There is something in this for everyone. It's sweet as hell, but not saccharine. It's fiercely intellectual, but very attractive. It's carefully constructed yet emotive to the bone. It can appeal to lovers of Tavener and Stockhausen alike. Truly the merit of this 31-tone system - and a composer who knows how to use it!
When I hear 31-tone microtonal pieces, the imagery begins to leave my ability to describe, it is very good temperament at conveying otherworldliness and the divine. I got a similar experience when listening to Gamelan, the toning was dissonant and minimal by western tuning standard but it has it's own self-contained sense of harmony and unmistakable identity. I started to feel perhaps 12 tone was shackling our creativity to thinking in just 12 tones.
31-tone is much more consonant than 12 and much more versatile than 19. Mathematically it approximates quarter-comma meantone, with all the right notes for practically every key, naturals, sharps, flats, double sharps, double flats. So appropriately scored, it plays Baroque music very well. You can do Bach’s WTC without the tempering.
Oh, thanks so much for getting into such level of detail of my piece!! Super apreciated! I was especially pleased with the way that the motive you mention built into that "war"-chord, the opposed chains of pure fifths, resolving afterwards. I hope we find resolution for the current conflicts in the world, and soon.
This is a fabulous display of what kinds of microtonal harmonies are possible. Very pleasing to listen to, well written, majestic, and interesting to the ear!
Totally agree! Wonderful musicians indeed, to whom I am so grateful!! Some had already experience with it, while others come from a solid background in historic performance and were helped by their familiarity with meantone tunings. And the brilliant Ere Lievonen supported them very well, preparing a practice recording on the organ, which helped a lot too.
you're everywhere! I gotta thank you for sparking my interest in microtonal music in the first place. I first heard Ganymede about 6 years ago, and I loved the style of music. It was one of the first things I ever liked on TH-cam. Now I'm studying music at university so I've really gotten a taste for the significance of microtonal music. :) Thank you for creating great music and inspiring me!
With a little delay: thank you, dear Sevish! I grew to be a great fan of your wonderful work over the past 1.5 years or so!! And my (7-year-old) son also! Let us keep the work, I know it isn't easy, the ideal thing would be, we were financially free to do our work....
5:05 is one of the most beautiful sonorities I have ever heard. That detuned A over the Eb looks so similar to the familiar lydian sound in 12tet, yet the slight change in how it's tuned (and of course, the way it's orchestrated) make it sound like something completely new, while miraculously avoiding the "unpleasant" reaction we often get when encountering something unknown
Thanks so much! Great to hear it! The Av is the 11th overtone from Eb, with a little error of some -10 cent, one of those still mostly unknown consonances of music...! :-)
The first two chords sung...when that second one hits, the color of it, if that makes any sense, is just.... rich. Unlike your average harmony. The harmony of this piece is....ethereal.
Phenomenal piece through and through! I started my composing journey because of microtonal music and have recently revisited it. 1:49 is probably my favorite chord I’ve ever heard among many throughout. Keep up the incredible work!
@@Fabio_Costa_Musicyou’re very welcome! I tried to initially but I never pursued it further. I’ve written a quasi-microtonal trumpet etude where I instruct the play the natural tone of each note. Aside from that, under certain circumstances, I play microtones on trumpet if you catch my drift.
Incredible everything. The composition, the interpretation. I had been looking for days for such approaches to 31-note equal temperament. I have seen interesting things in electronic & pop music, with new resources that did not exist decades ago. This work has enchanted me, I don't know where to start studying it. Microtonal music associated with modernism is not so easy to come by in scores. I think of the impressive work of Maurice Ohana (who experimented with thirds and quarter tones in a hybrid approach), which has been sporadically recorded, but scores are impossible to get. Congratulations on this work, Fabio Costa. Best regards from Venezuela.
Thanks so much, also in the name of the interpreters of the work, without which this would not have materialized. Microtonality is indeed a world for itself, I hope you have a fascinating and rewarding journey in it! Carissimos saludos para Venezuela, deseando lo mejor en especial este días! Abrazos, all best!
Thanks!! That passage actually comes from my work "Psalms for the Earth" from 2008, also a soprano solo, to Psalm 148: "Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.!" :-)
Thanks so much!! In fact, this performance wouldn't exist were it not for the efforts by the brilliant Ere Lievonen, the support of my esteemed colleague Sander Germanus, director of Huygens Fokker Foundation - and the truly marvellous musicians who embraced this project and sang so beautifully! :-)
I just discovered your music and I'm really impressed by how you manage to approssimate the overtone series with the 31TET while maintaining singable and beautiful melodic lines for the voices. Are you aware of the composer Alberto Colla and his treatises? He theorised an harmonic system based on the overtone series, similiar to Roberto Lupi's Armonie di Gravitazione but more extended, and it would work really really well with 31TET.
this is a lovely piece which uses the subtleties of 31-EQ quite well. this is approachable microtonality suitable for those who fear harshness. fabulous performance!
Oh, thank you so, so much! Yes, they were (and are) exceptional musicians, also my friend and brilliant fellow composer Sander Germanus, who organised all of it! :-)
Alejandro, thank you so much! It took me quite a time and lots of work to figure some of this system's possibilites out.... but great food for thought! Thanks again, best
5:55 woooow what a moment. I am just now dabbling in microtonality and I can't believe what I have been missing all this time! Congrats on this incredible composition! You have earned yourself a sub :)
muito feliz em saber que um compositor brasileiro conseguiu fazer uma música tão tocante e inovadora ao mesmo tempo, muito sucesso! Achei a peça genial, e linda!
