A MICROTONAL ANALYSIS OF

IGOR STRAVINSKY’S CONCEPT OF PITCH

AND ITS RESULTING SCALE

by Johnny Reinhard

Bassoonists Johnny Reinhard and Rezeda Gabdrakhmanova play

Igor Stravinsky’s “Lied Ohne Nahme” in higher harmonics at
Rimsky-Korsakov Home Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Johnny Reinhard © 2021

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 IGOR STRAVINSKY’S SCALE IN HIGHER HARMONICS

[25 TOTAL NOTATED PITCHES USED IN HIS SCORES]

Deduced by Johnny Reinhard through

8th octave of the overtone series (128) tuning

Notated Pitch Cents Value Harmonic Interval Tempered to ET

A (ET) = 0 1 unison identical

Bbb = 13 129 sixteenthtone + 13
A# = 92 135 small semitone +8
Bb (ET) = 105 17 semitone -5
Cb = 192 143 minor whole tone +8
B (H) (ET) = 204 9 major 2 nd -4
B# = 286 151 small minor third +14
C (ET) = 298 19 minor 3rd +2
C# (ET) = 397 161 major 3 rd +3
Db = 408 81 Pythagorean ditone -8
Cx = 491 85 major “fourth” +9
D (ET) = 501 171 “perfect” 4th -1
D# = 590 45 D# tritone + 10
Eb (ET) = 600 181 Eb tritone less than a cent off
Fb = 693 191 1/6th comma meantone 5th + 7
E (ET) = 702 3 perfect 5th +2
E# = 790 101 small minor sixth +10
F (ET) = 798 203 minor sixth +2
F# (ET) = 898 215 major sixth +2
Gb = 906 27 Gb -6
Fx = 992 227 small minor seventh +8
G (ET) = 1001 57 minor 7th -1
G# (ET) = 1103 121 major 7 th -3
Ab = 1110 243 big major 7 th - 10
Gx = 1193 255 pre-octave +7

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 A MICROTONAL ANALYSIS OF

IGOR STRAVINSKY’S CONCEPT OF PITCH

AND ITS RESULTING SCALE

by Johnny Reinhard

Beginning the bassoon as a teenager, it wasn’t long before I made the

acquaintance of the greatest composer of the 20 th Century through his music.
The “Rite of Spring” with its famous opening bassoon solo was among my
earliest classical music icons. The “Firebird” Berceuse solo is another bassoon
solo worthy of mention. Igor Stravinsky seemed to know how to write for
bassoon brilliantly.

When I have performed Stravinsky in my professional life, I never felt

especially restricted to a “tuning system.” The notes hollered and roared; they
were not well behaved and contrite. I played the parts very much by ear to my
section and to the winds generally, as opposed to responding to an intellectual
decision determining which way to pitch sharps as opposed to their respective
flats (e.g., C# vs. Db).

But along the way I found other 20th Century composers who vied for my
attention, individual musicians plucked out of time, to include as Harry Partch,
Charles Ives, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Something each composer had in
common, I came to discover, was an inner hierarchical ordering of a constellation
of tonal relationships. Yet, each of these composers had a completely different
model of idealized intonation constituted in their respective minds.

Any organ tuning Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was likely to use for
his music was tuned to a well tempered arrangement. My book, “Bach and
Tuning” examines tuning practices at the time of Bach and the great likelihood
that he was consistent with the same tuning on organs, which today is called
“Werckmeister III tuning” (although at the time it had no specific qualified name
other than well temperament). The “III” in its name is its actual position as third
in an order of six tunings etched into a copperplate that was given with a
purchase of the 1691 publication of Andreas Werckmeister’s “Musicalische

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Temperatur.” In this temperament, Bach would have different sentiments
available in different keys. There would be 29 different intervals in this well
temperament, no doubt invented for keyboard improvisers to circumnavigate the
24 major and minor keys (See Bach and Tuning by Johnny Reinhard.)

Charles Ives’s story is scandalous, with then teenage Elliott Carter

reporting 40 years after the fact that he saw with his own eyes how Ives changed
his dates, as well as switching his chromatics. Carter reported this to Beethoven
biographer Maynard Solomon, who spread the gossip to The New York Times
Donal Henahan, that Ives “was a cheat” who nefariously wanted to appear more
dissonant in his scores, to appear as if he foreshadowed Europe in the new
language of dissonance. (see Donal Henahan, The New York Times, “Did Ives
Fiddle with the Truth”).

Turns out the flats for Ives are intended to be lower than the sharps for the
Pythagorean plan of intonation he had in mind, such that reading the revised
notation properly demonstrated a chromaticism of 24 notes or more through the
spiraling of pure fifths. New notes could be gained by spiraling additional fifths.
Ives could imagine a personal model of idealized intonation in his mind which is
called extended Pythagorean tuning, and which has available to it a microtonal
dimension of intervallic relationships. (See The Ives ‘Universe’ by Johnny
Reinhard.) This intonation for the majority of Ives’s music is in addition to
notated quartertones, or even eighthtones.

