Search - Wyschnegradsky :: Hommage

Neglected exiled master of the quarter tone

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 12/28/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wyschnegradsky escaped the Bolsheviks to develop his quarter tone piano. A quarter tone is splitting the half step (a white key to a black one on the piano). It sounds out of tune to our ears. Yet to just intonation brethren it is a step in the right direction, away from the loathsome tempered system ,which utilize simplistic and even proportions. This CD features the ondes martinot, the first electronic instrument, named after its creator Maurice Martinot, who during the carnage of World War One dreamed of transforming the triode ray from radio lamps into a beautiful eternal musical instrument. He did, here in the Transparencies #1 and #2, it is accompanied by quarter tone pianos. Hollywood was keen to use the ondes for Horror Flicks, the Outer Limits ambience. And my sensibility is forever transformed, sorry to say. The Cosmos however is more on point for four pianos, a one-dimensional sound. We get a focused orthodox rendition. The premiere in the mid-Fifties included Pierre Booulez, Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen, with Wyschnegradsky directing. It is a wonderful work and experimental written in 1937 it was a step in the right direction. Provost's songs after Rilke's Unicorn has similar emotive resonance, pure vocal lines similar in fact to the ondes martinot, develops a haunting, hauted ambience. The ondes 's quality it sterile, clean and transparent. Like wise the Yquem by composer Bruce Mather, has a similar queer sound."