Hello Maestro Costa. Ever since I commented here 3 months ago, I’ve been absolutely enamored with this piece. You’ve been of great help and inspiration for me, with this piece. I am a 20 year old composer and I recently just completed my first microtonal piece. It is a string quartet in quarter tone tuning (24EDO).
Thanks for listening! Yeah, it's the "ugly" chord of the piece, because it is a non-harmonic construct with 2 chains of fifths a neutral 3rd apart, which alternate and clash, symbolizing conflict, war etc. :-)
alien beauty such an incredible work both from composer and the ensemble, thank you for that experience! this feels like something really important in music history tbh
Congratulations for being able to make the Fokker organ actually sound decent. It definitely sounds better when it is accompanying other performers than when playing by itself.
@@Fabio_Costa_Music The composition you linked, I like. The sound of that organ, not so much. It has nothing to do with the 31 notes per octave -- the pipes on that organ wouldn't sound very good in 12EDO either. They could sound good as part of a greater registration (in the case case of your composition, supplied by the vocalists), but that organ doesn't have the other pipes needed for that (just 2 ranks each on manuals I and II and on the pedal). The replica of Nicola Vincentino's arciorgano is even more limited in stops, but I think the 1 rank that it has sounds a bit better than those of the Fokker organ. (But then on the other hand, judging from the several available videos of it, the ergonomics of the arciorgano and arcicembalo are terrible, pretty much forcing the separation of use of the notes of the 19 keys per octave manual and the 17 keys per octave manual -- at least the Fokker organ has credible isomorphic keyboards.)
Easily my favourite piece of 31-TET music out there in the world. This music has been highly inspirational to me as a microtonal composer. Thank you, Fabio! (Quick edit: I'm not sure if 7:36 was intentional or not, but that brief moment before the final chord is one of the greatest microtonal resonances I've ever heard.)
So interesting. I've been wanting to listen to something like this for a while, as I've been getting familiar to to microtonal possibilities (thanks to Jacob Collier). I do have a question though, do you think that we can see already a way to create a "theory of harmony" of exquisite temperaments? Should we approach it taking on account the traditional harmonic functions of the common practice? Great work, first of yours that I hear and I'm just going to the next!
Thanks so much for tuning in and sharing your thoughts! Well, there is a lot of theoretical work done in microtonality. Maybe you want to look up this Facebook group? facebook.com/groups/497105067092502/?ref=share Yours might be a very interesting question to discuss there!
Absolutely fabulous! I enjoyed this piece very much. The fact that it is a live performance is just the icing on the cake for me. I know this kind of music is sort of an unusual “fetish” so to speak. but to know there are people out there exploring these musical possibilities warms my heart.
We are definitely on the verge of a new frontier. There's lots of microtonal music that is really terrible, and then there's music like this which is absolutely mind blowing. I definitely can see microtonal making its way into rock and pop music. Since this video was posted 7 years ago, I've already noticed it making inroads into jazz and hiphop. I'm suprised there isn't more microtonal orchestral music. Classical music is where most of the talented musicians exist, but they are also some of the most stubborn ;-) I can imagine them fiercely rejecting micro tonal as it goes against years of training.
Thank you so much for the comment, deeply appreciated! Many folks out there doing great microtonal stuff in many styles. Look up Georg Vogel, Sander Germanus and the Hallucinating Harmonists, Sevish - and numerous others, many in BandCamp. I agree, classical musicians often have a strong resistance to microtonality, maybe for one an aural question but also a lack of exposure or background.
Isso é fabuloso Fábio!!!! Eu nunca tinha ouvido uma peça tão misteriosa, tocante e hipinotizante como essa, simplesmente fenomenal!! Não acredito que descobri isso apenas hoje. Sinto Duruflé, Poulenc e até Ligeti escondidos por trás de toda essa caminhada harmônica 👏👏
Muito obrigado, Felipe! Fico muito contente em ler seu comentário! Há de tudo por detrás de minha - como você tão bem e poeticamente diz - "caminhada harmônica" 🙂A lista é longa, e inclui Poulenc certamente, mas também Schoenberg, Ravel, Berg, Scriabin, Debussy, Strauss e porque não, Brahms, Wagner, Prokofiev, Bartók - Gesualdo, Messiaen, Palestrina, Lasso, Josquin - e tb porque não ainda, Chick Corea, Thelonious Monk... Tom Jobim - e tantos mais. Enfim, tudo o que se ouve ao longo de uma vida e que nos vai ajudando a desvendar ou intuir um pouco mais do que harmonia pode ser. Mas como diz Edison, a parte restante é transpiração, incluindo o estudo dos fundamentos dos sistemas de afinação, como aqui, 31 😀🙏 Abraço!
