Name: Wolfgang von Schweinitz
Nationality: German
Occupation: Composer
Current Release: Wolfgang von Schweinitz's Helmholtz-Funk, featuring Jack Dettling and Vicki Ray on piano, and Schweinitz himself on electronics, is out via Populist.
Recommendations on the topic of alternative tuning systems: Hermann von Helmholtz: On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music

If you enjoyed this interview with Wolfgang von Schweinitz and would like to know more, visit his page on the Plainsound website.



When did you first start getting interested in the world of alternative tuning systems?  

Early on in the 1970s, when listening to the sound of classical Indian music, and later on in the early 1990s, while reading the great book on acoustics by the enlightened physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music from 1863.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances using alternative tuning systems captured your imagination in the beginning?

Foremost the spectral music of Gérard Grisey and the just intonation music of James Tenney and La Monte Young.



Working with a different tuning system can be a very incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

Yes, it was a decisive "revolutionary" step for me in 1997, when I decided to abolish the Equal-tempered 12-tone System and to dedicate my compositions to exploring the musical potential of microtonal just intonation, by researching and establishing some efficient new microtonal tuning and ensemble playing techniques based on just intonation that serve to maximize the resonance and "liberate" the partials of the compound sounds – by tuning all the pitches according to the natural intervals found within the harmonic series of the overtones within each musical tone.

My decision to adopt the performance practice of just intonation was motivated by the creative desire to search for a beautiful new sound. It is the resonant timbre of JI that fascinates me, and I don‘t think of JI as a "system", but rather as a straight-forward basic principle or method: "Don’t ever temper the melodic and harmonic intervals between your notes!"

How would you describe the shift of moving from one tuning system to another?

Luckily, we have a coexistence of tuning systems in Western music today. Besides 20th century Equal 12-tone Temperament (which was already in use for fretted instruments 500 years ago), we‘re using the beautiful old Meantone Temperament for the performance of Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical music nowadays.

There are also some very interesting EDOs (equal divisions of the octave). My favorite one is 31-EDO, it closely resembles the extended Quarter-comma MT, and I think that we should definitely build some organs in this tuning. Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ music would sound terrific and way more powerful on such an organ, and I am convinced that this is what Bach was suggesting to us when he composed "The Art of Fugue" near the end of his life.

We would in fact only need the 21 Meantone pitches from F-flat to B-sharp for performing all of Bach’s organ music, and therefore the keyboard design would be no problem.



We also have a hybrid intonation style in the symphony orcherstra – and, last not least, a radical focus on the experimental performance practice of microtonal just intonation in some contemporary Western music.

This is what has fascinated me way more than any other alternative tuning during the past thirty years, not only because of its very special timbre, but also because of its singular, categorical nature.

Terms like consonant and dissonant are used in school, but mostly with very limited understanding of what they mean. How has your own idea of these terms changed over time and how do you see them today?

I am using the definitions suggested by my colleague and friend Marc Sabat: Any interval between two simultaneous pitches that can be precisely tuned by ear may be called a consonance.

All other intervals are dissonant, including those dyads that can be constructed within a musical context that involves a 3rd pitch for reference, or several other pitches.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to alternative tuning systems - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

The adoption and development of a JI performance practice requires a huge amount of intonation research, both for the performers and the composers. How can all these microtonal pitches in my scores be recognized and actually be played in realtime on the various instruments within each musical context with the desirable and necessary amount of confidence and precision?

This ongoing research combines acoustics and psychoacoustics with ear training and a mircotonal focus on instrumentation, and it has led me to an utterly new way of dealing with pitch and pitch relations as a composer. This has radically changed my understanding of harmony, counterpoint, and the flow of time.

In how far has working with alternative tuning systems led to creating different music for you personally? Are there creative ideas / pieces which you could not realise in equal temperament?

All of my creative ideas and compositions from the past 25 years are tied up with just intonation and could not possibly be realized in equal temperament (with the exception of two little pieces for inside piano multiphonic sounds).

What were some of the most interesting tuning systems you tried out and what are their respective qualities?

In 1997 I wrote a piece (“Helmhotz-Funk”) for two digitally ring-modulated pianos tuned in “Helmholtz-Temperament,” which is essentially an extended Pythagorean tuning system with pure major thirds that are established by eight consecutive perfect fifths.



I could imagine myself composing a piece for an organ in extended Meantone Temperament or 31-EDO if such a beautiful instrument would indeed be built somewhere during my lifetime.

