Multicultural Microtonality — Musical Experimentation

Over 10 years of working with master musicians in non-Western traditions, and particularly practitioners of microtonal Turkish makam-based music, has transformed how I hear and play my own instrument of violin. 

As an invited resident artist at Harvard University's I Tatti Center for Renaissance Studies in April 2023, I had the opportunity to collaborate with three other scholar-musicians who bring very different but complementary approaches to microtonality and its polyphonic treatments. These included Tolgahan Çoğulu, classical guitarist and inventor of the adjustable fretted microtonal guitar; Johannes Keller, researcher and performer specializing on chromatic-enharmonic (more than 12 notes per octave) instruments and music from the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the theories and instrumental inventions of Italian theorist Nicola Vincentino; and composer-performer Mauricio Silva Orendain, whose works engage unconventional tuning systems to explore the bridges between microtonality and sound synthesis, bringing Klangfarbe to the foreground in a search for authentic sound sculptures. Johannes and Mauricio brought with them to the residency the contemporarily reconstructed renaissance keyboard instruments arciorgano and clavemusicum omnitonum with 36 and 31 keys per octave, built under the direction of the research team Studio31.

We were challenged with preparing and presenting a lecture-recital as well as running recording sessions to document our work together over the week-long residency. In the recording sessions and lecture-recital, we presented a program featuring arciorgano, harpsichord, adjustable microtonal guitar, and viola exploring both renaissance-era and contemporary approaches to microtonality. We performed madrigals by Vincentino, Turkish makam-based repertoire (polyphonized in accordance with Vincentino's theories), and the world premiere of "Jade," a composition by Mauricio for our instrumentation. The experience of sharing our intellectual and embodied experiences of microtonality challenged us each individually and now motivates us to seek out opportunities for future iterations of this collaborative experimentation project.