THE QUARTERTONE QUESTION

by

Ivor Darreg [1947]

[Typographical errors and omissions corrected 2020.0731 by Joseph Monzo.]

Would you like to stir up a heated controversy in a gathering of musicians? It's very simple. Just mention the word quartertone. Yet the very fact that quartertones are discussed at all shows that there must be something about them worth considering.

There is a vague notion is musical circles that the use of intervals less than the semitone is of modern origin, but a little inquiry into the subject will show that not only were scales with small intervals used by the ancient Greeks in their enharmonic genus, but mediaeval musical history also records a number of instances in which the instruments and compositions employed smaller intervals than our customary half-step.

Let us, then, seek to discover the reasons why intervals less than the semitone and the quartertone, in particular, have not been used more extensively.

First is the matter of habit--or shall we term it prejudice? We are brought up in a semitonal environment, and from early childhood are conditioned to the conventional scale of half-steps. Thus, when someone offers to play quartertone music to us, we are inclined to resent it because of its unfamiliarity, refusing even to take an hour or so to get used to it. It is obvious that years of training to a semitonal scales have etched some kind of permanent groove into our minds.

This prejudice may take another form. If we are told that quartertone music is about to be played, we mentally arch our backs; and our opinion is apt to be settled before a single note has been heard. If the music should happen to be played first, and we do not know it is quartertone music until afterward, our opinion is likely to be far more favorable. Such is the force of habit; such the rut into which our minds have been driven.

Next, there is the matter of instrument-builders' convenience. In the organ, the mechanism is so complicated already that the addition of more tones to each octave (let alone the doubling of their number!) is felt by the instrument manufacturer to be an unreasonable imposition. In the case of the piano, the properties of the materials from which keyboards and actions are made sets a definite limit to how narrow a key may be, and a quartertone piano with each key only half the width of our present keys would have a very flimsy action indeed. Such quartertone pianos as have been made usually have two separate semitonal keyboards tuned a quartertone apart. This is quite awkward for the performer. A harpsichord with thirty-one tones to he octave was built over two centuries ago; the strings and action-parts were crowded extremely closely, and the instrument was said to be "the tuner's despair", for, with the excessive tension on the wooden frame of the instrument occasioned by its numerous strings, it would not remain in tune very long at a time.

The performer's problems must not be neglected. No matter how excellent the mechanical design of the interior of the instrument, and no matter how well it may sound to the ear, there is no use in constructing a quartertone keyboard instrument if it [is] too difficult to play. Fortunately, a number of really excellent designs in quartertone keyboards are in existence, and they present very little difficulty to the performer. The keyboard problem is well solved; the major difficulties are those of constructing the mechanism behind the keyboard, as we have stated in the preceding paragraph. The new electronic musical instruments, just now appearing on the horizon, offer a complete solution to internal-construction problems.

Quite a number of our non-keyboard instruments are fully capable of performing quartertone music. The violoncello and double-bass can do so quite easily, will the violin and viola find these intervals a little too close together for comfort? Specially-designed violins have been proposed to overcome this difficulty. Quartertone guitars and mandolins, as well as other fretted instruments, have been made, and of course the Hawaiian steel guitar is admirably suited to quartertones, provided the player can be persuaded to avoid that annoying eternal glissando and be compelled to proceed by definite scale-steps instead!

Special clarinets and trumpets have also been designed for quartertones, though of course their key-mechanism is rendered rather complicated. Almost all wind instruments possess the ability of "humoring the tone"--their pitches are not absolutely fixed. The trombone and French horn play quartertones with facility.

Now let us turn to the problems of the listener. On the one hand, many musicians and listeners consider the semitone to be the practical limit of interval-smallness; yet, on the other hand, acousticians, as well as other scientists, and theorists, will make the statement that up to six hundred different pitches may be distinguished within one octave. These two viewpoints seem irreconcilable; which one is right? Incredible as it may appear, both are--each in its way. Tuners sometimes even exceed this ability to distinguish 600 tones per octave, because they can listen to the beats (peculiar wavering sounds) made by two sustained tones near together in pitch, and these beats can often be counted with great accuracy. Sometimes a difference less than one-tenth of one percent can be detected. But this is only under very special conditions. The person making such discriminations is doing so, not as a musician, but as an acoustical technician. It is utterly absurd to think that a melody could possibly be composed with such small intervals. And if the attempt were made, it would sound like the wailing of a siren, or the wobbly unsteady pitch of a bad phonograph record.

