How does Ivan Wyschnegradsky explore microtonality in reference to his 24 preludes for

piano (op.22)?
Or
How 24-TET microtonal music is formed, notated and harmonised. With specific
reference to Ivan Wyschnegradskys 24 preludes for piano (op.22).
There is little mention of microtonal music in primary academic scholarship, and what little exists
often comprises only a brief en passant reference to microtonal music embedded within a topic that
deals primarily with non-microtonal music. Even though the repertoire of microtonal compositions is
growing, theorists have not yet isolated some of the basic issues that this music engages. (M. Skinner:
2006. P1)

Ivan Wyschnegradsky (b.1893) was a Russian born composer who delved deeply into
the world of microtonal writing, he first wanted to hear these sounds that were unheard of, in
the literal sense of the word (ivan-wyschnegradsky.fr). This essay will look at how
Wyschnegradsky explored microtonal harmony in his piano works, mainly looking at op.22
24 preludes for piano due to their increased popularity and accessibility of the scores. This
essay should be able to help the reader understand quarter-tone writing for their own future
works or curiosities. The essay will analyse at the available scores for individual preludes,
looking for scales and tetrachords that Wyschnegradsky uses more frequently. There is a
dissertation by Myles Skinner that features a chapter on Wychnegradskys 24 preludes that can
be used for reference too (Skinner 2006). Wyschnegradsky was not alone in his curiosity for
microtonality, there was a great rush in the early 1900s for the new direction for music to take
weather it be surrealism, specralism, microtonality, minimalism or any other direction music
could have moved. Other composers such as Bartok (Yates 1968), Ives, Blackwood and Hba
also experimented with quarter-tone music, however Wyschnegradsky was the most
successful in his experiments and the 24 preludes are some of the greatest quarter-tone music
written to date.
Wyschnegradsky was born in St.Petersburg Russia in May of 1983, his grandfather
was a mathematician and his father was a banker so naturally, young Ivan began to study
mathematics and in 1912, joined a school of Law. During his academic years,
Wyschnegradsky studied harmony, orchestration and composition under the guise of Nicolos
Sokolov (who was a professor at the Conservatory of Saint-Petersburg), but kept a very
mathematical approach to these subjects and showed interest in how notes related to each
other and how microtonal music (and other temperaments) worked from a mathematical
standpoint. He also showed keen interest in eastern music which is likely to be one of the key
sources of his microtonal influences. Once he had finished his studies, Wyschnegradsky wrote
The red Gospel (Op.8) about the Russian revolution in 12-tones, this is an early example of
Wyschnegradsky exploring the avant-garde. Wyschnegradsky moved to Paris with his family
in late 1919 where he started pining for a 24-tone instrument, his first of which was a German
built harmonium from Straube and his second was a piano from Foerster. Wyschnegradsky
ordered the piano in 1927 and received it nearly two years later in 1929. He often explained
that he did not leave Russia to flee communism, rather in search of the ultrachromatic
instruments that he so craved. He then spent a number of years practicing and perfecting
quarter tone harmony and released a book titled A manual of quarter-tone harmony in 1932.
In 1934 Wyschnegradsky wrote the 24 preludes that this essay focuses on, one prelude for
every key in the 24 tone chromatic scale. This piece was originally written for two pianos
with one tuned a quarter tone sharp, in later years this piece was played on one 24 tone piano
(Lebrecht, 2000). Wyschnegradsky wrote a large body of work in different TET (tone equal
temperament) systems such as 18-TET, 36-TET and 72-TET, but predominantly used 24-TET.
The first concert comprised entirely of Wyschnegradskys works was presented on November
28th 1937 in Le Cercle Culturel du Conservatoire de Paris in a concert for advanced music
(Slonimsky, 1994, p.582). Wyschnegradsky met with Messiaen at this concert along with