I am new to the world of fully microtonal music- none of my peers in college were working in microtonal systems, and I left school before studying anything like this in music theory. But recently TH-cam has been throwing microtonal music at me left and right, day in and day out. And the thing is- I’m not even listening to much of what it throws at me, because it can be a little unapproachable to someone new to the sounds it can create. Before this, Jacob Collier was the closest I had ever gotten to this world. I mean, for context, I listen to a decent amount of contemporary classical music and I like to broaden my horizon to the fringes of experimental music of the past century when I can, and I’m extremely comfortable calling most dissonance “consonance”, or at least treating it that way compositionally 😂 But this music has been difficult for me to appreciate. Part of the problem is how bewildering and disorienting microtonal music can be. For someone used to the 12-tone equal temperament system, it sounds like something flitting into and out of tune at first, even if you know that true harmonics are not even tuned to a 12-tone equal temperament. And then suddenly you’re in a new tonal world you’ve literally never experienced before (because it’s sitting comfortably BETWEEN all the notes on your keyboard). And, it’s hard to understand how these different temperaments and divisions of the tone are derived and utilized without having learned about them. This piece however I found incredibly beautiful and approachable. I’m not even going to attempt to read this score for notes, but I *believe* my ear picked out many “color notes” throughout the chords of the piece, calculated dissonances that sone other microtonal works shy away from, perhaps out of a belief that the tuning already feels dissonant to an unfamiliar ear and extra dissonance would sound completely aharmonic. However I found these colored chords to actually feel really familiar and, in many cases “right” in the piece (perhaps because even these “jazz chords” are more in tune with greater divisions of the tone?), and it actually made the microtones more accessible to me, surprisingly. This piece sounded like the amorphous origins of the universe convalescing slowly into matter, and then into life. The use of fragmented lyrics presented as simple sounds notated in IPA further enforced this idea of the creation of order from chaos. And a side note, I’m very picky about my organs, there are only so many organs and so many stops that I can stand to listen to, but this organ’s timbres were absolutely unreal, otherworldly and strangely gorgeous!!!! All in all I’m in love with this piece and will certainly be listening to it quite a bit!!! And maybe after a dozen or so listening I’ll be comfortable enough to try more microtonality 😂
Thank you so so much for your thoughtful comments! I have been schooling my ear for a good 15 years now, after a whole adult life performing as a classically trained musician - and I find this journey just becomes more and more interesting. No doubt the perception of harmonicity is a complex theme, but can be also very intuitive, as you seem to be experiencing. There are many resources for microtonality online, even very active Facebook groups with extremely qualified people exchanging their knowledge there. Maybe something for you? Good journey! :-) Best, Fabio
This is wonderful....illuminating and glorious...I like the 31 eqT. I think this is so much more practical for performance. I knew I had heard of a 31 et system. If only there were a few more instrument like it. How long did the choir take to grasp the 31 pitches?
Thanks so much! :-) The soloists were actually used to either 31 or Renaissance and meantone, and the organist made a practice recording, so it went pretty smoothly! :-)
Indeed a very inspiring piece of music, a little bit as if Ravel had written the beginning of "Daphnis et Chloe" one hundred years later, with the possibilites of 31EDO in mind😊 Would you please allow me one question? In your explanation you describe the first modulation (from C to the slightly sharpened E) as a sequence of 9step-intervals, but when I try to calculate the size of the steps I think this are 11steps-intervals (ditonus & diesis)🤔 But I'm not sure whether I understand your notation correctly, and I'm also not really familiar with calculating in 31EDO, so I beg your pardon; and I'd be very grateful for a help to understand this point🙂
Thank you so much for the kind words. Very interesting you mentioning Daphnis et Chloe, a piece that I heard a lot with deep fascination as a teenager , and a few days ago again after a very long time, (and played through on the piano) just to be reminded how great it is - and how much harmonic series there is in it!! You are absolutely right on the size of the interval too, it is indeed 11 edo-steps, not 9! My mistake, I will correct it, thank you for this! You got the Jackpot! :-) 🙂
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thank you very much for your kind and fast answer! I'd guess you did it in an intuitive way without counting, but I'm happy to gain at least a small insight into the secrets of your musical alchemy😇
@@sarang69 oh no, I did count, and quite a bit for that matter - excel tables and all. It took me a better part of a year to figure out 31-ED2 - or some of it, I should say. Are you a musician too? I watched you sing in Vietnamese, how come? 🙂 PS if it interests you, I uploaded my latest work, in arithmetic frequency sequences, just-intonation in upper harmonic limits.
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thanks a lot for watching my Vietnamese video! My intention was to cause joy to a Vietnamese woman, but I think it actually caused more of a headache🤣And I'm not a real musician, only a teacher for theory and piano... But I see there's a lot to discover in your channel, so I'm looking forward to find more treasures in different tunings🙃
Thanks for the comment! I am not sure precisely what your question about notation is, in any case: I used a somewhat less standard notation with arrows to indicate a diesis or step (1/5-Tone), but Ere Lievonen, organist, used standard quarter-tone signs, as indicated at the huygens-fokker website, which he prefers.