Igor Stravinsky would seem at first brush to be a twelve-tone equal

temperament composer since he never said otherwise, and he favored the piano
since an early age. The piano is the stereotypical 12-tone equal temperament
instrument, what with its metal string inharmonicities, its blank nodes where the
felted hammer hits, the duplication and tripling of strings meant to be identical,
its countless calculated countings of acoustical beats by the rushed piano tuner.

However, a closer look reveals that Igor Stravinsky had a completely

different model of idealized intonation in his mind. It was possible to deduce
what his idealized tuning would be for future performances of his music, yes
even the Rite of Spring. And of course, Stravinsky might even suggest his
method to others for the future, but surely after he had left the scene.

Stravinsky was clearly not talking about 12 equal divisions of the octave.
And like with Charles Ives, eight years his senior, a microtonal dimension of
musical intervals appears. Stravinsky indicated a difference in meaning between
a notated Db and a notated C# found in close proximity. They are not treated as
identical by any means, as seen in his voice leading, and in player
interpretations. For Ives, the Db is lower in pitch than any neighboring C#, quite

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the opposite view than that of Stravinsky. How is this known? Through the
study of tuning, it is known that the use of the overtone series as a source of
knowledge of interval relationships mathematically measures the C# lower than
Db by a distinct difference, every time.

Igor Freidorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971), by his own admission to his

protégé Robert Lawson Craft (1923-2015) as heard in a televised interview of
1957, composed mainly at the piano. To hear Igor Stravinsky say it, “It was
always about the piano,” and his first career was as a pianist. Stravinsky went
on to discuss his need to feel the vibrations of the music as his primary reason for
playing the piano. My emphasis on Stravinsky’s active relationship to the
vibrating piano is because it is not in any way associated with any concept of
“equalness.” Stravinsky simply admonished those learning through his advice,
“You have to touch the music, not only to hear it!” Stravinsky followed that up
with a theatrical demonstration, placing a pencil in his mouth, only to lightly
touch the tip of his pencil to the music stand of the piano, while playing.
Stravinsky continued by speaking of conducting as being critical for him to be
fully connected to the vibration of music.

Stravinsky’s early study of scales was with a student of Rimsky-Korsakov,

which he repeatedly described in the Interview with Craft as “very dull!”
Stravinsky’s disdain for harmony was reason enough for Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov (1844-1908) to recommend that Igor Stravinsky not go on to the
conservatory. In contrast, Stravinsky was rather in love with counterpoint. Even
in his serialism, Stravinsky felt the tonal pull of his notes in his mind, if not in
what his ears heard back.

ROBERT CRAFT: Do you think of the intervals in your series as tonal intervals;
that is, do your intervals always exert tonal pull?

IGOR STRAVINSKY: The intervals of my series are attracted by tonality; I

compose vertically and that is, in one sense at least, to compose tonally.

When Craft specifically asked for the Maestro’s definition of music, Igor
Stravinsky was fully prepared to be precise and crisp conceptually. He replied,
right on cue:

Music is an organization of tones, an act of human mind (Stravinsky).

Stravinsky then pointed readily to a quote by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer

(1788-1860 ), who he claimed was speaking about music when Schopenhauer
wrote about that consciousness.

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 And the musical tones inhabit, and form a universe of their own, and with the
human mind has created the materials, introduced them to order (Shopenhauer).

Neither Ives nor Stravinsky could get past the imagination phase, to
transcend as Ives intimated. Harry Partch was able to do so, and wrote a book,
Genesis of a Music, on the mechanics of how he was able to accommodate the
tuning challenges of his original compositions. Partch’s system of “monophonic
fabric” was reduced to a 43-note scale. It was clearly a completely different
model of idealized intonation as he constituted in his mind, a model based on the
11th harmonic limit and its relative undertone series in what is usually described
as “11 limit just intonation.” With Partch there is finally the ability for a
composer to hear original works performed successfully (most of the time) in
their intended idealized intonation.

In publishing a book chapter entitled “Some Musical Questions” from

Memories and Commentaries,” Robert Craft once again prepared questions for
the Maestro to answer, for publication. This time, Stravinsky advanced his ideas
about pitch in a rare and unique manner.

Interview question put to Igor Stravinsky by Robert Craft

ROBERT CRAFT: Is any musical element still susceptible to radical
exploitation and development ?

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IGOR STRAVINSKY: Yes, pitch. I even risk a prediction that
pitch will comprise the main difference between the ‘music of
the future’ and our music, and I consider that the most important
aspect of electronic music is the fact that it can manufacture
pitch. Our mid-twentieth century situation, in regard to pitch,
might perhaps be compared to that of the mid-sixteenth century,
when, after Willaert and others had proven the necessity of equal
temperament, the great pitch experiments began—Zarlino’s
quarter-tone instrument, Vicentino’s thirty-nine-tones-to-the-
octave archicembalo, and others. These instruments failed, of
course, and the well-tempered clavier was established (though
at least three hundred years before Bach), but our ears are more
ready for such experiments now-mine are at any rate. I had been
watching the Kuramatengu play in Osaka one afternoon recently
and had become accustomed to the Noh flute. Later in a
restaurant, I suddenly heard an ordinary flute playing ordinary
(well tempered) music. I was shocked, music apart—I think I
could keep the music apart anyway—by the expressive poverty
of the tuning.

