XENHARMONIC MUSIC ALLIANCE

Several years ago, Ivor Darreg and Glen Prior, then in Los Angeles California, held a series of meetings devoted to performing on new musical instruments and demonstrating scales which sound quite different from the standard twelve-tone equal temperament.

At one meeting, the members decided to call this group the XENHARMONIC MUSIC ALLIANCE.

Glen Prior had to move to Michigan and later to Florida; Ivor Darreg had to move to San Diego. HOWEVER:

For some 27 years, an informal group has existed, mostly by correspondence and long-distance phoning and various publications: Ervin Wilson, John Chalmers, Ivor Darreg, Tillman Schafer, and Joel Mandelbaum on the East Coast, became aware of one another and exchanged music-theory tables, calculations, tape recordings, scores; and before long this group spanned the country and reached to Canada and Mexico and abroad. New instruments were built.

In 1978, further expansion when Ivor Darreg's article on non-12 guitars was published in Guitar Player and Buzz Kimball in New Hampshire became active in building instruments. Then Jonathan Glasier of San Diego started the INTERVAL FOUNDATION devoted to new scales and instruments; Darreg is now Secretary of that foundation in San Diego.

The Foundation has published INTERVAL MAGAZINE, a journal of research and development, for ten years.

The Sonic Arts Gallery in San Diego has exhibited xenharmonic instruments since it was opened. Through concerts and other events many new people have been turned on to xenharmonics.

In New York City Johnny Reinhard has the Microtonal Concerts which have continued for several years and be recently announced that he will compile a Directory of Microtonalists.

In the last two months, we have become aware of many more people interested in new scales and instruments, and now that synthesizers and computer music and new kinds of recording equipment have matured, we are at long last free to forge ahead without worrying about the severe restrictions of conventional instruments, such as the piano and certain orchestral instruments, whose design has not changed for many generations.

Xenharmonics includes both equal and unequal temperament systems as well as Just Intonation, the untempered scale. Xenharmonics is defined as any kind of music which does not sound like the ordinary 12-tone equal temperament under normal performance and listening conditions. Obviously mere out-of-tune performance may not qualify something as xenharmonic! It may be existing music or new compositions. The important aspect of xenharmonics not usually recognized is the CONTRAST with ordinary 12-tone tuning, and the NEW MOODS it affords composers as well as performers. The composer's vocabulary is at least quadrupled, and. one's pride is not offended by the possibility that some long-dead composer did the same thing better!

With our new growth in numbers and 27 years of success in existing as a network of people, this informal banding-together without hierarchical structure or unnecessary expenses ought to continue.

For information contact: IVOR DARREG, 3612 Polk Avenue, San Diego, California 92104, or our colleagues in other cities.