Hi there! I guess the answer is the more you munition yourself with rudiments of musical theory, the further and the deeper you will be able to have the musical/compositional insight which will in turn feed into your musical instincts in a virtuous cycle. So I highly encourage you to delve as deep as possible into musical theory side by side with practice! :-)
something kind of unsettling about this musically it kinda sounds like I'm hearing something that was not meant to be heard gives me the mental image of coming face to face with the true form of God or some eldritch being
Thanks for the message! As for the notation, it's a good question, I think there are many factors behind it. First, it refers somehow to pre-baroque music, particularly the high style of vocal polyphony of the renaissance, with composers such as Ockeghem and Josquin above all, which I studied quite a bit, and they have is a footing in mensural notation which uses exactly these kind of durations (double or quadruple the post-baroque); the very roots of vocal polyphony are in this style. But there is also a relationship with 31-edo, since it is so to speak an extension of 1/4-comma meantone, very frequent around the renaissance. The musicians of the Huygens-Fokker and the foundation itself have a very active report to old music, such as Vicentino and others, so dealing with this kind of notation is no problem at all for them, on the contrary, they are well trained and proficient at it. Another factor would be that the piece asks for a deliberate tempo pretty much in function of the harmonic material, in other words, the drive is not rhythmic but rather harmonic, so I felt the notation could be conducive to that, particularly in the end part. In the beginning I chose the eight notes to be the underlying maximum common divisor, instead of sixteenth notes, because again I felt it would best convey the character I was loking for. I hope that gives some clarifying background for your interesting question.
Nice, thanks a lot. You'll surely be rewarded with microtonal music, there's a lot out there! Right now I´d recommend (other than my own stuff here) Juhani Nuorvala violin sonata and works by Sander Germanus, particularly Organic Movements, only to name a couple, there are many more! Enjoy
There is something in this for everyone. It's sweet as hell, but not saccharine. It's fiercely intellectual, but very attractive. It's carefully constructed yet emotive to the bone. It can appeal to lovers of Tavener and Stockhausen alike. Truly the merit of this 31-tone system - and a composer who knows how to use it!
Thank you so so much for the kind and generous words, also in the name of the wonderful interpreters I am so grateful for! :-)
This music is underrated right now, in 200 years people will understand the greatness of these pieces.
Too much of an honor, but thank you!
Definitely
yea man
🤣
lol, that’s what they said about Schoenberg…
When I hear 31-tone microtonal pieces, the imagery begins to leave my ability to describe, it is very good temperament at conveying otherworldliness and the divine.
I got a similar experience when listening to Gamelan, the toning was dissonant and minimal by western tuning standard but it has it's own self-contained sense of harmony and unmistakable identity.
I started to feel perhaps 12 tone was shackling our creativity to thinking in just 12 tones.
Many thanks for stopping by, listening and commenting! Deeply appreciated!
31-tone is much more consonant than 12 and much more versatile than 19. Mathematically it approximates quarter-comma meantone, with all the right notes for practically every key, naturals, sharps, flats, double sharps, double flats. So appropriately scored, it plays Baroque music very well. You can do Bach’s WTC without the tempering.
I love how IPA notation and music notation is mixed. It makes me happy.
the harmonics 9-10-11 in the melody of the world section is my favorite part, it feels surprisingly resolved and satisfying
Oh, thanks so much for getting into such level of detail of my piece!! Super apreciated! I was especially pleased with the way that the motive you mention built into that "war"-chord, the opposed chains of pure fifths, resolving afterwards. I hope we find resolution for the current conflicts in the world, and soon.
This is a fabulous display of what kinds of microtonal harmonies are possible. Very pleasing to listen to, well written, majestic, and interesting to the ear!
Stephen, I never replied to you, what a shame!! So now, better later than never: THANKS!!!!
Harmony go brrrrr
Jeez, what great performers. To be able to hit those microtones so easily.
Totally agree! Wonderful musicians indeed, to whom I am so grateful!! Some had already experience with it, while others come from a solid background in historic performance and were helped by their familiarity with meantone tunings. And the brilliant Ere Lievonen supported them very well, preparing a practice recording on the organ, which helped a lot too.
solid harmonies!
you're everywhere! I gotta thank you for sparking my interest in microtonal music in the first place. I first heard Ganymede about 6 years ago, and I loved the style of music. It was one of the first things I ever liked on TH-cam. Now I'm studying music at university so I've really gotten a taste for the significance of microtonal music. :) Thank you for creating great music and inspiring me!
With a little delay: thank you, dear Sevish! I grew to be a great fan of your wonderful work over the past 1.5 years or so!! And my (7-year-old) son also! Let us keep the work, I know it isn't easy, the ideal thing would be, we were financially free to do our work....
This music has every color I have never seen before. The most brilliant bright sounds the ear could imagine. This is a masterpiece
Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it!
5:05 is one of the most beautiful sonorities I have ever heard. That detuned A over the Eb looks so similar to the familiar lydian sound in 12tet, yet the slight change in how it's tuned (and of course, the way it's orchestrated) make it sound like something completely new, while miraculously avoiding the "unpleasant" reaction we often get when encountering something unknown
Thanks so much! Great to hear it! The Av is the 11th overtone from Eb, with a little error of some -10 cent, one of those still mostly unknown consonances of music...! :-)
Absolutly love the harmony! there should be more written in 31-tone temperament
Thank you!!
Love how the beginning mimics the harmonic series!
Seth Hobi I was thinking the same thing
That's why it's so beautiful haha
Hardly a mimic tbh
Nature is amazingly beautiful!
@@teddydunn3513 No, it's a really good mimic. No idea what you're talking about
The first two chords sung...when that second one hits, the color of it, if that makes any sense, is just.... rich. Unlike your average harmony. The harmony of this piece is....ethereal.
Thank you, glad to hear of your impressions!
4:56 and onwards is just out-of-this-world beautiful
Thank you!!
I don't understand what anyone is talking about in here, but it all sure sounds cool!
