Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music that includes intervals outside of those from the customary Western tuning of twelve equal divisions of the octave (12edo). The boundaries of microtonal music are fuzzy for various reasons, namely cultural context and psychoacoustic effects.
Terminology
Many dictionaries define microtonal music as music that employs intervals smaller than a semitone. However, in contemporary practice, "microtonal music" is any music that isn't 12edo, even if it is in a tuning system that does not use any intervals less than a 12edo semitone step.
Several terms have been proposed with more or less similar definitions. A notable example is "xenharmonic music", coined by Ivor Darreg, which describes music that sounds significantly different from 12edo. There are many gray areas regarding what sort of systems qualify as "xenharmonic" or not, and no rigorous definition seems to be universally acceptable among xenharmonists.
Debates and usage
Xenharmonic
Many theorists caution against using the term "xenharmonic" for non-Western traditions that use non-12edo tunings. This is because the prefix "xen-" denotes otherness, so calling those traditions "xenharmonic" implies they are 'exotic', and that Western 12edo music is 'normal'.
To avoid unintentionally spreading such misconceptions, theorists often use "xenharmonic" only to mean Western non-12edo traditions. With "microtonal" being a broader catch-all term that also includes non-Western traditions too.
Because the prefix "xen-" denotes otherness, many theorists also caution against using "xenharmonic" to describe tunings that are very similar to 12edo, on the grounds that they do not really exhibit that 'otherness'.
Some theorists, for example, would argue that historical temperaments like meantone are not xenharmonic, because they follow almost identical rules to 12edo and sound very similar to it too. They would argue that only tunings which deviate significantly from 12edo, like 11edo, Bohlen-Pierce or Orwell, are truly "xenharmonic".
Microtonal
The term "microtonal" is itself contested, because it implies that 12edo's step sizes are 'normal-sized tones' and that anything smaller than them is 'micro'. Of course in reality, there is nothing more or less 'normal' about 12edo's step size than any other system.
The term "microtonal" can also cause confusion for music students because some "micro"tonal scales like 5edo or orwell[9] actually have larger step sizes than 12edo.
Despite these concerns, "microtonal" still remains in broad use among most musicologists as the main catch-all term to describe this kind of music. Because it doesn't cause too much offense, and because of the sheer inertia of the term being so widely known, it seems likely that "microtonal" will continue to be the most common term for non-12edo music in general.
Aside from "microtonal", "xenharmonic" is the most common other term in broad use, and though its exact boundaries are debated, it is widely agreed among music theorists that "xenharmonic" is in some way a more strict version of "microtonal". "Microtonal" is something of a catch-all term, while "xenharmonic" refers to something more specific. But what exactly the boundaries of that 'something more specific' are continues to be debated.
Scope of this wiki
Despite being named the "Xenharmonic Wiki", this wiki documents any and all kinds of musical tunings, no matter whether one counts them as xenharmonic or not.
History
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Todo: expand |
Sometime before 1900, composer Julián Carrillo Trujillo performed experiments on a violin string, using a razor blade to achieve very precise intervals smaller than a semitone, which he called "microtono." Over a decade later, the music theorist Maud MacCarthy Mann began using the term "microtone" to describe Indian sruti intervals that were smaller than a semitone, to differentiate them from quarter tones.
In the 1910's and 1920's, there was some discussion as to whether the term "microtone" was appropriate, or if competing terms, such as "heterotone" or "fraction-tone" etc., would be clearer. By the 1930's, with interest in American Blues music booming, and with people like Ivor Darreg becoming active with new tuning methods, many more terms were proposed, but the terms "microtonal" and "xenharmonic" were most prominent in the English language by the end of the decade.
See Category:People for a list of people involved in microtonality or xenharmonics.
See also
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Todo: cleanup Are all these pages still necessary? Could some of them be merged? |
- What is microtonal music
- Why Microtonality?
- A recovering microtonalist's critical reaction to Why Microtonality
- Microtonalists' critical reaction to a recovering microtonalist's critical reaction to Why Microtonality?
- Why microtonality
- Whynotmicrotonality
- Whynotnotmicrotonality
- Whynotnot by Carlos Augusto Scalassara Prando
- Microtone
- Mesotonal
- Approaches to musical tuning
External links
- What is microtonal music? What is xenharmonic music by Margo Schulter, on UnTwelve's website