Toby Twining: Chrysalid Requiem--Sanctus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgGqm_jnL_0

I, of course, learned about this reading Kyle Gann's The Arithmetic of Listening, which is a great book on the history of tuning systems I'm going to have to blog about at some point this year.  I'm still committed to composing using the equal-tempered set-up we guitarists are given who don't have access to fretboards that have alternate tunings, but I've been intrigued by a lot of work done in what's maybe too colloquially known as microtonal music. 

Toby Twining--Chrysalid Requiem, Dies Irae

Not that I'm really at all committed to composing microtonal or extended just intonation music myself (the classical guitar is in its most conventional form the most stuck-to-equal-temperament instrument an instrument can be), but I do like to listen to music that's composed without being tethered to equal temperament.  String quartets by Haba, keyboard music by Wyschnegradsky or Ben Johnston, especially the string quartets of Ben Johnston, I find that I can enjoy microtonal music.  Johnston's been my favorite because, to put it bluntly, Johnston was the microtonalist/extended just intonationist composer who didn't forget that tunes have to be in the music, which is not necessarily the case with, say, Easley Blackwood (although, frankly, I don't dislike the Blackwood string quartets, I just don't come back to them as listening experiences the way I repeatedly have with Johnston's quartets).

Anyway, having read Kyle Gann's wonderful recent book on the history of tuning systems I learned about Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem.  So, fair warning to people who aren't into microtonality or extended techniques in choral singing, don't click on the link but if you are ... a link to the Dies Irae from Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem is after the break