Costa: "Lamento" (Just Intonation/72-tone-microtonal)

Описание: "Lamento" is a harmonic-microtonal work in Just-Intonation based on the 72 equal division of the octave. It invites into a melancholic, meditative world of vocal, singing lines and pure, soothingly consonant "natural" harmonies, yet fascinatingly "strange" to the unused ear.

[ Listen to this music in an improved, high quality version through Bandcamp including a PDF download of the score at
https://microtonalharmonyproject.band... ]

At any given point the pitches (notes) harmonize corresponding quite precisely to ratios of natural numbers. To achieve that, I used 72-edo as the tuning system - which is the same as dividing each half-step (of the 12 usual notes) into 6 steps each.

I developed the notation used here over the last few years, following the principle (for readability) that all accidentals must be contained in the horizontal plane of the note it alters. In addition to the usual sharps and flats there is a quarter-tone (or "diesis") sign ^,v altering +-50 cents and a 1/12-tone (or "comma") sign /,\ altering +- 16,67 cents. This notation allows for clear reading even in dense polyphonic contexts.

You can see some of the ratios on the score (only as help for harmonic analysis, it's not part of the notation), which also go into higher harmonic "limits", i.e. the natural numbers relating the pitches can be far up in the harmonic series. The listening sensation is of course very subjective (also depending of the listeners' exposure to microtonal music) but it might be fair to say that the consonance (or harmonicity) can be clearly perceived as a "round", "smooth" quality of the sound, even if the tiny individual changes in pitch might be on the border of our perceptual capabilities (needless to say that I am viscerally fascinated by microtonal harmony and it's subtleties).

I played each voice using an EWI (electronic wind instrument) MIDI controller, recording a track for each; the DAW used is Reaper and the Synth plug-in is Surge-XT.

For more details on how I am able to play microtonally with the EWI and pedals:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o1gD...

After recording, I will still edit where needed for balance, synchronization, tempo fluctuation (agogic) fine tuning (some ratios that have higher error in 72-edo - such as 13, 23, 25, 17) and some performance details.

From the constructive or formal point of view, the piece follows a so-called Rondo or Rondo-Sonata form A-B-A'-C-A' '-D-A' ' ' (even if the tempo is slow, rather like an "adagio").
The "A" or returning part (refrain) is exposed right at the beginning; the episodes (B,C,D etc) are recitativo-like (free prosody); the last refrain is interspersed with 2 episodes:
0:00 Refrain 1
0:52 Episode 1 - "lontano" (far away) soprano melodies, staccato chords
1:24 Refrain 2 (varied, expanded)
2:34 Episode 2 - bass-melody, U-tonal pitches/notes (inverted ratios, such as 1/5, 1/7, 1/11, 1/13 etc, so "undertone" series as opposed to overtone)
3:09 Refrain 3 - varied, more counterpoint
4:08 Episode 3 - "lontano" chords built on arithmetic frequency sequences (AFS)
4:43 Refrain 4 / Development - sequence derived from thematic material
5:21 Episode fragment (AFS-s)
5:30 Final Refrain 5 (and re-exposition) - with U-tonal bass counterpoint, interspersed with episodes:
6:15 Episode 4a: soprano melodies, staccato chords (now also AFS-s)
6:50 Episode 4b: U-tonal bass melody
7:10 Short Coda

A PDF guide for microtonal playing on the EWI https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o1gD...

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