Igor Stravinsky

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 Stravinsky’s prediction of future radical advances in pitch was tongue in
cheek, for he was well aware of the contemporary microtonal achievements by
such 20th century pioneers as Harry Partch, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Juliàn
Carrillo, and Alois Hába. But rather than acknowledge any success to them, he
preferred an answer meant to supersede them. Admittedly, no one previously
had conceptualized straight up harmonics in a public way in his lifetime, who
might have caught his attention. Harry Partch was disqualified because he used
an undertone series to profoundly affect the results. And Stravinsky did not
himself utilize electronics to hear back the higher relationships of the overtone
series. He could only imagine them, perhaps with Lithuanian folk music
influence.

That Stravinsky chose “pitch,” exclusively, as the musical element to watch

for the future for music matches well my own musical investigations. Music has
indeed move enormously through new tuning systems and approaches. By not
mentioning his specific preferences, as both Bach and Ives did not, Stravinsky
kept close to the vest his personal side of music making. Personal, yet primary,
based on his microtonal response to Robert Craft’s open-ended question. No
doubt hedging his bets, Stravinsky’s prediction was already becoming a reality in
his lifetime.

Stravinsky sought to give a historical perspective to his predictions about

pitch.

Our mid-twentieth century situation, in regard to pitch, might perhaps be

compared to that of the mid-sixteenth century, when, after Willaert and others had
proven the necessity of equal temperament, the great pitch experiments began—
Zarlino’s quarter-tone instrument, Vicentino’s thirty-nine-tones-to-the-octave
archicembalo, and others.

Adrian Willaert (1490-1562) was the prominent Flemish composer who was part
of a dynasty of Dutch speakers in the Mediterranean, and who was preceded by
Dunstable, Binchois, Dufay, and Tinctoris. Their revolution in tuning was
through meantone tuning, which followed the Pythagorean tuning of spiraled
fifths from the Middle Ages. The obvious exception was for fretted and
strummed instruments such as the lute. Willaert is credited with a single
composition that is said to have been designed for equal temperament.

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 Adrian Willaert confounded supporters of Pythagorean and Just intonations with
his four voice piece ‘Quid non ebrietas,’ written in 1519. Willaert intentionally
wrote it so that performers would constantly run into musical commas, each
setting the singers slightly off course. When sung in Pythagorean tuning, the
melody concludes with a disastrous leap, slightly larger than a pure octave. Just
Intonation produces a final octave leap too narrow. He designed the music to fail
with either system; rather, he espoused a radical new tuning – what we today call
equal temperament.

The second historical name that Stravinsky drops in regard to pitch is

Gioseffo Zarlino (1570-1590), Nicola Vicentino’s teacher. Zarlino was an ethnic
Italian, the catalyst for the beginning of the first non-Flemish dynasty of
Renaissance composers. Zarlino was known to favor 2/7ths comma meantone,
as compared with the garden variety quarter-comma meantone of the Flemish
composers. Most importantly, Zarlino acknowledged his support for the use of
equal temperament for fretted instruments. I had been unfamiliar with any
specific quartertone instruments devised by Zarlino. However, a simple Google
search will bring up “Zarlino’s quartertone instrument.”
DENZIL WRAIGHT - Zarlino's 24-note harpsichord

Nicola Vicentino (1511-1575) was infamous in his lifetime as a microtonal

musician, someone who added smaller relationships to the cultural pitch palette,
including his building multiple multi-keyed keyboards. Vicentino positioned a
dot above a note to indicate a slight sharpening of pitch, measured at less than a
quartertone, although thought of generically throughout history as a quartertone
simply for its diminutive size. Stravinsky was incorrect with his statement that
Vicentino designed a archicembalo with “39 tones to the octave” as the
instrument actually only had 36 keys total, as did a second instrument built by
Vicentino. Although, most moderns scholar musicians interpret Vicentino’s
music through a 31-tone equal temperament lens, a tuning invented by Christian
Huygens in the Baroque period to serve as a circular quarter comma meantone,
Nicola Vicentino’s aim was to rediscover the microtonal intonation of the ancient
Greeks.

The scales of the two instruments are identical, comprising thirty-six physical keys
that are organized into two keyboards, each with three rows of keys. The Venetian
organ builder Vincenzo Colombo built these instruments on Vicentino’s
commission. No historic specimen survives, but thanks in part to diagrams and
descriptions that Vicentino published in L’antica musica and in another document,
Descrizione dell’ Arciorgano (1561), modern reconstructions have been possible.
Microtonal Keyboard Instruments in Early Modern Europe | Sound &
Science: Digital Histories (soundandscience.de)

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 Stravinsky was correct that these extra-keyed instruments were one-offs,
and might be seen today only in museums, or through recent reconstructions.
Knowledge of the well temperament of Bach was understandably substituted
with modern equal temperament, even in Germany. Well temperament offers
different sentiments in different keys, 29 different intervals per octave in
Werckmeister III, while equal temperament has identical keys and is as such,
redundant.

