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Xenharmonic triad, part 2

Ivan Wyschnegradsky: Étude ultrachromatique, for Fokker 31-tone organ, Op. 42 (1959)

From the album 50 Jaar Stichting Huygens-Fokker

In 1951, the Dutch physicist and musician Adriaan Fokker (1887-1972) oversaw the construction and installation of a unique, 31-tone keyboard instrument in Teyler’s Museum in Haarlem. This would became known as the Fokker Organ. Fokker’s tuning system was based on the theories of the 17th-century Dutch polymath Christian Huygens, whose notion of a 31-part equal division of the octave was in turn inspired by earlier instruments such as Vicentino’s arcicemablo. The instrument’s labyrinthine keyboard interface demanded a fundamentally new technique from those who would dare to play it.

The keyboard of the Fokker Organ

Huygens and Fokker both envisioned this configuration as a means of enabling the performance of music in various mean-tone tunings, rather than a path toward microtonality as it is generally understood. Other composers, however, viewed the refined division of the octave as the technological basis for a new chromatic overdrive: the principle of the equal importance of all notes that motivated atonality and Schoenberg’s 12-tone technique was now to be applied to a greater (and theoretically unlimited) number of tones.

This was the approach taken by the Russian-French composer Ivan Wyschnegradsky, who wrote this piece for the Fokker Organ in 1959. A champion of microtonal music since the early 20th century, Wyschnegradsky used various systems of tuning, all unified by his vision of “ultrachromaticism,” in which microtonal pitch organization was infused with a heavy dose of Scriabin-esque musical mysticism. 

This portable version of the Fokker Organ, the Archiphone, was developed in the 1960s

This recording was released on a CD made for the 50th anniversary of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation Centre for Microtonal Music, in Amsterdam. The foundation’s website is one of the best resources on the history and theory of microtonal/xenharmonic music on the internet. 

August 17, 2011, 10:45am

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Anonymous: “Tribularer”

From the album Ein Konzert an der ältesten spielbaren Orgel der Welt (2004)

“A concert on the oldest playable organ in the world,” proclaims the title of this remarkable recording, released in Germany in 2004. The instrument in question is the “Gothic organ” of the Church of St. Andreas in the town of Ostönnen in the German region of Westphalia.  Previously located in the nearby town of Soest, the organ was moved to its current home in 1721.

The keyboard of the St. Andreas organ

The dating of the organ, carried out in conjunction with its restoration from 2000-2003, was an extremely complicated process, involving the study of inscriptions on the instrument’s metal pipes and dendrochronological tests on the wood used in the organ’s console and windchest. (This process was complicated further by the fact that many of the instrument’s numerous parts had been replaced over the course of centuries.) Ultimately the date was determined as circa 1430, making this organ among the oldest preserved specimens of its type, and the single oldest that is still playable. 

This anonymous “Tribularer” is thought to be an intabulation of a four-part motet, though the voices are remarkably independent. The score comes from the library of the Monastery of the Holy Ghost in Krakow. It was written in 1548 in German letter notation. Little else is known about this piece.

I was surprised (and perhaps a little disappointed) at how good the instrument sounds. No doubt the quality of its tone has everything to do with the extensive restoration work that has been lavished on the organ over the years. Any remaining strangeness can be attributed to the organ’s tuning, which is a compromise between Pythagorean and mean-tone temperament derived from Arnolt Schlick’s Spiegel der Orgelmacher (1511).

The frontispiece to Schlick’s treatise

May 25, 2011, 11:20am

Concert review: John Zorn at Christ Church, Philadelphia (March 6, 2011)

There is something irreducibly strange about contemporary music for the pipe organ. Perhaps more than any other instrument, the organ is indelibly associated with deep cultural traditions: its sound evokes ceremony, worship, and divine cosmic order—all very well suited to the grandeur of a Bach fugue or Mozart mass, but not so much to the spirit of most contemporary music.  But on the other hand, on a technical level the organ can be seen as the ideal instrument for 20th century music: long before electronics, it allowed allowed the creation of synthetic timbres, and its sheer sonic force lends itself readily to clusters and “wall of sound” effects so dear to many modernist composers.

On Sunday, March 6, New York-based composer John Zorn came to Christ Church in Old City Philadelphia to play the church’s pipe organ in the final event of the Blindspot festival, a ten-day series of contemporary dance performances and organ concerts co-presented by Bowerbird and Ladybird. Zorn was originally scheduled for a single appearance on the festival’s opening night, but he came back at the end for an encore performance.

Zorn’s playing was effortless, joyful. As expected, his performance was rich in juxtaposition: the music passed from angular atonal counterpoint to bright chordal blasts of sound; gently flowing melodies over modal ostinati gave way to huge, glorious clusters that shook the windows of the church. What was so remarkable about the performance was how self-evidently all these elements seemed to fit together. In Zorn’s hands, the contrast of this heterogeneous material was anything but forced or bombastic; he convinced the listener that these sounds belong together by nature.

The leadership of Christ Church has declared its commitment to establishing an ongoing connection with contemporary music, and their hosting of the Blindspot festival certainly shows they mean business. Here’s hoping the collaboration continues and grows stronger in the future.

March 07, 2011, 7:05pm

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György Ligeti: Ricercare - Omaggio a Frescobaldi (1951)

From the album György Ligeti Edition 6.  Keyboard Works

When you think of organ music, you probably think of the North German masters of the late Baroque, composers such as Bach and Buxtehude blasting radiant sound-beams of Protestant piety to rattle the stained glass and shake the souls of the faithful.

But in fact the pipe organ tradition goes back further, at least to the early 17th century, to intrepid, non-German composers with names like Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Girolamo Frescobaldi.  The latter is the subject of this musical homage, an early work by Ligeti written before he left Hungary for the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Built around a dolorous theme that wends chromatically ever downward, Ligeti’s Ricercare is a tribute to the lugubrious glories of early Baroque counterpoint. (And if you don’t think 17th-century music could be so wonderfully dissonant, listen to Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica.)

This one begins very quietly, but builds to a powerful din.  Don’t blow out your speakers.

January 22, 2010, 5:35pm