The Well-Tuned Piano

Last updated

A 1987 performance of The Well-Tuned Piano in conjunction with Zazeela's The Magenta Lights was released on DVD in 2000. The well tuned piano dvd.jpg
A 1987 performance of The Well-Tuned Piano in conjunction with Zazeela's The Magenta Lights was released on DVD in 2000.

The Well-Tuned Piano is an ongoing improvisatory solo piano work begun in 1964 by La Monte Young. Young has never considered the composition or performance of this piece finished, and he has performed it differently several times since its debut in 1974. [1] The composition requires a piano tuned in just intonation. [2] A 1987 performance of the piece was released on DVD in 2000.

Contents

A typical performance lasts five to six hours. [3] and is performed within the context of Marian Zazeela's light art installation The Magenta Lights. [4] The Guardian described it as "one of the great achievements of 20th-century music." [1]

Inspiration and influence

Young gives credit to Dennis Johnson, a former schoolmate and composer from UCLA, for inspiring The Well-Tuned Piano. Johnson wrote an extensive, improvisatory, solo piano piece titled November in 1959, a few years before Young began working on The Well-Tuned Piano. Although the piece is said to be as long as six hours, the tape recording made in 1962 cuts off suddenly after only an hour and a half. [5]

Young has also been influential to many composers and musicians throughout his life. Dennis Johnson cites Young as an influence in his composition The Second Machine, which is based on four single pitches of Young's Four Dreams of China. [6] Composer and critic Kyle Gann [7] has said that The Well-Tuned Piano "may well be the most important American piano work since Charles Ives's Concord Sonata , in size, in influence, and in revolutionary innovation". [2] Gann has also called the piece "the most important piano work of the late 20th century." [8] In his book Four Musical Minimalists, Keith Potter states that The Well-Tuned Piano is significant "in the contexts of musical minimalism, of musics working at the interface between composition and improvisation, and of twentieth-century music for solo piano". [9]

Music

Tuning

Western piano tuning vs. Young's tuning for The Well-Tuned Piano [10]
Piano
key		12-TET
(cents)		WTP
(≈ cents)		 Johnston's
notation 		Interval
ratio 		Frequency
(≈ Hz)
E♭000000.00E♭ 1/1 297.989
E♮100176.65F 7 rightside up.png ++567/512330.000
F200203.91F+ 9/8 335.238
F♯300239.61G 7 rightside up.png 7 rightside up.png ♭+147/128342.222
G400470.78A 7 rightside up.png ♭+21/16391.111
G♯500443.52A 7 rightside up.png 7 rightside up.png ♭++1323/1024385.000
A600674.69B 7 rightside up.png ♭+189/128440.000
B♭700701.96B♭ 3/2 446.984
B♮800737.65C 7 rightside up.png 7 rightside up.png ♭+49/32456.296
C900968.83D 7 rightside up.png ♭ 7/4 521.481
C♯1000941.56D 7 rightside up.png 7 rightside up.png ♭+441/256513.333
D11001172.74E 7 rightside up.png ♭+63/32586.667
E♭12001200.00E♭ 2/1 595.979
Note that the 12-TET cents are all relative to Young's E♭
that is 74.69 cents flat, which puts A at exactly 440 Hz. [11]
The Well-Tuned Piano
Magic chord (as played). [12]

La Monte Young's piano tuning is an essential aspect of The Well-Tuned Piano. Young dates the piece as "1964–73–81–Present" to indicate the work's development through its tunings, where in E was retuned in 1973, and C♯ and G♯ were retuned in 1981. [13] Young had kept the tuning a secret until 1993, when he allowed Kyle Gann to publish the details. [14] [15]

Young has always performed The Well-Tuned Piano on an Imperial Bösendorfer piano, which is larger than a standard acoustic grand piano, spanning eight complete octaves, with nine notes extending the bass of the piano. [16] Young describes the pitches of his tuning as being, "derived from various partials of the overtone series of an inferred low fundamental E-flat reference ten octaves below the lowest E-flat on the Bösendorfer Imperial". [17]

Harmonic number13792149631471894415671323
Johnston's notation EbBbD7bF+A7b+C77b+E7b+G77b+B7b+D77b+F7++A77b++

