“On a typical piano, there are 88 keys but only 12 different notes. Moving 12 notes up or down from, say, the note C will put you back on another C an octave above or below,” writes Jeremy Reynolds in Thursday’s (2/27) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “But what about that nebulous region between the C and the C-sharp? … These pitches open up new possibilities…. Once considered fringe, microtones have come to be commonly used in contemporary classical music…. Mathew Rosenblum [is] composer and co-director of the biennial Microtonal Music Festival in Pittsburgh along with fellow composer Eric Moe…. This year’s festival, the third since its inception, includes … concerts … symposiums and lectures…. The festival is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge contemporary series as well as The Andy Warhol Museum, where several of the events will take place. The festival … features music by Lou Harrison, Harry Partch—a 20th-century Western composer and early adopter of microtonal scales—and John Schneider as well as works by local Pittsburgh composers Eric Moe, Amy Williams, Federico Garcia-De Castro and Mr. Rosenblum…. ‘We’re trying to make Pittsburgh a hub for this sort of music,’ Mr. Rosenblum said.”
Change font size
