo’s “metamorphic pianos” were admired by other microtonal composers such as Alois Hába and Ivan Wyschnegradsky.
Carrillo also developed a new system of notation meant to rationalize musical production and make it easier to write microtonal intervals. Like the many other efforts in this vein undertaken in the 20th century, Carrillo’s innovations did not catch on.
The title of this piece translates as “Prelude to Columbus.” It is written for soprano, flute, guitar, violin, octavina, and harp.
Played 110 time(s).
December 09, 2009, 5:31pm