As explained by Kyle Gann, [14] Young's system uses 7-limit tuning, a just intonation system where every pitch class in the scale is constructed from a previously constructed pitch by taking only up to the seventh pitch from its overtone series or undertone series. Young cites a distaste for the fifth harmonic, so Young uses only overtone and undertone numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 in the construction of his scale. A consequence to this is that the ratio between the frequencies of any two pitches is a rational number whose numerator and denominator have prime factors consisting only of 2, 3, and 7. Factors of 2 correspond to octave shifts, so in tuning theory ratios are normalized to lie within the octave 1/1–2/1 by multiplying or dividing through by powers of 2.

All of the pitches in Young's scale can be placed in a two-dimensional grid, [18] where pitches on the horizontal axis are related by a 3/2 ratio (a perfect fifth) and pitches on the vertical axis are related by a 7/4 ratio (a harmonic seventh). This collection of 12 pitches is then assigned to the keys of a standard piano keyboard in such a way that pitches with a 3/2 ratio tend to span 8 keys, which in standard piano tuning forms a perfect fifth. Each octave of the piano follows the same sequence of intervals. The following table shows the grid along with the assignment to piano keys:

BF♯C♯G♯
49/32147/128441/2561323/1024
CGDAE
7/421/1663/32189/128567/512
E♭B♭F
1/13/29/8

The A key on the piano is tuned to A440, and the rest of the keys are tuned relative to this. This puts Young's Eb key 74.69 cents flatter than the Eb in equal temperament with the same A. It should be stressed that the key names are not meant to be tunings of the standard pitch names, and they are merely assignments of pitches to conveniently located piano keys. Some pitches, for example G♯ and G, are acoustically in reverse order.

The primary consonant intervals in Young's scale are: [19]

RatioCentsName
3/2701.96 Perfect fifth
4/3498.05 Perfect fourth
7/4968.83 Septimal minor seventh
7/6266.87 Septimal minor third
9/7435.08 Septimal major third
12/7933.13 Septimal major sixth
14/9764.92 Septimal minor sixth

In 12-TET, all intervals, when measured in cents, are a multiple of 100. According to Kyle Gann, when listening to The Well-Tuned Piano "you spend the first four hours becoming familiar with the cozy septimal minor third, the expansive septimal major third, and by the fifth hour you can hardly remember that intervals had ever been any other sizes." [19] In 5-limit tuning, the major third is usually a 5/4 ratio ( Play ⓘ ), which at 386.31 cents is closer to a 12-TET 400 cent major third than the 9/7 septimal major third ( Play ⓘ ) at 435.08 cents. [10] As another point for comparison, in three-limit tuning the Pythagorean major third is an 81/64 ratio, which is 407.8 cents.

A tuning is a choice of pitches in a scale, which lets one judge the intonation of pitches, and a temperament is a tuning where compromises are made to an ideal tuning (like just intonation) to meet other requirements, such as being able to use any pitch as the tonal center for Western harmonic practice. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier took full advantage of the development of a temperament where all 24 major and minor scales were reasonably usable. In contrast, Young's The Well-Tuned Piano is organized around certain fixed non-transposable sets of pitches that function as scales, such as the Magic Chord. While just intonation eliminates rough beating between the harmonics of two pitches, the trade-off is the loss of general transposability to other tonal centers due to 2, 3, and 7 being coprime and pianos having a physical limit to the number of keys per octave.

Form

The Well-Tuned Piano, being improvisatory in nature, as well as ever-changing, has no specific form. The closest a listener can come to understanding the structure of Young's piece is by studying the liner notes from the 1981 Gramavision recording. Within the liner notes, Young breaks the performance into seven major sections and further deconstructs each of those sections into multiple subsections. The sections and subsections are not notated or described, but simply listed along with the duration of each section so a listener can easily follow along. [20] The seven major sections are as follows:

  1. Opening Chord (00:00:00–00:21:47)
  2. Magic Chord (00:21:47–01:02:29)
  3. Magic Opening Chord (01:02:29–1:23:54)
  4. Magic Harmonic Rainforest Chord (1:23:54–03:05:31)
  5. Romantic Chord (03:05:31–04:01:25)
  6. Elysian Fields (04:01:25–04:59:41)
  7. Ending (04:59:41–05:01:22)

