Charles Ives: 3 Quarter-Tone Pieces (1924) - III. Chorale

The piano on the left is tuned one-quarter tone down, providing notes in-between the notes of the normally tuned piano. Performed by the Paratore brothers.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ives
• piano
• music
• classical

[ProgWill91]

It really is astounding how much we have trained ourselves to limit the amount of notes we find "pleasing." There could have been so many more possibilities in Western music, had quartertones been recognized and used earlier in its history.

[tomestubbs]

This is an extraordinary and beautiful triumph musically. It opened my mind when I first heard it in 1975 when the first recording came out. By now it is so familiar to me that it is normal. It reaches for something beyond what we R familiar with! Get it! Try opening your mind! Thank you Ives!

[JediMediator]

I find it hard to believe that our tastes in music are completely cultural. For instance, I don't remember getting any sort of messages from American culture telling me that a B and an F sound bad together (tritone). Might some of our musical preferences be innate, thus leading to the selection of the specific frequencies that our culture has chosen and trained us to like?

[kratanuva725]

@ProgWill91 Indian music isn't really microtonal.

[rick4318]

Now that's some home-bred all-American music right there.

[colourfulwithaU]

@AbstractDissonance

It sounds like crap? Your crap, maybe. What do you eat?

Microtones aren't artificial. 12ET is artificial. Every interval on a 12ET piano is artificial with the exception of the octave.

But who says artificial = bad?

Also, I don't pretend to understand this music, I just find it beautiful for beauty's sake. Why do you assume that no one can genuinely like this without being "elitist"? Isn't the assumption that your taste is everyone's taste pretty elitist of you?

[colourfulwithaU]

@brunolelis1

It's two pianos. One is tuned a quarter tone down so that the two pianists together can reach the notes in between the 12ET pianos.

[colourfulwithaU]

@ixcaliber

Actually, this is a mutlimovement piece. The 2nd movement is allegro: /watch?v=EU85bUyDPWs&feature=r­elated

[ixcaliber]

@DarkZekeX Alright, then it is an instrumental piece of music.

I tend to use the word song to describe any written piece of music.

[DarkZekeX]

@ixcaliber no, its not a song at all because there is no singing. A rap is a sort of song because rapping is a sort of singing.

[ixcaliber]

@DarkZekeX Well to be fair this is more of a song than rap.

[DarkZekeX]

@ixcaliber this isn't a song.