Phenomenal piece through and through! I started my composing journey because of microtonal music and have recently revisited it. 1:49 is probably my favorite chord I’ve ever heard among many throughout. Keep up the incredible work!
Many, many thanks! 🙂 So, do you play microtonally on the trumpet too?
@@Fabio_Costa_Musicyou’re very welcome! I tried to initially but I never pursued it further. I’ve written a quasi-microtonal trumpet etude where I instruct the play the natural tone of each note. Aside from that, under certain circumstances, I play microtones on trumpet if you catch my drift.
wow 6:21 is something else
bar 67 is mindblowing
Kicks the shit out of ordinary classical music.
Incredible everything. The composition, the interpretation. I had been looking for days for such approaches to 31-note equal temperament. I have seen interesting things in electronic & pop music, with new resources that did not exist decades ago. This work has enchanted me, I don't know where to start studying it. Microtonal music associated with modernism is not so easy to come by in scores. I think of the impressive work of Maurice Ohana (who experimented with thirds and quarter tones in a hybrid approach), which has been sporadically recorded, but scores are impossible to get. Congratulations on this work, Fabio Costa. Best regards from Venezuela.
Thanks so much, also in the name of the interpreters of the work, without which this would not have materialized. Microtonality is indeed a world for itself, I hope you have a fascinating and rewarding journey in it! Carissimos saludos para Venezuela, deseando lo mejor en especial este días! Abrazos, all best!
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thank you very much for the response and good wishes. These are very difficult days here and music is always a refuge.
The Soprano line from 4:27 - 4:55 is so gorgeous. I listen to the whole thing sometimes just for that line.
Thanks!! That passage actually comes from my work "Psalms for the Earth" from 2008, also a soprano solo, to Psalm 148: "Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars.
Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies.!"
:-)
th-cam.com/video/Geq-GU2EPJU/w-d-xo.html
Back after a year. Still can't believe this performance exists
Thanks so much!! In fact, this performance wouldn't exist were it not for the efforts by the brilliant Ere Lievonen, the support of my esteemed colleague Sander Germanus, director of Huygens Fokker Foundation - and the truly marvellous musicians who embraced this project and sang so beautifully! :-)
Lovee the bending of chords a whole tone apart. Really cinematic.
I just discovered your music and I'm really impressed by how you manage to approssimate the overtone series with the 31TET while maintaining singable and beautiful melodic lines for the voices. Are you aware of the composer Alberto Colla and his treatises? He theorised an harmonic system based on the overtone series, similiar to Roberto Lupi's Armonie di Gravitazione but more extended, and it would work really really well with 31TET.
Hi, many thanks for your comment and feedback. I wasn't aware of the names you mentioned, thanks for the info.
Oh god. This is magnificant. That colours of microtones ah... Thanks for masterpiece!
Merci, my friend! It's really wonderful to read your feedback 🙂There's a whole fascinating world in microtonality to be explored...! Best, Fabio
Wow I mean this is amazing to listen to not just intellectually but emotionally and the performance is just brilliant
Thank you! Yes, I was really lucky to have such wonderful interpreters.. :-)
this is a lovely piece which uses the subtleties of 31-EQ quite well. this is approachable microtonality suitable for those who fear harshness. fabulous performance!
Isn't this organ 53TET? (there have been bosanquet keyboards made to 31 and 19TET but AFAIK this instrument is 53
@@ericoschmitt it’s 31-TET
It's crazy that an actual organ was built with this system. As if an enharmonic harpsichord or piano is not crazy enough.
Well, not so crazy considering the Netherlands has a historical prominence in things science...! :-)
just oh my god..
Belated many many thanx!!
One of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard.
Thank you so much!
Wow, this is unbelievable! I think I need to study 31 ET...
Thank you!! Well, there is also 17, 19, 22... Many fantastic tuning systems out there! :-)
tears burning down my eyes, what an elegant score, and what a piece, omg the performers 100/100, sublime
Oh, thank you so, so much! Yes, they were (and are) exceptional musicians, also my friend and brilliant fellow composer Sander Germanus, who organised all of it! :-)
Why this is not on Spotify? It's great.
You may have just answered your own question there
How high in a musical way you have to be for composing such a majestic piece with microtones..., simply; wonderful.
Alejandro, thank you so much! It took me quite a time and lots of work to figure some of this system's possibilites out.... but great food for thought! Thanks again, best
this music makes me drool
@@fesh I hope that's a good thing...
This reminds me of music from the future.
5:55 woooow what a moment. I am just now dabbling in microtonality and I can't believe what I have been missing all this time! Congrats on this incredible composition! You have earned yourself a sub :)
Thank you so much! I'm happy to read your feedback! Best, Fabio
this is incredible
Thank you so much! :-)
muito feliz em saber que um compositor brasileiro conseguiu fazer uma música tão tocante e inovadora ao mesmo tempo, muito sucesso! Achei a peça genial, e linda!
Puxa, muito obrigado! Fico honradissimo com o comentário! Vc também é compositor? Grande abraço!
Hello Maestro Costa. Ever since I commented here 3 months ago, I’ve been absolutely enamored with this piece.
You’ve been of great help and inspiration for me, with this piece. I am a 20 year old composer and I recently just completed my first microtonal piece. It is a string quartet in quarter tone tuning (24EDO).
it like beeing in space for the first time. wow....
