Techniques of Polytempic Polymicrotonal Composition: History of Fat Colored Polymicrotonal Staves, part XIV

History of My Altered Polymicrotonal Staff System in Pictures.



My little notebook holds my treasure trove of poly ideas. Landing in grad school in 2004-7 lit a fire inside me that sought a new approach to composition through my polytempic polymicrotonal approach. 

Wiggly staff, may be a silly idea, but I am envisioning an interactive computer notation program that could eventually widen and narrow the staves, such as my fat staves idea, to encompass microtonal tunings vertically without semiotics interrupting the horizontal flow of dense polyrhythmic activity.

My little notebook shows the progression of ideas about fattening up, or altering the staff for microtones, without the hassle of semiotics and semaphores cluttering the horizontal scansion of rhythms. 

The idea of holographic sheet music occurred to me as a possible solution to microtonal notation problems, and amazingly, I believe I had heard recently, in 2025, that someone was in the process of inventing this. A hologram is thought to be projected in such a way that a string quartet could read it together without the hassle of stands, flipping pages, taping pages, or even requiring a page turner.



Ultimately, I did not settle on these and wound up using the ideas below for my rondo.

From the early 2000s until 2012, I worked away at this idea, culminating in a saxophone solo for my DMA, along with Hypercube, a four-part polytempic polymicrotonal string quartet. 
More ideas about vertical staff expansion and microtonal pitch verticalities.
Agnes Martin's artwork reminded me of musical staves. I stole this idea for my polymicrotonal staff systems that emphasize vertical space, while losing the semiotics, such as the vast plethora of microtonal accidentals that clutter the horizontal flow of my rhythms. I would continue using fat staff systems, except that I can not draw to save my life, and Finale won't accommodate this technique, hence I am at a crossroads. 

From my book Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music, published through JennyStanford and distributed through Routledge. The legend explains the staves and microtonal systems used in Jove Defeats Saturn, performed by Nathan Mandel, saxophonist extraordinaire, here in Urbana.
Nathan Mandel's beautiful calligraphy, as he has redrawn my second section of the rondo. His hand is steady. This is the 19-tone section B of the rondo Jove Defeats Saturn at 63 cent intervals. Click the highlighted link to hear Nathan play this piece. 
This is the third section of the rondo, section C, in 31 tones, in 38.7 cent intervals.
This is the last section, D, of the rondo in 53 tones per octave at 22.7 cents per interval, arranged in a tetrachord, with 21 out of the 53. 
Fat Staff system from my book, featuring Jove.
This idea was included in my DMA thesis, which, amazingly, became a book in 2022.


Hope you enjoyed this. 

To be continued. 

Comments

  1. PhilippJune 30, 2025 at 4:28 AM

    I was at the premiere of Jove defeats Saturn. Nathan’s great. Also, thanks for mentioning Agnes Martin, who’s a fascinating artist. I hadn’t realized she counted among your influences. It is mentioned in the book but I guess it didn’t click until now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joel TaylorAugust 3, 2025 at 6:22 PM

    Love the fat staff idea. Seems to me that using Illustrator or similar software that it should be possible to produce good "fat staff" staff paper. It might even be possible to use something like Max's Jitter to produce animated scores to go along with music.

    ReplyDelete
  3. peter alexander thoegersenAugust 3, 2025 at 6:25 PM

    How about holographic staves?

    ReplyDelete

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