Stravinsky’s rude comment about electronics is telling. By stressing that

“the most important aspect of electronic music is the fact that it can manufacture
pitch,” one is both immediately drawn into the wonder with which modern
electronics and computers have revolutionized music, along with its intrinsic
microtonal potentiality, but also Stravinsky’s paucity of electronic works, as
somewhat anathema to his acoustic based aesthetic.

Most exciting is Stravinsky’s rejoinder to present day circumstances

regarding new adventures with pitch. “[B]ut our ears are more ready for such
experiments now – mine are at any rate.” My life has certainly improved my ear
to the point that I work in a tuning named 128 tuning. It is based on a scale of
the 128 notes found in the eighth octave of the overtone series above a single
fundamental pitch, usually “A” for its commonality for tuning instruments and
for the ease of naming by letters. After 15 years of work in making 128 music,
there are several albums exclusively in 128 tuning, as well as new works by
prominent contemporary composers, internationally.

Stravinsky’s signals that he “is ready” for pitch experimentation. Since his
passing, microtonal music has been in ascendency, and it is possible now for
anyone to purchase the appropriate reasonably affordable synthesizer to admit
the new microtonal vocabulary to the body of music. His admission here that he,
at least, is ready, hints of the loneliness of his continual musical journeys. When
he was a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg, Russia, he was in
a fertile environment, surrounded by others eager to imagine intonationally on a
grand scale. Stravinsky’s music would remain in conventional notation, but it
would permit a harmonics interpretation, with a 128 tuning interpretation,
possible by the scale formed by the eighth octave of the overtone series.

Hermann von Helmholtz’s famous book “On the Sensation of Tone,”

expected to be in the personal library of Charles Ives, demonstrated that modern
conventional notation allows for three (3) different interpretations of its
symbology: 1. Conventional equal temperament allows for a common pitch for
sharps and their nearest flats. 2. Meantone and just intonation, where sharps are
pitched lower than their nearest flats. And 3. Pythagorean tuning in which
sharps are pitched higher than their nearest flats. Charles Ives idealized #3, and

9
I propose that Igor Stravinsky idealized #2, but to imagine higher harmonics
than had previously entered much of contemporary theory, practice, or research.

When Stravinsky brought up his observance of a Japanese Kuramatengu

play, he wasn’t expecting his listening audience to be familiar with that
particular type of musical presentation with its distinctive sounding Noh flute.
Rather, he was emphasizing that his prediction of pitch was deeply anchored in
world music, and neither restricted to either the present day, or to European
culture. The world of cultural microtonal music includes, but is not limited to,
Dastgah (Iran), Maqam (Egypt, Turkey, Syria), Pelog & Slendro (Indonesia),
Higher Harmonics (Lithuania), and Equiheptaphonic-7-tone equal temperament
(Thai, North Solomon Islands, Puna of Panama).

Stravinsky then announced he has the mental ability to strip the Japanese
Noh flute of all its cultural accoutrements, to the exclusion of pitch expressivity,
so that he can compare them in his mind, one abstract tuning to the next. Here
we have evidence of Stravinsky’s ability to abstractly retain and compare 2
different flute traditions, separated by several hours, for their expressivity, all
while mentally removing other musical considerations. Stravinsky’s last
sentence is startling coming from a European composer, as he found modern
tuning left him wanting.

I was shocked, music apart—I think I could keep the music apart anyway—by the
expressive poverty of the tuning (Igor Stravinsky).

(The italics for the word “tuning” in the quote belong to either the Stravinsky or
the publisher. They are not mine.)

As for the use of 128 tuning, found ordered in the eighth octave of the
overtone series, I offer the following evidence for its appropriateness. As
Stravinsky used chromatic notation it is only possible to be taken literally with
the acceptance of a greater than 12 notes and intervals in his musical vocabulary.
Yet Stravinsky did use equal temperament as well. 128 tuning provides for the
major third, perfect fourth, and the tritone of equal temperament.

The simple use of the tritone in equal temperament is measured as less than
a cent in difference from the position of the 181 st harmonic, well within 128
tuning which reaches the 255th harmonic. As the best representative of the
harmonic series of all the notes in the temperament of 12-tone equal
temperament, the tuning Stravinsky expected to receive in his performances,
Stravinsky nevertheless uses the tritone as a consonance in the opening of the
Rite of Spring. After an outline of A minor in the unaccompanied bassoon solo,

10
the melody at last resolves to D# - the tritone - as a comfortable and pleasant
consonance. As a D#, interpreted as a harmonic, this tritone is 10 cents flatter
than the Eb at 600 cents.