In how far has working with alternative tuning systems changed your collaborative practice?

The experimental performance practice of microtonal just intonation requires an unusual amount of rehearsal time and engagement.

Since unfortunately most of the major professional new music ensembles can‘t afford to dedicate so much extra time to their concert preparations, I am now collaborating almost exclusively with my own group of enthusiastic specialists who don’t need to care about time and money.

This non-commercial work with my close friends and ‚JI test pilots‘, as I call them, is of course highly productive and a lot of fun.

Do you still use equal temperament? What are some of the aspects and goals for which you find it suitable?

I am not interested in composing my notes within the conventional framework of the Equal-tempered tone system. This traditional “tempered thought” feels way too limited and boring to me now.

But I do appreciate 12-tone ET as an appropriate and elegant tuning system, especially for the guitar and for the modern piano, and I love so much music that has been created for it.

I am no longer a fan of the idea to retune the piano, because I think that it is not an ideal instrument for displaying the beauty of just intonation, since it demands all the octaves to be stretched because of the inharmonicities of its strings.

So far, the focus with regards to alternative tuning systems has mainly been on harmony. But melody is affected, too. How do you personally understand melody and what changes when it becomes part of a new pitch environment?

Well, when I was studying composition in the early 1970s with György Ligeti, there seemed to be a common notion within the avantgarde circles that it was somehow old-fashioned to write melodies, and it felt like melody as such was almost dead perhaps.

There were of course creative efforts to rebell against the “impasse of the chromatic scale,” as Xenakis called it, and to search for ways to reinvigorate melody (Stockhausen’s Tierkreis pieces, Xenakis’s sieve theory, or Ligeti’s incorporation of folklore, for example).



Now, it has been my experience that the enormous wealth of different microtonal pitches brought about by the performance practice of just intonation opens up exciting new possibilities to revitalize melody. I have more than twelve different semitones at my disposal, several different whole tone steps, a bunch of different minor and major thirds, fourths and tritones, and their inversions, and each one of these intervals has its own specific harmonic context and melodic groove.

I feel like Alice in Wonderland with all these beautiful, still unfamiliar melodic creatures!

With electronic tools, playing and composing in just intonation has become a whole lot easier. Do you find this interesting? What are some of the  technologies, controllers and instruments you use for your own practice?

Yes, I am using electronic tools mostly for my research and not for my music.

The precise control of pitch the synthesizers are offering (like the two synths my friend Marc Sabat has built, “HE31calc” and “Hexatone”) leaves no doubt about what we are really hearing, and they are therefore helpful tools for ear training and intonation & timbre research.

I wasn’t so happy with LogicPro, but I am a great fan of the Dorico notation software, in which I can define my JI pitches in terms of a 12000-EDO, so that the midi sounds can easily get played back with the precision of 1 tenth of a cent.

Some artists approach tuning systems from a strongly scientific angle. In case you're interested in this, what do you feel 'research' could potentially uncover and provide in terms of tuning systems? Where do you see the biggest potential for exploration at the moment?

I think that I could not have composed any of my music during the past thirty years without my ongoing acoustic and psychoacoustic research and the associated practical experimentation for which I am usually using my voice and my string instruments in conjunction with synthesized sounds.

Twenty years ago, Marc Sabat has assembled and shared a comprehensive list of all the non-tempered intervals that can be tuned by ear. This is a very important document for me (I call it “microtonal intelligence”), and it offers a fruitful basis for many years of research and experimentation – to get acquainted with the compound sounds of all these new microtonal intervals, and to learn to sing and play them with confidence and precision.

This systematic contemplation of the musical material, as well as the experimental methods developed in the research process, will then serve to inform the conceptual approach for each composition.

How do you see the connection between music and science in general and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I think it is very desirable to make use of the valuable insights that science is offering when making important decisions (in politics, for example).

In my compositions I like to organize the sounds, their pitches and all the intervals between them as much as possible according to the laws of nature, according to the given inner structure of the musical tones, to optimize the overall clarity and sonority.

From the concept of Nada Brahma to "In the Beginning was the Word", many spiritual traditions have regarded sound as the basis of the world. Regardless of whether you're taking a scientific or spiritual angle, what is your own take on the idea of a harmony of the spheres and sound as the foundational element of existence?

The existing universe is a grand and powerful polyphony of vibrations. Nature is like an amazing everlasting piece of music for the mind.

So let us take care and pay attention, let’s listen to what we can hear, and sing along!