other less notable composers of the time. Messaien can be quoted as saying that This gestival
dedicated to the exclusive hearing of Ivan Wuscnegradskys works seems to me, the most
important event of the months there is here, not only known and popular melodic contours,
but those of hindu and completely new harmonic material. Around 1945, Wyschnegradsky
contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to the sanatorium of St. Martin-du-Tertre, he stayed
in poor health, but kept composing until his death in September 1979 at the age of 86 with his
later works even breaking out of the octave and working closer with frequencies though it is
not relevant to the essay.
Throughout this essay there will be terminology used that is about or in reference to
microtonal music. A TET (tone equal temperament) system shows how many equally spaces
notes are being used in an octave, for example, most western music will be written in a 12TET system with notes from A to G# with notes spaced 100 cents apart. The music discussed
in this essay uses a 24-TET system meaning that there are 24 notes spaced equally around the
octave from A to G#, but with notes spaced 50 cents apart. Also when this essay says
conventional, it means the standard 12-TET notes. This kind of music is also known as
quarter tone music because the interval between each note is a quarter of a tone (50. Cent).
There are two different ways of creating a scale (more specifically a row of notes), either
taking an octave and dividing it equally into an arbitrary number of equally spaced notes, or
finding the notes through ratios of frequencies to get more in tune temperaments such at
just, true or Pythagorean temperaments, these are technically nicer to the ear, but are each
flawed because they might work melodically, but not harmonically or they might not add up
to a full octave. Though because ratios are created through numbers and numbers are an
unlimited resource, xenharmonics are an unlimited resource (S. Archibald 2012).
Looking through the history of microtonality there will be a point where the lines
become blurred since we have only accepted our twelve tones in recent centuries, before then,
there were other temperaments and EDOs commonly used, it is actually believed now that
Vivaldi used 12 notes from the 21-TET scale, this is completely ignoring non-western music
where what we would call microtonal would be considered the norm. This essay will not
focus on eastern music or pre-12 tone standardisation rather how people (Wyschnegradsy)
explored microtonal (24-TET) music in the age of the 12 tone standard and the rush to the
avant-garde in the 20th century. New tuning systems have not always been linked to onwestern influences; their development is often motivated purely by an urge to break free of
the twelve tone limit (D. Godfrey 1993. P.211). The biggest problem faced when looking at or
analysing microtonal music is that throughout any music education we have been taught with
the idea that there are 12 notes in an octave, this affects note names, intervals and many other
harmonic elements of music. Notating quarter tone music also has its difficulties since almost
everyone that has written this kind of music has developed their own way to do so. Gardner
Read theorised four different standard ways of notating quarter tone music from analysing
over one hundred different quarter tone composers. These are; signs placed above the
notehead, shaped noteheads, numeric representations (developed by Carrillo in a similar way
that a guitarist would look at tablature) and new accidental signs to be used with regular
sharps, naturals and flats (G. Read. 1990). It seems though, that out of these four different
notation styles, the fourth has become the most common and will likely find its way to being
considered standard in the coming years (if not decades), this is likely due to it being standard
on modern music notation software. The last way (that will be looked at here) of notating
microtonal music is to have more than one score for more than one instrument tuned a
specific interval apart, for example Wyschnegradskys early works were written for two pianos
tuned a quarter tone apart despite the fact that Wyschnegradsky owned a quarter tone piano,
this was due to the fact that there were no pianists that were open to the idea of learning the
demanding technique required to play the instrument, all of Ives microtonal works were
written this way for two pianos. These duets are much easier for a performer to play since
they need not learn to read new notation or even learn a microtonal instrument/playing style
though there are instrumentation difficulties when trying to write ultrachromatic passages or
since the notes would jump from keyboard to keyboard and the rhythms for each performer
would be far from ideal. The main problem with the quarter tone accidentals is that they do

not work outside of a 24-TET setting unlike some of the other methods. To stress the point
that everyone tried to create a standardised notation for quarter tone music, even Schoenberg
experimented with quarter tone notation by adding < or > before or after a note to indicate
to move the note 25cent in one direction. This made sense to Schoenberg because these are
mathematical symbols, but he seriously doubted this style of notation would ever catch on.
(Auner and Schoenberg, 2003, pp.75). The first way of writing listed above seems to be used
more for conventional twelve tone composers to embellish their music such as Bela Bartoks
Sonata for solo violin which uses arrows to show when to raise a note by a quarter tone.
Bartok was not unfamiliar with microtonal mannerisms since he travelled around Europe
learning folk tunes and some camps would not let him perform until he could sing their
slightly sharpened sevenths. (G. Allen & Unwin: 1968: p.179). Wyschnegradsky being the
progressive composer that he is wrote with the obviously supreme quarter tone flat/sharp
accidentals in his 24-TET compositions. These accidentals often changed visually from
composer to composer, but the idea stays the same. Miles Skinner created a useful diagram to
show a comparison between how the largest 20 th century composers wrote these symbols. On
the right, Skinner shows the closest we have to a standard, again since these symbols are used
in modern notation software.

(M. Skinner: 2006. P.14)

In our twelve tone music certain intervals can be described as major or minor, in
twenty four tone music, there is a note between these intervals, this note is to be referenced to
as neutral (A. haba. 1927. P.143). Wyschnegradsky also coined the major fourth as the note
between the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth, he believed that this interval should hold a
strong place in music because its ratio is 11:8 which is found in the harmonic series. For
analysis, it is important to understand how twenty four tone music has intervals through major
/ minor / neutral / perfect / augmented / diminished. This is ordered as follows (unison
neutral second minor second augmented second/diminished third minor third neutral
third major third augmented third/diminished fourth perfect fourth major fourth
augmented fourth minor fifth perfect fifth augmented fifth minor sixth neutral sixth
major sixth augmented sixth minor seventh neutral seventh augmented
seventh/minor octave octave). This system works as the 12-TET version does with
inverting, major becomes minor, augmented becomes diminished. There is an almost infinite
amount of chords that you can create with 24 notes within an octave and writing out the
names here would be hugely excessive (and would without a doubt, exceed the 3000 word
count by its self, there are over 250 tetrachords and over 352,000 unique chords), there are
however quarter tone variations of conventional chords such as a neutral triad created from
the root, a neutral third and a major fifth. Ives, Haba and Wyschnegradsky each developed
their own preferred tetrachords though this essay only needs look at Wyschnegraskys. His
tetrachord consists of the root, minor third, major fourth and neutral sixth, interesting because
its the only of the three to not make use of the perfect fifth like most conventional chords.
Later in the essay, we will see how Wyschnegradsky uses this tetrachord in his 24 preludes.
We can also see Wyschnegradsky using certain scales in his music such as his octatonic scale,
which is eight notes spread equally across the octave range with a major second interval
between each note, Wyschnegrasky also developed a new chromatic scale where there are five
semitone followed by a quarter tone repeated, this gives 14 chromatic notes instead of the