Thanks, I am glad to hear of your experience listening! :-)
This has brought tears to my eyes never in my life have I heard such perfect harmonies
I am so glad to hear it! Just for my curiosity, how did you get here? :-) Thanks so much!
@@Fabio_Costa_Music I searched microtonal choir on TH-cam.
@@Chris-vr8cd allright! Thanks, best to you. ;-)
Can we talk about how genuinely astounding the chord at 5:58 is?
Thanks for listening! Yeah, it's the "ugly" chord of the piece, because it is a non-harmonic construct with 2 chains of fifths a neutral 3rd apart, which alternate and clash, symbolizing conflict, war etc.
:-)
Absolute genius man
I keep coming back to this, the chord resolution at 1:35 or so gives me goosebumps every time!
Thank you!
literally had chills throughout the whole thing (in a good way)
amazing,,,
Wonderful to hear it, thank you so much!
alien beauty
such an incredible work both from composer and the ensemble, thank you for that experience!
this feels like something really important in music history tbh
Very belated response from me, but: thank you so much! :-)
Congratulations for being able to make the Fokker organ actually sound decent. It definitely sounds better when it is accompanying other performers than when playing by itself.
Thank you, but there are many things out there making the organ sound great, take this for instance:
th-cam.com/video/C5tZx_tJFQQ/w-d-xo.html
;-)
@@Fabio_Costa_Music The composition you linked, I like. The sound of that organ, not so much. It has nothing to do with the 31 notes per octave -- the pipes on that organ wouldn't sound very good in 12EDO either. They could sound good as part of a greater registration (in the case case of your composition, supplied by the vocalists), but that organ doesn't have the other pipes needed for that (just 2 ranks each on manuals I and II and on the pedal).
The replica of Nicola Vincentino's arciorgano is even more limited in stops, but I think the 1 rank that it has sounds a bit better than those of the Fokker organ. (But then on the other hand, judging from the several available videos of it, the ergonomics of the arciorgano and arcicembalo are terrible, pretty much forcing the separation of use of the notes of the 19 keys per octave manual and the 17 keys per octave manual -- at least the Fokker organ has credible isomorphic keyboards.)
Absoluty beautiful ! Very dreamy too (and sensations not possible to write)
This is great
Thank you! :-)
Easily my favourite piece of 31-TET music out there in the world. This music has been highly inspirational to me as a microtonal composer. Thank you, Fabio!
(Quick edit: I'm not sure if 7:36 was intentional or not, but that brief moment before the final chord is one of the greatest microtonal resonances I've ever heard.)
Thanks so much for this feedback, Marcus! So great to hear it :-) all best!
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thank you, Fabio!
This was intense and beautiful
Thank you so much, also in the name of the great interpreters! Very appreciated.
Breathtaking piece 😯
Thank you so very much for the nice feedback! :-)
Amazing composition
Thank you!
Majestic
Beautiful to see this temperament used masterfully, it can be so colourful :)
Thanks a lot! Yes, 31 approximates so many intervals of the overtone series so well, the possibilities are endless!!
Astounding
Many thanks indeed! Also in name of my wonderful colleagues who performed the work! 🙂
Notes in 31-edo with casual accidental nomenclature:
C
C‡
C#
Db
Dd
D
D‡
D#
Eb
Ed
E
E‡
Fd
F
F‡
F#
Gb
Gd
G
G‡
G#
Ab
Ad
A
A‡
A#
Bb
Bd
B
B‡
Cd
Great composition!
Thank you a lot, I appreciate your feedback! :-)
Magnificent!
This is really amazing!! Sounds kind of like ravels Daphnis et chloe
Thank you!
Great (microtonal) tune!!! I love it!
Absolutely beautiful and haunting
Super nice. You are a genious.
Very belatedly, sorry: thank you!! Glad you enjoyed it!
So interesting. I've been wanting to listen to something like this for a while, as I've been getting familiar to to microtonal possibilities (thanks to Jacob Collier). I do have a question though, do you think that we can see already a way to create a "theory of harmony" of exquisite temperaments? Should we approach it taking on account the traditional harmonic functions of the common practice? Great work, first of yours that I hear and I'm just going to the next!
Thanks so much for tuning in and sharing your thoughts! Well, there is a lot of theoretical work done in microtonality. Maybe you want to look up this Facebook group? facebook.com/groups/497105067092502/?ref=share
Yours might be a very interesting question to discuss there!
Insane.. amazing
Absolutely fabulous! I enjoyed this piece very much. The fact that it is a live performance is just the icing on the cake for me. I know this kind of music is sort of an unusual “fetish” so to speak. but to know there are people out there exploring these musical possibilities warms my heart.
Thank you so much! There are many people out there right now exploring microtonality though! And growing ever more. Heartwarming to me too! :-)
this is a masterpiece!!!!
Too much of an honor, but thank you so much. Wouldn't exist without the support of my colleagues! :-)
We are definitely on the verge of a new frontier. There's lots of microtonal music that is really terrible, and then there's music like this which is absolutely mind blowing. I definitely can see microtonal making its way into rock and pop music. Since this video was posted 7 years ago, I've already noticed it making inroads into jazz and hiphop. I'm suprised there isn't more microtonal orchestral music. Classical music is where most of the talented musicians exist, but they are also some of the most stubborn ;-) I can imagine them fiercely rejecting micro tonal as it goes against years of training.