The interval that first alerted me to the possibility of understanding

Stravinsky through a microtonal lens was his consonant use of the tritone. The
tritone, the result of bisecting an octave, had been used by other composers
besides Stravinsky as a consonance, certainly by Jazz musicians who modulate
by tritones. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story’s famous “Maria” melody has a
tritone as its second interval, which is always sung lovingly and without any
accent. Tritones, as a traditional dissonance, are typically accented. “Maria” is
distinctive in its use of a consonant tritone is a song.

Leonard Bernstein’s broadcast of his Harvard Lectures titled “The

Unanswered Question” maintained that the piano was representative of the
overtone series, with nary a mention of its classic equal temperament (although
he did mention “theoretical” microtonal music more than once). Bernstein spoke
sparingly about higher overtones, although he did argue for the 19 th harmonic
(which he confused with the 18th harmonic) as the basis for Western music’s use
of the minor third. The minor third is traditionally taught as arriving from an
undertone derivation. In contradistinction, Bernstein properly acknowledged
that major and minor thirds occur simultaneously in the overtone series, with the
minor third described as “sad” precisely because it is so far away from the
fundamental when it first appears. The 19th harmonic is only two cents shy of
modern equal temperament at 298 cents and is covered well in 12 edo (equal
divisions of the octave) at 300 cents, especially when vibrato is involved.

The major third of equal temperament is historically claimed as the fifth

harmonic tempered 14 cents sharp into a value of 400 cents, to which an
orchestra with the stature of the New York Philharmonic tunes. 14 cents is quite
a bit of stretching for a harmonic, so much so that I question whether we need to
look for a different source. As it happens, the 161 st harmonic at 397 cents only
needs to be tempered sharp three cents. Despite the newness of the number 161,
this interval makes much more sense as the true modern source of the major
third. (The 5th harmonic is no doubt beautiful and useful for early music, music
which utilized an undertone series for its derivation of the 6/5 minor third of 316
cents).

The minor sixth is best represented by the 203 rd harmonic. Equal

temperament’s minor sixth is tempered two cents higher in temperament. The
major sixth is best represented by the 215th harmonic, this time tempered two
cents lower in temperament.

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 The perfect fourth in equal temperament is measured at 500 cents. Early
music produced the raison d’être for its perfection as due to its derivation in the
undertone series, and as the result of the subtraction of a perfect fifth taken from
an octave, leaving a historic perfect fourth at 498 cents. However, the 171 st
harmonic is only a single cent sharper than equal temperament at 501 cents, not
even noticeable to traditional listeners.

The major seventh is best represented by the 121 st harmonic at the end of
the seventh octave of the overtone series, and equal temperament’s version has
tempered it sharp by 3 cents. Fundamentally, there are 5 out of 12 notes of 12-
tone equal temperament found as harmonics exclusively in the eighth octave of
the overtone series, and they are already a part of contemporary music practice.
These are the major third, perfect fourth, major sixth, minor sixth, and the
tritone. 128 tuning removes all traces of temperament from contemporary music
and is meant as an advancement in music in the spirit of Stravinsky’s emphasis
on pitch.

The minor second is best represented by the 17th harmonic in 128 tuning,
placing it five cents sharper than equal temperament. (It would be one cent
lower than a 271st harmonic from a projected ninth octave of the overtone series,
but that entails a projected 256 tuning. My composition “Asteroid Belt” for cello
makes exclusive use of the virgin notes of the ninth octave of the overtone series,
and is to be premiered on September 5, 2021 by Dave Eggar on Zoom.
Contrasting the lowest semitone which has the least amount of alternatives in
128 tuning, is the leading tone G# intervals have many variants of semitone
available as befits its role.

The minor seventh is best represented in 128 tuning by the 57 th harmonic at

1001 cents. (A complete list of all 128 pitches is attached at the end of this paper.)
Equal temperament tempers the minor seventh found in the overtone series flat
by a single cent. The major seventh is best represented by the 121 st harmonic
which is measured at 1103, only 3 cents tempered down to the 1000 cents of
equal temperament.

Lastly, the whole tone is measured at 105 cents by the 17 th harmonic and
may be notated by a Bb. With the whole tone we have the most tempered of the
harmonics that could stand in for 12-tone equal temperament, a deviance of 5
whole cents. The tuning chart affixed to the beginning of this article includes
only the known notes found in Igor Stravinsky’s scores, 24 different notations
total.

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 One piece of aural evidence is a miniature bassoon duet by Igor Stravinsky
titled “Lied Ohne Name” (1918), published by Boosey & Hawkes (1979). I first
played the one-page score in NYC, recording it with my colleague, bassoonist
Sara Schoenbeck. It has since been released as a video on the AFMM channel on
YouTube. It has both the C# and the Db working tonally as distinctive.
Igor Stravinsky - LIED OHNE NAME - YouTube

St. Petersburg Recital Poster designed by Cıarán Ó Meaċaır

The evidence continues with a solo recital that I gave at the Nicolai Rimski-
Korsakov Home Museum in St. Petersburg in 2012. During the Sunday Recital, I
asked the full audience if I might be permitted to perform Stravinsky’s “Leid
Ohne Name” (“Song Without Name”) for them twice, once in conventional
tuning, and once in 128 tuning. And with their eager approval, I continued to
everyone’s evident amazement to demonstrate the “expressive” difference in the
music, this time with Russian bassoonist Rezeda Gabdrakhmanova. (I had
previously compiled a book of bassoon fingerings in 128 tuning for the bassoon
based on an A at 440 and could pass this to other bassoonists for study.) The
comparison to the Russian concert goers was clear, as was their obvious
preference for their collective 128 experience.

