Pianist Sarah Cahill has been trying to get me together with Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda, and Saturday he and I managed to have lunch in New York. Among other points of commonality, he’s written a book on microtonality (I should say, I am currently writing a book on microtonality; I will always be writing a book on microtonality; I am so wary of the thousands of picayune errors of fact and number that my fellow microtonalists will hit me with, that I am planning to time its publication to occur mere moments before my death, so that their objections will come too late; but anyway, Mamoru has already completed one). It’s titled The Archeology of Sound, only in Japanese, and here’s his discussion of La Monte Young’s Well-Tuned Piano:
Patterns of Plants is a series of compositions based on the melodic patterns that are extracted from the data of slight changes of electric potential found in living plants. Such a procedure was made possible by “Plantron,” an apparatus conceived by bio-media artist Yuji Dogane… The compositional process… starts from finding out “musical values” in the changes of electric potential. By finding out “musical value,” I mean an attitude to regard the changes as “voices of plants” and to gather melodic patterns while listening to their voices.
I’ve been an admirer of Patterns of Plants for some time, since the first Tzadik recording on solo koto, and especially since I’ve read about the piano version. I’ve tried to track down the piano score now and then, but without success; do you have any contact information you can share for his publications?
KG replies: Sarah gave me a score to the piano version, and it’s at school. I’m on fall break, but I’ll go there soon and get it and provide the information.
I haven’t seen the score but I hear a similarity between the tunings of PoP and The Well-Tuned Piano, at least a similar prominence of septimal intervals. Are you at liberty to disclose the tuning? Either way, it’s a beautiful work, thanks for sharing.
KG replies: It’s possible I misunderstood, but I believe the tuning is Pythagorean.