Thank you so much for the comment, deeply appreciated! Many folks out there doing great microtonal stuff in many styles. Look up Georg Vogel, Sander Germanus and the Hallucinating Harmonists, Sevish - and numerous others, many in BandCamp.
I agree, classical musicians often have a strong resistance to microtonality, maybe for one an aural question but also a lack of exposure or background.
this is so pleasing
Thanks!
Very interesting.
I love this!
Thanks so much, I am glad!
This sounds like the music for the video game Destiny! Very cool
Isso é fabuloso Fábio!!!! Eu nunca tinha ouvido uma peça tão misteriosa, tocante e hipinotizante como essa, simplesmente fenomenal!! Não acredito que descobri isso apenas hoje. Sinto Duruflé, Poulenc e até Ligeti escondidos por trás de toda essa caminhada harmônica 👏👏
Muito obrigado, Felipe! Fico muito contente em ler seu comentário! Há de tudo por detrás de minha - como você tão bem e poeticamente diz - "caminhada harmônica" 🙂A lista é longa, e inclui Poulenc certamente, mas também Schoenberg, Ravel, Berg, Scriabin, Debussy, Strauss e porque não, Brahms, Wagner, Prokofiev, Bartók - Gesualdo, Messiaen, Palestrina, Lasso, Josquin - e tb porque não ainda, Chick Corea, Thelonious Monk... Tom Jobim - e tantos mais. Enfim, tudo o que se ouve ao longo de uma vida e que nos vai ajudando a desvendar ou intuir um pouco mais do que harmonia pode ser. Mas como diz Edison, a parte restante é transpiração, incluindo o estudo dos fundamentos dos sistemas de afinação, como aqui, 31 😀🙏 Abraço!
@@Fabio_Costa_Music realmente muito bem dito! O músico é aquilo que ele ouve, quanto mais melhor a "afinação" haha. Abraços! 👊
Wow, fascinating
Many thanks!
I am new to the world of fully microtonal music- none of my peers in college were working in microtonal systems, and I left school before studying anything like this in music theory. But recently TH-cam has been throwing microtonal music at me left and right, day in and day out. And the thing is- I’m not even listening to much of what it throws at me, because it can be a little unapproachable to someone new to the sounds it can create. Before this, Jacob Collier was the closest I had ever gotten to this world. I mean, for context, I listen to a decent amount of contemporary classical music and I like to broaden my horizon to the fringes of experimental music of the past century when I can, and I’m extremely comfortable calling most dissonance “consonance”, or at least treating it that way compositionally 😂 But this music has been difficult for me to appreciate. Part of the problem is how bewildering and disorienting microtonal music can be. For someone used to the 12-tone equal temperament system, it sounds like something flitting into and out of tune at first, even if you know that true harmonics are not even tuned to a 12-tone equal temperament. And then suddenly you’re in a new tonal world you’ve literally never experienced before (because it’s sitting comfortably BETWEEN all the notes on your keyboard). And, it’s hard to understand how these different temperaments and divisions of the tone are derived and utilized without having learned about them.
This piece however I found incredibly beautiful and approachable. I’m not even going to attempt to read this score for notes, but I *believe* my ear picked out many “color notes” throughout the chords of the piece, calculated dissonances that sone other microtonal works shy away from, perhaps out of a belief that the tuning already feels dissonant to an unfamiliar ear and extra dissonance would sound completely aharmonic. However I found these colored chords to actually feel really familiar and, in many cases “right” in the piece (perhaps because even these “jazz chords” are more in tune with greater divisions of the tone?), and it actually made the microtones more accessible to me, surprisingly.
This piece sounded like the amorphous origins of the universe convalescing slowly into matter, and then into life. The use of fragmented lyrics presented as simple sounds notated in IPA further enforced this idea of the creation of order from chaos.
And a side note, I’m very picky about my organs, there are only so many organs and so many stops that I can stand to listen to, but this organ’s timbres were absolutely unreal, otherworldly and strangely gorgeous!!!! All in all I’m in love with this piece and will certainly be listening to it quite a bit!!!
And maybe after a dozen or so listening I’ll be comfortable enough to try more microtonality 😂
Thank you so so much for your thoughtful comments! I have been schooling my ear for a good 15 years now, after a whole adult life performing as a classically trained musician - and I find this journey just becomes more and more interesting. No doubt the perception of harmonicity is a complex theme, but can be also very intuitive, as you seem to be experiencing. There are many resources for microtonality online, even very active Facebook groups with extremely qualified people exchanging their knowledge there. Maybe something for you?
Good journey! :-)
Best,
Fabio
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thanks for the advice and insights!! And again, fantastic piece, bravo!! 😄
really good!
Wonderful, Fabio!
...thank you so much!
This is wonderful. I could see this being used in a Sci-fi or Fantasy movie soundtrack. Keep up the good work, stranger! ;-)
Hey stranger, I think I know you from somewhere! :-) I hope all is well there! Thanks!
I've come back to this piece for quite a while now. Can't help saying how beautiful this is!
Thank you so much, very appreciated! :--)
Absolutely fantastic!
Obrigado, Érico!!
Super!!!
Great composition!
Thank you!!
wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow woooooooooooooooooooooooow
relaxing
This is wonderful....illuminating and glorious...I like the 31 eqT. I think this is so much more practical for performance. I knew I had heard of a 31 et system. If only there were a few more instrument like it. How long did the choir take to grasp the 31 pitches?