I can indeed imagine all of the great works of Stravinsky being performed
in the future within a microtonal dimension. In fact, since writing a Masters
thesis at Columbia University, “Phenomenology and its Application to
Microtonal Music,” I believed all music was microtonal. After all, I was in the

13
Ethnomusicology department of the General School of Graduate Studies and I
could define microtonal music as if it was a universal, except for 12-tone equal
temperament. After 40 years of directing the American Festival of Microtonal
Music Inc. in New York City (since 1981), I developed a definition of microtonal
music for a new virtual microtonal university that starts September 5, 2021 on
Zoom. This definition allows me to see Igor Stravinsky as a microtonalist in spirt
even as he never produced a piece of obvious microtonality in his lifetime.

All music is microtonal music cross-culturally. Twelve-tone equal temperament

is, in itself, a microtonal scale, only it enjoys exorbitant attention and hegemonic
power, so we focus on the other tuning arrangements.

Of course, I recognize the liberties that a talented modern orchestral

musician may take in order to acquire greater expression in the playing of a piece
of music, often starting with instrumental tone. However, as the short
Stravinsky bassoon duo “Leid Ohne Name” previously demonstrated, “Firebird”
and the “Rite of Spring” would also benefit from losing its temperings, the
deliberate out-of-tune-ness inflicted for an earlier historical compromise, for the
powerful justness of 128 tuning’s intonation.

128 tuning allows for the simultaneity of any and all of its pitches, in any
combinations, to have the sensibility of being a single chord. The greater
counterpoint provided by the added microtonal vocabulary removes the dull
identity-less harmonies of conventional equal temperament that Stravinsky
found boring and dull. The full Gestalt of an harmonics rich tuning, on top of the
already established brilliance of Stravinsky’s imaginative rhythms and
orchestration, further enriches the charms of tonality.

Wagner may have been Stravinsky’s bête noire but, like all great
artists who came after Wagner, Stravinsky benefitted from
Wagner’s model, even if he rejected his aesthetic (“A Violent Luxury: Robert
Craft and Igor Stravinsky by John Browening).

Thanks to Richard Wagner, any other composer to follow in his tradition,

certainly one who sat at the piano to compose, would find each note related to
every other note in a unified field theory for harmony using the tuning system of
12-tone equal temperament.

Finally, it is the power of Slavic and Baltic folk musics that provided the
true foundation needed to bring out his musical ideas, although Stravinsky was
known to credit his dreams at night for his font of creative ideas. It just so
happens that there is a particular Baltic folk music that is rich with higher

14
harmonics. Young Igor Stravinsky likely picked up on the higher harmonic
microtonal music of Lithuanian folk music, as he paid attention to these
European roots throughout his youth.

According to Lithuanian composer scholar Vytautasd his recent July 3,

2021 Zoom presentation titled: Identification of Microtonal Intervallic Relations
in Lithuanian Vocal and Instrumental Folk Music and their Application in Music
Composition (as part of the Salzburg, Austria based Ekmelic Conference held
virtually in 2021), folk music in his country may normally reach the 31 st
harmonic in the polyphonic Sutartinės. Using a Melodyne, Vytautas
Germanavičius analyzed numerous Lithuanian music types for their specific
harmonic identities, and generously shared his data for this paper.

NUMBER OF HARMONICS Identified in recorded samples of 39 sutartinės,

34 monodies, 16 horns, 7 panpipes, 3 kanklės (stringed instrument)

Harmonics: 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31

Sutartinės: 39 2 3 1 1 1 8 4 2 1 1 5 13 1

Monodies: 34 4 2 2 5 2 3 5 6 1 2 7

Horns: 16 1 4 2 3 1 1 4 1 3

Panpipes: 7 1 1 1 2 1 1 1

Kanklės: 3 4 2

The lecture further discussed Lithuanian wooden trumpets that are pre-
tuned to higher harmonic proportions. The instruments are rather solid so that
children can readily play them, and they are an old part of the Lithuanian
culture. The concept, as I understand it, is that people learned to sing these same
higher harmonic instrument relationships from the pre-tuned wind instruments,
only to expand upon them. Germanavičius found higher harmonics were the
most common:

In this table you can see the number of overtones with their serial numbers that
were detected and calculated when analyzing the vocal and instrumental music
samples. I identified the most common 9 overtones (Nos. 29, 13, 21, 17, 19, 25, 3,
11, and 5), (B♭+, G#+, -F, C#, E♭, G#+, G, F+, E) and additionally 5 microtonal

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 overtones Nos 29, 13, 21, 25, 11 (B♭+, G#+, -F, G+, F+, ) in vocal music, as well as
not so frequently used overtones Nos. 7, 23, and 31 (-B♭, -G, B+). For
instrumental music were identified 3 microtonal overtones Nos 29, 21 and 13
(Bb+, E+, G#+). And for all samples commonly used microtonal overtones are
Nos 29, 21, and 13 (Bb+, E+, G#+) (Germanavičius).