The subsections are often called themes, and each is vastly and descriptively labeled. A few examples are "The Flying Carpet", which belongs in The Romantic Chord section, and "Sunshine in The Old Country", which is found in The Magic Opening Chord section. Each theme is made up of a specific, unique combination of pitches. However the smaller themes found in one larger section will often have many pitches in common. [21]

Performance history

Young gave the world premiere of The Well-Tuned Piano in Rome in 1974, ten years after the creation of the piece. Previously, Young had presented it as a recorded work. In 1975, Young premiered it in New York with eleven live performances during the months of April and May. As of October 25, 1981, the date of the Gramavision recording of The Well-Tuned Piano, Young had performed the piece 55 times. [22] The only other person to ever perform the piece besides Young is his disciple, composer and pianist Michael Harrison. Young taught Harrison the piece, which not only allowed him to perform it, but also to aid in tuning and preparing the piano for performances. [23] In 1987, Young performed the piece again as part of a larger concert series that included many more of his works. [24] This performance, on May 10, 1987, was videotaped and released on DVD in 2000 on Young's label, Just Dreams. [8]

Each realization is a separately titled and independent composition, with over 60 realizations to date. The World première was presented in Rome in 1974. The American première was presented in New York City in 1975.

Chords from The Well-Tuned Piano are sometimes presented as sound art environments. These chords include The Opening Chord (1981), The Magic Chord (1984), The Magic Opening Chord (1984).

On 3 January 2016, the 25 October 1981 Gramavision recording of The Well-Tuned Piano was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 (followed by excerpts of other Young compositions and collaborations) between 1 am and 7 am (GMT). [25]

Reviews

The playing waxes and wanes, with the slow parts ritualistically simple and repetitive and the fast parts whirling and flurring notes together into eerie, independently generated voices ... This sort of music is certainly not for everyone, and even for those who respond to it, there is sometimes the question of whether it should be concentrated on, meditated upon or simply lived through. Whatever one does, Mr. Young remains a fascinating if austere figure in our musical life.

—  John Rockwell, The New York Times (1975), [26]

The grand performing space was dimly lighted with magenta lights. There were no chairs. Listeners wore no shoes, reclining on plush white rugs….The work lasts about four hours, and listeners are encouraged to attend numerous performances. This listener's consciousness became a little restless after two hours of overtonal influence, but Mr. Young has clearly achieved something extraordinary, creating unexplored regions of sound.

—  Edward Rothstein, New York Times (1981), [27]

My personal experience with The Well-Tuned Piano was one of just such heightened concentration...the flow of momentum marshaled the vibrations of air in the room, slowly making the ear aware of sounds that weren't actually being played….I thought I heard foghorns, the roar of machinery, wood blocks, a didgeridoo, and most powerfully, the low, low vibration of the 18-cycles-per-minute E-flat that the ear supplied as the "missing fundamental" of the piano's overtones.

— Kyle Gann, The Village Voice (1987), [28]

Recordings

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Just intonation</span> Musical tuning based on pure intervals

In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals consist of tones from a single harmonic series of an implied fundamental. For example, in the diagram, if the notes G3 and C4 are tuned as members of the harmonic series of the lowest C, their frequencies will be 3 and 4 times the fundamental frequency. The interval ratio between C4 and G3 is therefore 4:3, a just fourth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Overtone</span> Tone with a frequency higher than the frequency of the reference tone

An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental is the lowest pitch. While the fundamental is usually heard most prominently, overtones are actually present in any pitch except a true sine wave. The relative volume or amplitude of various overtone partials is one of the key identifying features of timbre, or the individual characteristic of a sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">La Monte Young</span> American avant-garde composer

La Monte Thornton Young is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition Trio for Strings. His compositions have called into question the nature and definition of music, most prominently in the text scores of his Compositions 1960. While few of his recordings remain in print, his work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including avant-garde, rock, and ambient music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perfect fifth</span> Musical interval

In music theory, a perfect fifth is the musical interval corresponding to a pair of pitches with a frequency ratio of 3:2, or very nearly so.

Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr. was an American contemporary music composer, known for his use of just intonation. He was called "one of the foremost composers of microtonal music" by Philip Bush and "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer" by John Rockwell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minor third</span> Musical interval

In music theory, a minor third is a musical interval that encompasses three half steps, or semitones. Staff notation represents the minor third as encompassing three staff positions. The minor third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is called minor because it is the smaller of the two: the major third spans an additional semitone. For example, the interval from A to C is a minor third, as the note C lies three semitones above A. Coincidentally, there are three staff positions from A to C. Diminished and augmented thirds span the same number of staff positions, but consist of a different number of semitones. The minor third is a skip melodically.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Major sixth</span> Musical interval

In music from Western culture, a sixth is a musical interval encompassing six note letter names or staff positions, and the major sixth is one of two commonly occurring sixths. It is qualified as major because it is the larger of the two. The major sixth spans nine semitones. Its smaller counterpart, the minor sixth, spans eight semitones. For example, the interval from C up to the nearest A is a major sixth. It is a sixth because it encompasses six note letter names and six staff positions. It is a major sixth, not a minor sixth, because the note A lies nine semitones above C. Diminished and augmented sixths span the same number of note letter names and staff positions, but consist of a different number of semitones.

The intervals from the tonic (keynote) in an upward direction to the second, to the third, to the sixth, and to the seventh scale degrees (of a major scale are called major.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minor sixth</span> Musical interval

In Western classical music, a minor sixth is a musical interval encompassing six staff positions, and is one of two commonly occurring sixths. It is qualified as minor because it is the smaller of the two: the minor sixth spans eight semitones, the major sixth nine. For example, the interval from A to F is a minor sixth, as the note F lies eight semitones above A, and there are six staff positions from A to F. Diminished and augmented sixths span the same number of staff positions, but consist of a different number of semitones.

<i>Stimmung</i> 1968 music piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen

Stimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work number 24 in the composer's catalog.

Michael Harrison is an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist living in New York City. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 2018–2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music and mathematics</span> Relationships between music and mathematics

Music theory analyzes the pitch, timing, and structure of music. It uses mathematics to study elements of music such as tempo, chord progression, form, and meter. The attempt to structure and communicate new ways of composing and hearing music has led to musical applications of set theory, abstract algebra and number theory.

<i>Dream House 78′ 17″</i> 1974 studio album by La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela / Theatre of Eternal Music

Dream House 78' 17" is a studio album by minimalist composer La Monte Young, artist Marian Zazeela, and their group the Theatre of Eternal Music. The album was originally released in 1974 by the French label Shandar. The length of the record, almost double what was then normal, was extremely unusual in its time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harmonic seventh</span> Musical interval

The harmonic seventh interval, also known as the septimal minor seventh, or subminor seventh, is one with an exact 7:4 ratio (about 969 cents). This is somewhat narrower than and is, "particularly sweet", "sweeter in quality" than an "ordinary" just minor seventh, which has an intonation ratio of 9:5 (about 1018 cents).

In music, 41 equal temperament, abbreviated 41-TET, 41-EDO, or 41-ET, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into 41 equally sized steps. Each step represents a frequency ratio of 21/41, or 29.27 cents, an interval close in size to the septimal comma. 41-ET can be seen as a tuning of the schismatic, magic and miracle temperaments. It is the second smallest equal temperament, after 29-ET, whose perfect fifth is closer to just intonation than that of 12-ET. In other words, is a better approximation to the ratio than either or .

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Five-limit tuning</span>

Five-limit tuning, 5-limit tuning, or 5-prime-limit tuning (not to be confused with 5-odd-limit tuning), is any system for tuning a musical instrument that obtains the frequency of each note by multiplying the frequency of a given reference note (the base note) by products of integer powers of 2, 3, or 5 (prime numbers limited to 5 or lower), such as 2−3·31·51 = 15/8.