Thanks so much! :-) The soloists were actually used to either 31 or Renaissance and meantone, and the organist made a practice recording, so it went pretty smoothly! :-)
Indeed a very inspiring piece of music, a little bit as if Ravel had written the beginning of "Daphnis et Chloe" one hundred years later, with the possibilites of 31EDO in mind😊 Would you please allow me one question? In your explanation you describe the first modulation (from C to the slightly sharpened E) as a sequence of 9step-intervals, but when I try to calculate the size of the steps I think this are 11steps-intervals (ditonus & diesis)🤔 But I'm not sure whether I understand your notation correctly, and I'm also not really familiar with calculating in 31EDO, so I beg your pardon; and I'd be very grateful for a help to understand this point🙂
Thank you so much for the kind words. Very interesting you mentioning Daphnis et Chloe, a piece that I heard a lot with deep fascination as a teenager , and a few days ago again after a very long time, (and played through on the piano) just to be reminded how great it is - and how much harmonic series there is in it!! You are absolutely right on the size of the interval too, it is indeed 11 edo-steps, not 9! My mistake, I will correct it, thank you for this! You got the Jackpot! :-)
🙂
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thank you very much for your kind and fast answer! I'd guess you did it in an intuitive way without counting, but I'm happy to gain at least a small insight into the secrets of your musical alchemy😇
@@sarang69 oh no, I did count, and quite a bit for that matter - excel tables and all. It took me a better part of a year to figure out 31-ED2 - or some of it, I should say. Are you a musician too? I watched you sing in Vietnamese, how come? 🙂
PS if it interests you, I uploaded my latest work, in arithmetic frequency sequences, just-intonation in upper harmonic limits.
@@Fabio_Costa_Music Thanks a lot for watching my Vietnamese video! My intention was to cause joy to a Vietnamese woman, but I think it actually caused more of a headache🤣And I'm not a real musician, only a teacher for theory and piano... But I see there's a lot to discover in your channel, so I'm looking forward to find more treasures in different tunings🙃
Parabéns!! Fantástico!
O Paul Vandervoort me contou que tens um Daskin dele, já escreveu algo pra piano jankó?
Obrigado Érico! Pois é, tenho um Jankó que ele fez, uma fase pratiquei bastante, mas agora anda encostado, o tempo é tão curto... abs
👍👍👍
7:36
How did you notate this? I think this piece is brilliant, and I would love to play around with composition in 31 EDO.
Thanks for the comment! I am not sure precisely what your question about notation is, in any case: I used a somewhat less standard notation with arrows to indicate a diesis or step (1/5-Tone), but Ere Lievonen, organist, used standard quarter-tone signs, as indicated at the huygens-fokker website, which he prefers.
Is this on any streaming services
Hi, yes, on BandCamp!
Great! =)
Thanks!
Great Music !
How can I learn to compose xenharminic music as someone who has a rudimentary understanding of music theory?
Hi there! I guess the answer is the more you munition yourself with rudiments of musical theory, the further and the deeper you will be able to have the musical/compositional insight which will in turn feed into your musical instincts in a virtuous cycle. So I highly encourage you to delve as deep as possible into musical theory side by side with practice! :-)
is there a download of this recording available anywhere?
something kind of unsettling about this
musically it kinda sounds like I'm hearing something that was not meant to be heard
gives me the mental image of coming face to face with the true form of God or some eldritch being
Wow, I'll take it as a good thing! :-) This is all harmonic series really, so in a way, just (relatively) simple physics... :-) Thanks for listening!
I heard there was a secret chord
Hahaha, hopefully it pleased Him :-)
It also reminds me of World of Warcraft, a computer game with awesome music. Some of that music is microtonal and is similar to Aphoristic Madrigal.
What music in world of warcraft is microtonal?
sounds kindof arabic at some points
The microtonality is real cool, but why on earth these confusing and long time signatures?
Thanks for the message!
As for the notation, it's a good question, I think there are many factors behind it.
First, it refers somehow to pre-baroque music, particularly the high style of vocal polyphony of the renaissance, with composers such as Ockeghem and Josquin above all, which I studied quite a bit, and they have is a footing in mensural notation which uses exactly these kind of durations (double or quadruple the post-baroque); the very roots of vocal polyphony are in this style.
But there is also a relationship with 31-edo, since it is so to speak an extension of 1/4-comma meantone, very frequent around the renaissance. The musicians of the Huygens-Fokker and the foundation itself have a very active report to old music, such as Vicentino and others, so dealing with this kind of notation is no problem at all for them, on the contrary, they are well trained and proficient at it.
Another factor would be that the piece asks for a deliberate tempo pretty much in function of the harmonic material, in other words, the drive is not rhythmic but rather harmonic, so I felt the notation could be conducive to that, particularly in the end part. In the beginning I chose the eight notes to be the underlying maximum common divisor, instead of sixteenth notes, because again I felt it would best convey the character I was loking for.
I hope that gives some clarifying background for your interesting question.
Quite solid… i’ll give other chance to microtonality
Nice, thanks a lot. You'll surely be rewarded with microtonal music, there's a lot out there! Right now I´d recommend (other than my own stuff here) Juhani Nuorvala violin sonata and works by Sander Germanus, particularly Organic Movements, only to name a couple, there are many more! Enjoy