Only a few days after the Lithuanian harmonics lecture, Composer scholar
Ben Lunn in Scotland sent me two YouTube videos, which serve as great
ambassadors to the rich treasure of higher harmonic folk music. My thanks to
Ben Lunn for providing these links:

wooden trumpets: https://youtu.be/JXPZYuU-xzU

a cappella voices: https://youtu.be/zeEnhlRteiA

Lithuanian folk song motifs and music ideas posted from Juška's
Anthology correspond to Igor Stravinsky's melodies in The Rite of Spring as
identified by prominent contemporary musicologist Richard Taruskin (1996).
Lithuanian folk songs from Juška's anthology corresponding with... | Download Scientific Diagram (researchgate.net)

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 Lithuanian musicologist Rūta Stanevičiūte has recently written about
microtonal music from a Lithuanian perspective. In the published article
“Microtonal Music: From the Baltic to the Adriatic and beyond the Atlantic” Rūta
Stanevičiūte focuses on the greater question, not dissimilar to that of Igor
Stravinsky, and also with the power of the Lithuanian folk tradition in harmonics
behind them.
MICL - Music Information Centre Lithuania | Rūta STANEVIČIŪTĖ | Microtonal Music: From the Baltic to the
Adriatic and beyond the Atlantic

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have been quoted as a feature

on just that very question, the future of pitch, in the Stanevičiūte article
published by the Lithuanian Music Centre.

Our ears are expanding in correspondence with our minds and appreciating
finer degrees of musical intervals is a natural consequence. Hegemonic 12-tone
equal temperament was the opposite direction having reduced our appreciation
of intervallic specialness in lieu of uniformity of irrationality.

Johnny Reinhard, composer, performer, Founder of the American Festival of

Microtonal Music.

“Eighth Octave of the Overtone Series Tuning,” otherwise known as “128

tuning” for its number of pitches in the scale is ideal for its inclusion of 12-tone
equal temperament relationships. As indicated in Robert Craft’s question, 128
tuning is exactly the answer to the “radical exploitation” of pitch.

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REFERENCES
Berger, Arthur. "Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky." Pp. 123-154 in Perspectives
on Schoenberg and Stravinsky, edited by Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone. New York: Norton,
1972.

Browening, John. “A Violent Luxury: Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky,” The New English
Review, 2021.

Craft, Robert. "The Rite of Spring: Genesis of a Masterpiece." Perspectives of New Music 5, 1
(1966):20-36.

———. “Some Musical Questions” from Memories and Commentaries, Doubleday & Co.,
Garden City, (1959) 2009, pp. 115-116.

Craft, Robert, ed. Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, vols. 1, 2, and 3. New York: Knopf,
1982, 1984, and 1986.

Germanavičius, Vytautas. “Identification of Microtonal Intervallic Relations in Lithuanian

Vocal and Instrumental Folk Music and their Application in Music Composition,” Lithuanian
Academy of Music and Theatre, unpublished. (Forthcoming publication: Lithuanian Musicology,
No. 22, 2021, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius.)

Helmholtz, Hermann von. “On the Sensation of Tone,” translated into English by Alexander
Ellis, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 2013, pp. 608.

Henahan, Donal. “Did Ives Fiddle with the Truth?,” The New York Times, February 27,
1996.

Partch, Harry. Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and its Fulfillments.
A DaCapo Paperback, Second Edition, New York (1949) 1974, pp. 517.

Reinhard, Johnny. Bach and Tuning. Vol. 47, Sources and Studies in Music History from
Antiquity to the Present. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2016, pp. 297.

———. Eighth Octave of the Overtone Series Tuning. Available from the American Festival of
Microtonal Music, NYC, San Dimas, California.

———. The Ives Universe. Academia.org, Lambert Press

Schoenberg, Arnold. “Theory of Harmony.” University of California Press, (1978) 1983,

pp. 464.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, translated from the German by
E.F.J. Payne, in 2 Volumes. Dover Publications, New York, 1966.

Stanevičiūte, Rūta. “Microtonal Music: From the Baltic to the Adriatic and beyond the
Atlantic,” Lithuanian Music Centre. MICL - Music Information Centre Lithuania | Rūta
STANEVIČIŪTĖ | Microtonal Music: From the Baltic to the Adriatic and beyond the Atlantic

18
 Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. Conversations with Stravinsky. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980.

———. Memories and Commentaries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

———. Expositions and Developments. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

———. Dialogues. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Stravinsky, Vera, and Robert Craft. Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1978.