The Theatre of Eternal Music was an avant-garde musical group formed by La Monte Young in New York City in 1962. The first group (1962–1964) of performers consisted of La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise, and Billy Name. From 1964 to 1966, Theatre of Eternal Music consisted of La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, John Cale (viola), and Tony Conrad (violin), with sometimes also Terry Riley (voice). Since 1966, Theatre of Eternal Music has seen many permutations and has included Garrett List, Jon Gibson, Jon Hassell, Rhys Chatham, Alex Dea, Terry Jennings, and many others, including some members of the various 1960s groups. The group's self-described "dream music" explored drones and pure harmonic intervals, employing sustained tones and electric amplification in lengthy, all-night performances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magic chord</span> Musical chord

The Magic Chord is a chord and installation (1984) created by La Monte Young, consisting of the pitches E, F, A, B♭, D, E, G, and A, in ascending order and used in works including his The Well-Tuned Piano and Chronos Kristalla (1990). The latter was performed by the Kronos Quartet and features all notes of the magic chord as harmonics on open strings. The quartet has been described as, "offer[ing] perhaps the ultimate challenge in performing in a just environment".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">7-limit tuning</span> Musical instrument tuning with a limit of seven

7-limit or septimal tunings and intervals are musical instrument tunings that have a limit of seven: the largest prime factor contained in the interval ratios between pitches is seven. Thus, for example, 50:49 is a 7-limit interval, but 14:11 is not.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Overtones tuning</span> Tuning for a guitar

Among alternative tunings for the guitar, an overtones tuning selects its open-string notes from the overtone sequence of a fundamental note. An example is the open tuning constituted by the first six overtones of the fundamental note C, namely C2-C3-G3-C4-E4-G4.

References

  1. 1 2 Service, Tom. "A guide to La Monte Young's music". The Guardian . Retrieved 12 June 2016.
  2. 1 2 Gann 1993.
  3. ↑ Potter 2000, p. 81.
  4. ↑ "Marian Zazeela: Narrative". MelaFoundation.org. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
  5. ↑ Gann 2010, p. 481.
  6. ↑ Gann 2010, p. 482.
  7. ↑ Gillespie, Don D. "Gann, Kyle". Grove Music Online . Retrieved October 13, 2012.(subscription required)
  8. 1 2 Gann, Kyle (2002). "Pinned Down by the Piano". The Village Voice . Vol. 47, no. 36. p. 122. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  9. ↑ Potter 2000, p. 80.
  10. 1 2 Welch 1999, p. 184.
  11. ↑ Gann 1993, p. 162.
  12. ↑ Gann 1993, p. 143.
  13. ↑ Gann 1993, p. 141.
  14. 1 2 Gann 1993, p. 135.
  15. ↑ "La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano by Kyle Gann, 1997
  16. ↑ Botstein, Leon. "Bösendorfer". Grove Music Online . Retrieved October 13, 2012.(subscription required)
  17. ↑ Young 1987, Notes on The-Well Tuned Piano.
  18. ↑ Gann, Kyle (1997). "La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano". KyleGann.com. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  19. 1 2 Gann 1993, p. 140.
  20. ↑ Young 1987.
  21. ↑ Gann 1993, pp. 143–144.
  22. ↑ Young 1987, Performance History.
  23. ↑ Feldman, Morton; Young, La Monte (1987). "A Conversation on Composition and Improvisation (Bunita Marcus, Francesco Pellizzi, Marian Zazeela)". Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics . 13 (13): 166. doi:10.1086/RESv13n1ms20166768. JSTOR   20166768. S2CID   193655269.(subscription required)
  24. ↑ Palmer, Robert (April 5, 1987). "Recordings; A Maverick Eases Into the Aboveground". The New York Times .(subscription required)
  25. ↑ "The Well-Tuned Piano". BBC Radio 3 . Retrieved 1 January 2018.
  26. ↑ Rockwell, John (May 13, 1975). "La Monte Young Performs His Solo, Well-Tuned Piano". The New York Times .
  27. ↑ Rothstein, Edward (September 15, 1981). "Music: La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano". The New York Times . ProQuest   121726020.(subscription required)
  28. ↑ Gann, Kyle (June 8, 1987). "Maximal Spirit: La Monte Young". Music Downtown: Writings from The Village Voice.
  29. ↑ Olewnick, Brian. The Well Tuned Piano 81 X 25 (6:17.50 – 11:18:59 PM NYC) at AllMusic

Sources

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.