The smallest practical difference in interval-size, for musical purposes, is that which will just allow the smaller of two intervals to have a character definitely different from that of the larger interval. A perfect fifth does not sound like a minor sixth, though they differ by only one semitone. Now, the practical question is, How many more intervals may we insert between the perfect fifth and minor sixth, and yet have each additional interval sound quite different from its neighbors? Upon experiment, it is found that one extra interval can be so inserted. Insert any others, divide any more finely, and you will have only intervals which sound like mistuned versions of one another. In other words, the quartertone is about the smallest interval that can be practically employed in music. It is conceivable that still smaller steps, such as the sixth- or eighth-tone, could be used in special instances, but one would run the risk of having one's musical enjoyed by only a select few. We must be careful not to ask too much of our listeners.

The use of quartertones in vocal music really deserves an article by itself. The average singer, if given frequent access to a quartertone instrument, can learn to sing in quartertones in about a month's time. Of course those vocalists whose vibrati are too wide, or who are careless about intonation, might not learn! It may be added here that certain contemporary poems really should have quartertone music composed to them. Properly sung, quartertone melodies can be profoundly affecting.

Now it will be asked: Why quartertones, rather than some other division--17,19,30,31--of the octave? The present scale of twelve equally-tempered semitones to the octave was chosen because it provided an approximation to a large number of consonant intervals with the simplest and most economical means that our ears would tolerate. So many instruments have this division already, and it is so convenient to use and easy to learn, that the next refinement of the scale had best take as much advantage of the present state of affairs as possible. Halving the semitone into the quartertone is thus a logical move; furthermore, it will still be possible to play all semitonal music on any quartertone instrument without the slightest alteration whatever.

There is ample acoustic justification for quartertones, since they provide approximations to at least three more consonant intervals than we now have with the twelve-toned system. Overtones of higher order are well represented by quartertone intervals.

Those who strive for what is called just intonation will of course forward the claim for a scale with still smaller divisions, in order to attain mathematical purity of intervals, or to approach it so nearly that the ear will be fully pleased with the result. If the music is slow enough in tempo. and if a sufficiently attentive audience can be found, they are fully justified in so doing.

However, the faster music is played and the more is strays from the middle octaves, then the less important become fine distinctions of pitch. In fact, did all our music run at a breakneck prestissimo, we could content ourselves with a scale that had but seven divisions to the octave, like the Siamese scale. Still, if we wished to play largo and adagio most of the time, the use of even a 53-note-to-the-octave scale might be desirable.

It would perhaps be wise at this point to explain that, while such systems as the meantone temperament, Pythagorean intonation, the 31- and 53-note systems, and just intonation employ smaller intervals than the quartertone, these small differences of pitch almost never occur melodically. In fact, elaborate precautions are taken by those performing music in these systems to prevent the awkward effect caused by small shifts in pitch that would disturb the melodic line. Sometimes vibrato serves well in covering up these changes. When successive tones less than a quartertone apart are played with vibrato, it becomes almost impossible to detect any difference between their pitches. As a rule, just intonation is advocated as a means for making existing music sound smoothe--the use for novel effects of the small intervals introduced into the scale is only a secondary consideration. The advocates of such divisions as sixth-, eighth-, twelfth-, and sixteenth-tones have a purpose in mind utterly different from the aims of the advocates of just intonation. So with quartertones, but the author's approval of the quartertone system for certain kinds of music by no means prevents him from recommending just intonation in other circumstances. Each has its place, and so does the standard twelve-tone scale have its place.

Just because the present twelve-tone scale is suitable for a great deal of average music, that does not mean that composers should be forbidden to use other scales for special needs. And the quartertone scale would be very useful for many special kinds of music. Atonal music, as well as that written in a key-system, would benefit. Composers, though, ought not to use quartertones where they do not belong. This would only delay their general use that much longer. Unless a composer really has something to say in quartertones, he should keep to the conventional scale and not burden the musical world with mere experiments in which quartertones are tacked onto conventional musical cliches.

It is interesting to note that performers of ordinary music often introduce enharmonic ornaments, which may approach a quartertone in size, into regular compositions quite unconsciously. Sometimes a wide vibrato deserves to be interpreted as an enharmonic trill. Many times a certain tone in a melody is intentionally played quite sharp or flat for a heightened artistic effect. So general is this practice that is must be considered the rule rather than the exception. This microtonal ornamentation ought to be recognized and systematized, even though many musicians will confine their use of it to embellishment and ornamentation.

In the musica ficta some hundreds of years ago, sharps and flats were sung by the performers even though they were not written in the music and theoretically were forbidden by ecclesiastical edict. We now have th same situation in regard to quartertones and similar intervals. Isn't it foolish to continue ignoring any practice so prevalent as this use of microtonal intervals? [1945/1947]