The Talea Ensemble presents a program that addresses these questions in music from the recent and distant past. The technique of scordatura, which literally means “mistuning” in Italian, is a salient feature in the works of all the composers on the concert. The Baroque master Heinrich Biber’s rarely-played Mystery Sonatas explore the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the mood and affect of each reflected in the retuning of the violin’s strings.

Inspired by the micro-inflections of everyday speech, which do not conveniently fit into the confines of a twelve-note system, Harry Partch rediscovered ancient tunings from the Greeks based on Pythagorean ratios, and built his own instruments to fit his personalized musical language. Turning his back on hundreds of years of western music theory, his inventions were built on the foundation of language, the mathematics of overtones, and Corporealism, the unifying of body, action, and spirit in art. Independence and individualism were great traits of Partch’s private life in addition to his music, and for several years he lived as a hobo. Barstow (1941), his first masterpiece, uses graffiti texts culled from a highway railing in Barstow, California, which he encountered during his hobo years. In the true fashion of a bard, Partch accompanied himself on the “adapted Viola,” an instrument of his own invention, as well as the Chromelodeon, capable of 43 tones to an octave.

Over the years, Partch would make several versions of the piece; Talea will perform his student Ben Johnston’s arrangement for voice and string quartet. Johnston’s student Marc Sabat, a Canadian living in Berlin, has been one of the leading exponents of just intonation, the system of tuning that Partch rediscovered from the Greeks. His 3 Chorales for Harry Partch explore the expressive power of pure, just intervals between two retuned string instruments. Taylor Brook is a young American-Canadian composer not only influenced by just intonation, but also the Hindustani music of North India. His Vocalise, for Solo Retuned Violin with Drone, is a work filled with long, sighing phrases; like Partch, he is interested in imitating the human voice through refined micro-intervals, but through the lens of another tradition.

Reimagined Tunings

Heinrich Biber: Selections from the Mystery Sonatas (ca. 1676)
for violin with continuo
Harry Partch: arr. Ben Johnston: Barstow (1941) for voice and string quartet
Marc Sabat: 3 Chorales for Harry Partch (1993) for retuned violin and viola
Taylor Brook: Vocalise (2009) for scordatura violin with drone