Taruskin, Richard. "Russian Folk Melodies in The Rite of Spring. " Journal of the American
Musicological Society 33, 3 (1980): 501.

———. "Chernomor to Kastchei: Harmonic Sorcery; or, Stravinsky's 'Angle.'" Journal of the
American Musicological Society 38, 1 (1985): 72.

———. "Stravinsky's 'Rejoicing Discovery' and What it Meant: Some Observations on His
Russian Text-Setting." Pp. 162-99 in Stravinsky Retrospectives, edited by Ethan Haimo and Paul
Johnson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

van den Toorn, Pieter C. "Some Characteristics of Stravinsky's Diatonic Music." Perspectives
of New Music 14, 1 (1975): 104; 15, 2 (1977): 58.

———. "Octatonic Pitch Structure in Stravinsky." Pp. 130-56 in Confronting Stravinsky: Man,
Musician, and Modernist, edited by Jann Pasler. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

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 128 Notes of Eighth Octave Overtone Tuning

Harmonic Cents Name of interval

1 0 unison
129 13 sixteenthtone
65 27 eighthtone
131 40 smaller quartertone
33 53 quartertone
133 66 large quartertone
67 79 small semitone / 3-eighthtones
135 92 minor semitone
17 105 Bb, major semitone
137 118 large semitone
69 130 big semitone
139 143 small three quarters of a tone
35 155 large three quarters of a tone
141 167 diminished whole tone
71 180 small whole tone
143 192 minor whole tone
9 204 B, major whole tone
145 216 large whole tone
73 228 whole plus eighthtone
147 240 5ET diesis
37 251 five quarters of a tone
149 263 diminished minor third
75 275 low minor third
151 286 small minor third
19 298 minor third
153 309 low just minor third (referencing 316)
77 320 high just minor third (referencing 316)
155 331 large minor third
39 342 big minor third
157 354 neutral third
79 365 tiny major third

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159 375 eighthtone flat major third
5 386 C#, just major third
161 397 ET major third
81 408 Pythagorean ditone
163 418 large Pythagorean ditone
41 429 Db
165 440 small quartertone sharp major third
83 450 quartertone sharp major third
167 460 tiny fourth
21 471 low fourth
169 481 minor fourth
85 491 major fourth
171 501 ET perfect fourth
43 512 perfect fourth, D
173 522 fourth plus comma
87 532 fourth plus a fifthtone
175 541 fourth plus small quartertone
11 551 eleventh harmonic
177 561 tiny tritone
89 571 low tritone
179 581 minor tritone
45 590 D#
181 600 Eb, ET tritone
91 609 large tritone, Eb in tonal music
183 619 big tritone
23 628 eighthtone high tritone
185 638 quartertone and sixteenth flat dominant
93 647 quartertone flat dominant
187 656 tiny dominant
47 666 small dominant
189 675 eighthtone low dominant
95 684 irregular perfect fifth
191 693 sixth comma flat fifth
3 702 perfect fifth
193 711 poodle fifth
97 720 large fifth
195 729 howling dominant
49 738 sixthtone high dominant
197 746 three quartertones high perfect fifth
99 755 quartertone high perfect fifth
199 764 quartertone and 16th tone high fifth

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25 773 quartertone and eighthtone high fifth
201 781 almost minor sixth
101 790 tiny minor sixth
203 798 ET minor sixth
51 807 minor sixth
205 815 just minor sixth
103 824 large minor sixth
207 832 big minor sixth
13 841 thirteenth harmonic
209 849 quartertone high minor sixth
105 857 quartertone plus minor sixth
211 865 almost major sixth
53 874 tiny major sixth
213 882 small major sixth
107 890 just major sixth
215 898 ET major sixth
27 906 major sixth
217 914 sixthtone high major sixth
109 922 eighthtone high major sixth
219 930 eighthtone and 16th tone high major sixth
55 938 large major sixth
221 945 big major sixth
111 953 three quartertone sharp major sixth
223 961 small harmonic seventh
7 969 harmonic seventh
225 977 large harmonic seventh
113 984 tiny minor seventh
227 992 small minor seventh
57 999 G, minor seventh
229 1007 large minor seventh
115 1015 big minor seventh
231 1022 double perfect fourth
29 1030 eighthtone high major seventh
233 1037 eighth- and 16th tone high minor seventh
117 1044 three-eighths flat major seventh
235 1052 quartertone flat minor seventh
59 1059 tiny major seventh
237 1066 diminished major seventh
119 1074 eighthtone flat major seventh
239 1081 small major seventh
15 1088 major seventh

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241 1095 large major seventh
121 1103 ET major seventh
243 1110 big major seventh
61 1117 Ab, large minor seventh
245 1124 eighthtone plus major seventh
123 1131 leading tone major seventh
247 1138 sharp leading tone major seventh
31 1145 hyper leading tone major seventh
249 1152 quartertone flat octave
125 1159 three-eighths flat octave
251 1166 eighthtone flat octave
63 1173 small octave
253 1180 comma flat octave
127 1186 dipped octave
255 1193 preoctave

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