conventional 12 chromatic notes. This is an interesting scale because the lower half sits purely
on conventional notes and the second half sits purely on quarter tone notes, it can also be
looked at as two heptachords stacked on top of each other since the scale repeats.
Wyschnegradskys OP.22, commonly known as 24 preludes has a full title of 24
Prludes dans lchelle chromatique diatonise 13 sons. Each prelude starts in a different
key (of which there are 24 in quarter tone music), similar in many ways to preludes from
Chopin or Bach which also cycle through each key. The essay will now expand on that which
was iterated in the previous paragraph when it was stated that Wyschnegradsky was fond of
the major fourth. This was due to the intervals simple ratio of 11:8 and that it was found
relatively early in the harmonic series. Wyschnegradsky developed a new circle of (major)
fourths which visits each of the 24 chromatic notes without repeating (fantastic for artist
working with surrealistic ideas of the time), this can be seen in figure one bellow. It is also
interesting to see that if you take the first thirteen notes of this cycle, you get
Wyschnegradskys diatonicized chromatic scale (referred to from here on as the DC scale)
seen in the last page (M.Skinner: 2006. pp.146-147).

Figure .1: Wyschnegradskys cycle of (major) fourths. (Note: some intervals shown above are minor fifths, this is due to limitations
with our notation system where more accidental signs would be needed)

The ordering of the preludes is based from this cycle, the first being in C natural, the second
being in F quarter-sharp and the third being C sharp ETC. When analysing the 24 preludes,
one of the first things one may notice is that there is a row of notes above the score for each
prelude, this is the DC scale displayed starting on the root note of the piece and shows how
chromatic (not true chromatic, a diatonicised chromatacism) movement within the prelude
will work, there are this notes outside this scale that can be used in a true chromatic sense
within the 24 tone work, often used as leading notes in melodies or to add dissonance to
harmony. Writing this essay, it seems that it would be entirely possible to write on and on
about the similarities of Wyschnegradskys DC scale and the conventional major scale,
bringing in definitions of scales from a number of musicologists and comparing how they are
formed, but for the purpose of this essay, only the basics will be discussed. The conventional
major scale (or subsequent modes) can be built from a cycle of fifths by taking an eight note
slice of the cycle and putting the notes in order of pitch, this can also be done for the DC scale
by taking a thirteen note slice of the cycle of major fourths. The major scale can also be
constructed of two tetrachords in a similar way to the DC scale being made from two
heptachords. Someone may (very critically) find a lot of these compositions very
mathematical with little to no imagination or compositional joy to which they should be
pointed in the direction of the third prelude with its crumbling melodies and sparse textures or
the fifth, where any quarter tone movement melodically is descending creating the feel that
any time the piece is getting anywhere, it simply melts away again.
Looking conclusively at Wyschnegradskys 24 preludes, one can easily see why he
latched onto the DC scale since it relates so closely to the major scale. Different ways of
applying the major scale apply here and it could almost be viewed as a shortcut into the world
of 24-TET music, its almost certain that this is why he created the 24 preludes around such a
pivotal scale in the movement. Wyschnegradsky gave himself enough time to explore the ins
and outs of this scale and its modes throughout these 24 short compositions. There are also
worlds of Wyschnegradsky that this essay did not touch upon such as the other side of his
compositions for orchestra and spoken word, or his spectral illustrations which he drew on
circular paper and linked with audible sound, towards the end of his life, despite poor health,
he even broke out of our standard octave with notes not repeating every time their frequencies
doubled. While many modern composers of the 21 st century seem quite content to add quarter
tone notes to their standard, conventional compositions while holding a huge banner that says
Look how clever I am being!, Wyschnegradsky really was pushing what was possible and
exploring what this new temperament, even going as far as to travel to globe looking for

composers with similar mind-sets and instruments on which he could play this music. Its is
such a huge pity that people do not know Wyschnegradskys name to the same extent that
people know the likes of Ives, Schoenberg or Messiaen.
Jonathan Keeler - 13035634

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http://www.ivan-wyschnegradsky.fr/en/biography/